Review: The setting is the real star of this mystery
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 25, 2012
In a strange way, Murder in Mumbai reminds me of William X. Kienzle's The Rosary Murders. A cop and a reporter compete--and at times co-operate--to solve a murder in their gritty city against a backdrop of changing religious hierarchy. Except in The Rosary Murders, the city is Detroit in the 1970's, the religious hierarchy is the Catholic church, and the culture is reeling from the recent civil rights movement and Vatican reform. In Murder in Mumbai, the city is Mumbai, India, the hierarchy is the caste system, and the culture is shifting as it adjusts to the new Mumbai in what was once the old Bombay. The movie version might star Frieda Pinto rather than Donald Sutherland but I could definitely see it as a gritty police drama.Though Murder in Mumbai is short (it comes in at just 169 pages on my Kobo, including introductory pages) I felt I really got a sense of life in the fast-paced and ever-changing city of Mumbai. The murder mystery storyline was accessible and relatively easy to follow, though, like The Waterman's Daughter, the real star of the novel was the setting itself.For more reviews, please visit my blog, CozyLittleBookJournal.Disclaimer: I received a digital galley of this book free from the publisher from NetGalley. I was not obliged to write a favourable review, or even any review at all. The opinions expressed are strictly my own.