“Murder in Old Bombay” - Nev March

 🔍 MIOB was an unexpectedly engaging mystery novel. Unexpected because where I thought I was in for a historical mystery set during the years of the British Raj, what I got was much more. In places this novel reads like more of an adventure story than detective fiction, while in others, it is a surprisingly heartwarming love story, and throughout, March provides thorough historical detail.

🔍 Captain Jim Agnihotri is an honorably discharged British army officer. This is the first book I’ve read featuring an Anglo-Indian protagonist. His “otherness” in Indian and British society is a theme throughout, and I’ll examine it further in my blog post. He reads about two upper class Indian women plummeting to their deaths from a clock tower in colonial Bombay. Agnihotri is intrigued by the case because he instinctively disagrees with the death by suicide verdict. Something is amiss. Can Agnihotri uncover the truth and bring some peace to the bereaved families, or is his interest in the case merely stoking a mare’s nest and causing them more pain?

🔍 March is a talented storyteller. Conjuring up the gulmohar trees, jambul, bougainvillea, and jacaranda, I could perfectly picture the sights and sounds of old Bombay. 

🔍 MIOB finds us decades away from Indian independence, yet March vividly portrays the political tensions simmering across the breadth of the Raj. The Sepoy Mutiny wasn’t a singular conflagration of native rebellion; as March portrays it, it was more accurately a series of events connecting by seething resentment and a growing desire for self-determination among the native Indian population. March examines the broader political landscape at this time, with the British Raj controlling vast swaths of kingdoms and  principalities. As in the second Perveen Mistry novel, here, we see battles of princely succession with constant interference from the Raj.  

🔍 In addition to the tensions between the British and Indians, March also examines a terrible by-product of the abolishment of slavery in the British Empire: the human trafficking and indentured servitude that saw thousands of Indians shipped to toil on far off plantations in the Caribbean, Guyana, and Surinam. The historical record shows that most of these individuals were lured by false promises of a better life, made to sign agreements that were incomprehensible, and essentially exported as cheap labor for the Empire’s plantations across the ocean. Most were then resigned to a life of toil for meager recompense that would never satisfy their “debts” and thus prevent their return home. Human trafficking is a plot point for MIOB, but broadly speaking, the story of these indentured laborers (search the term “Girmitya”) is of great import and should be studied to better understand the Indian diaspora.

🔍 Although it’s set 20 years earlier, I keep expecting Jim to run into our girl Perveen Mistry as he races around Bombay. In MIOB, Diana Framji describes an encounter she has in England with Corneal Sorabji at the start of Sorabji’s illustrious legal career. In the Perveen mysteries, we know that Sorabji is Perveen’s idol.  

 🔍 Jim’s “otherness” in Indian and British society is a theme throughout MIOB. March gives us the Parsi and Anglo-Indian perspectives. Novels such as “The Moor’s Last Sigh” and the Perveen Mistry series give a good account of the Parsi experience of being “othered” amongst the British and the Indians. Here we see Jim feel keenly the sense that he is both overtly Indian (perceived as a social drawback) and not Indian enough based on his treatment by comrades in the British army and fellow Indians. 

As an Anglo-Indian orphan, of unknown parentage, Jim’s sense of unbelonging is heightened in an Indian society where one’s surname typically informs others a great deal of about one’s background.

🔍 MIOB is first and foremost, a detective fiction; nods to Jim’s literary hero, Sherlock Holmes, abound. The plot definitely meanders in places. There are definitely heavily dishoom parts where Agnihotri is taking on the baddies Hindi movie style, and it feels like we’ve lost the mystery all together. If you’re a history geek, I’d urge you to stick with the story because March fills these wandering portions with so much historical and cultural insight, that it felt worth it to take the detours from the main mystery.

Speaking of Bollywood, I think Jim has all the makings of an excellent Bollywood hero, and this book could make an excellent film adaptation. I plan to read book 2 to follow Captain Jim’s further adventures…in America, as it turns out!