Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Book Author: Vaseem Khan

In 1950 Bombay, Persis Wadia is the only female police inspector on the city’s police force.  She’s learned to ignore the insults and unflattering remarks made by her colleagues, the most annoying being Hermant Oberoi.  He misses no opportunity to belittle her, both privately and in front of her fellow officers, and now, much to Persis’ dismay, she has been assigned to one of his cases.

High in the Himalayas, two men on an expedition come across a body in a cave.  He’s nicknamed The Ice Man because no identification is found on him, so it’s up to the small Bombay division to which Persis is assigned to discover who the man was and why he was in the cave, wearing almost no clothes and with his face brutally battered, possibly to make identifying him impossible.  All that can be seen is that he is a white man, a European.

The only item found on him is a small notebook with BOMBAY PRESS 1943 stamped on the flyleaf.  Aside from maps of India and a few scribbled notes, Persis sees nothing unusual about the notebook until she reaches the end of it.  Three pages have been torn out and a fourth page asking that in the event of The Ice Man’s death the journal be sent to his wife.  But without the man’s name or address or even his nationality, that request is a dead end.

Then Persis is assigned to an even more problematic case.  The lead investigator is the afore-mentioned Hermant Oberoi, a man who is not silent about his belief that the force is no place for a woman.  Nevertheless, the two of them must work together on a double murder case, that of Stephen and Leela Renzi.  The Renzis were apparently asleep in the bedroom of their Bombay mansion when they were attacked; he was bludgeoned to death and her throat was slit.

The brutal murder of Stephen Renzi strikes Persis as similar to that of The Ice Man, with both men sustaining injuries that made their faces virtually unrecognizable.  But what could possibly be the connection between the deaths of these two men seven years apart?

Then comes a third murder, this time a Catholic priest beaten and placed on the altar of his church.  Again, the only common thread between the deaths is that Peter Gruenwald had had his face beaten almost to a pulp.  What brought about the deaths of these three white men, seemingly unknown to each other?  And why were the last two beaten so severely about their faces, since in these cases the beatings did nothing to hinder their identification?

The Lost Man of Bombay is a wonderful addition to the story of Persis Wadia.  Getting to know the all-too-human inspector, we see her difficulties in facing her father’s remarriage, her problematic relationship with the Englishman Archie Blackfinch, and the stresses she encounters at work.  Vaseem Khan has created characters and a plot that are very realistic, the Bombay setting is fascinating, and Persis is an engaging heroine, faults and all.

You can read more about Vaseem Khan at this website.

Why would someone steal a priceless manuscript?  And how did they do it, housed as it was in the Special Collections room of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, a monumental stone building constructed in 1804, with a guard on duty in the room that had no windows and only one door?

Persis Wadia, the first and so far the only female police inspector in Bombay in 1950, is sent to the Society after the Malabar House police station receives a call about a stolen book.  When she meets Neve Forrester, the Society’s president, she learns that the book in question is a copy of Dante Aligherieri’s La Divina Commedia, one of the two oldest copies in the world.  Priceless doesn’t even begin to explain its worth, Persis is told.  And not only is the manuscript missing, but so is the man who was examining it.

John Healy is a well-known English palaeographer, one who studies ancient writing systems and deciphers and dates historical manuscripts.  Neve tells Persis that John enlisted to fight in World War II, was captured by the Italians in North Africa, and spent a year in a prisoner of war camp.  After his return to England in 1947, three years before the book opens, he contacted the Society for permission to come to Bombay to examine Dante’s masterpiece for a new translation he was preparing.

The Society was delighted to accede to his request and named Healy their Curator of Manuscripts, a position he had held ever since he came to India.  Described as a workaholic, he arrived at the society at seven every morning, six days a week.  But when two days went by without a word from him, one of the Society’s librarians went into the strongroom to check on Dante’s book.  That’s when the Commedia was discovered to be missing, along with the palaeographer.

Persis is told that the book was kept in a special locked box that was returned to the librarian of the Special Collections when Healy left each night.  When Persis opens the box, inside it is a large volume wrapped in red silk.  But it’s a copy of the King James’ Bible rather than Dante’s magnum opus.  The librarian had not checked the closed box when Healy returned it.

Persis opens the Bible and reads an inscription on the flyleaf:  What’s in a name?  Akoloutheo Alethia.  The Society’s president translates the ancient Greek words as follow the truth, and Persis wonders what the first sentence has to do with the second and what Healy was trying to communicate with this brief message.

The Dying Day covers a lot of ground–feminism, World War II, Nazism, and man’s search for forgiveness, among other topics.  Although the novel takes place more than seventy years ago, these topics still resonate today.  Vaseem Khan has written an outstanding mystery, with a fascinating protagonist and a sense of place that brings mid-century India vividly to life.

You can read more about Vaseem Khan at this website.