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Transcript

Welcome to Mystery Books podcast. I’m USA Today bestselling mystery author, Sara Rosett. I’m also a bookworm who specializes in the mystery genre. I love sharing my favorite mystery discoveries, from classic Golden Age novels to contemporary cozies.

This episode is all about The Bangalore Detectives Club by Harini Nagendra.

The Bangalore Detectives Club was published in 2022, and it’s the first in a new series. I don’t know what the series name will be, but I have a feeling it will be The Bangalore Detectives Club. Will be the continuing name of the series, as is the case with the Tuesday Murder Club series and the Marla Murder Club series. That seems to be a pattern that’s emerging that’s very popular, and so I think that’s probably what they’ll do here.

Blurb

Here’s the blurb. When clever headstrong Kaveri moves to Bangalore to marry handsome young Doctor Ramu, she’s resigned herself to a quiet life. But that all changes the night of a party at the Century Club, where she escapes to the garden for some peace and quiet and instead spots an uninvited guest in the shadows. Half an hour later, the party turns into a murder scene.

For the first lines of the book, I’m going to read from the first chapter instead of the prologue, because it gives us a little taste of the protagonist. Mrs. Kaveri Murphy pulled out her oldest sari, nine yards of checked cotton and dark Brown. She felt so excited that she wanted to scream, but that would not do. So she resorted to her usual method for calming herself down, which was to make a mental list of all the objective facts at hand. Which were at this very moment: she was about to go swimming; she had not gone swimming in three years.

I think that gives us a very good quick snapshot of Kaveri, and we will talk more about her in a moment. But first, the setting of this story is in Bangalore in the 1920s. It opens in April, 1921. Kaveri is newly married, and she goes to live in this new area of the city. And it’s an extension of the city; it’s described as having perfect roads with street signs in two languages. So it’s a cosmopolitan place.

She’s adjusting to her life there, being newly married and adjusting to living in a new city. She is a really fun character. I really enjoyed reading about Kaveri. She is a list maker, and she’s very logical and almost scientific in the way that she approaches things. She has a great interest in math, and this is a great struggle for her in the book. We’ll get into this more in the themes of the book, but she’s very interested in calculus and algebra. And she loves seeing patterns and making sense of them, which I thought was a great characteristic for a sleuth, because that is what an amateur sleuth does. She’s going to look at what’s going on in the world around her, and hopefully she’s going to pick up on the patterns that nobody else sees.

Themes and Tropes

Okay, so let’s talk about some of the themes of this book. One of the major themes of this book, I think, is Kaveri’s transition to married life. And within that it deals with lots of other things. One of the lines in the book was, “There were a lot of things that a good married woman did not do.” And so she’s kind of chafing at these restrictions that society is placing on her. But she’s still a good girl. She wants to do what’s right, and she does not want to embarrass her husband, but she’s secretly rebellious. So I would say that there is a struggle going on here and that’s one of the themes is how she is quietly rebelling in some ways against these things that society is expecting of her.

There is the theme of the pressure to do certain things and have certain appearances. She has expectations about the cooking that she will do. And that she will give up her math and her interest in calculus and algebra. All these things go into how her attitudes, beliefs, and actions reflect on her husband.

So we see Kaveri, she is trying to figure out her role in this new role in this new city. She has several quiet rebellions, kind of private things that she does that no one else knows. She states that she is going to continue to study mathematics. But she does it in secret because she doesn’t know how it will be, how her new husband will feel about it. And some of the things she eats would not be acceptable for her to eat. There’s a scene where she’s in the garden secretly eating something that would not be acceptable for her to eat, but she’s doing it secretly so that no one else knows about it. But then as the book goes on, she becomes a little more bold and a little more sure of herself. So it’s a really nice transition to see her move from her secret rebellion to be a little more open about what she wants and how she wants to live her life.

Now, another aspect of this book that I thought was really interesting. One of the themes is just the themes of Indian life in the 1920s. And I thought it was really interesting to read about the expectations that her family and her society put on her as far as, like, the food and the clothing that she wore. And there was even one line in the book that saying she was, I think, five foot five, and she was considered very tall for a woman at that time. And her family went to great pains to find her a husband who would be taller than her. These are just things, little tiny details that really capture what it would have been like to live at that time. And it’s just an interesting look at another time period and another culture.

There’s also a theme of some of the unrest that’s going on in India at this time, and it doesn’t play a large part in the storyline, but I think that it will be in future books. It’s just a couple of hints in this story.

Okay, so a quick look at some of the tropes. The first one that comes to mind for me is fish out of water. Kaveri is in a new place, and she is in a new role. And so she is trying to figure out where she belongs and how she’s going to settle into this new place. She is a woman who is interested in education and in learning, and so that’s unusual, too, for her culture and her society at this time. So she’s also a fish out of water in that aspect as well.

Another trope we have is the closed circle. Everyone at this dinner that she goes to where the murder happens is a possible suspect. And so you’ve got British doctors and Indian doctors who are at this dinner. And so all of them are potential suspects. And it’s the perfect closed circle set up for a traditional mystery.

Another one of the tropes is colonial life. And I’ve read quite a few books set in India, Asia, different places during colonial times. But this is an interesting one because it is flipped and it’s told from the point of view of an Indian character versus a British character who is living in India. So I really enjoyed seeing the world from the point of view of an Indian character.

And then, of course, we have the trope of the persistent amateur sleuth. And Kaveri when she begins this story, she is very tentative. But as the story goes on, she decides that she’s going to figure out what’s wrong, and she is very determined. So that is a trope that is very familiar to mystery readers. And the persistent amateur sleuth Kaveri is definitely persistent.

And then we have the beginning of a detection club. She gathers some people around her, sort of recruits them to help her. And I always love that. I won’t get into too many details because I don’t want to spoil anything for the story.

The last trope that I wanted to talk about was this is basically a story within a story. The prologue gives us an introduction to a man who arrives at this address, and he realizes there’s a social event going on, and he doesn’t want to disturb anyone. And he goes around to this little area in the back of the house and sees a sign that says Bangalore Detectives Club. And he goes in and he begins reading this notebook. So basically, that’s our little introduction to the story. So the whole story is basically a story within a story because we get the story of how this club was formed.

Story Behind The Story

Okay, so for some fun facts and story behind the story section, I’ll tell you a little bit about the author Harini Nagendra. She’s a professor at a University in Bangalore. She leads the University Center for Climate Change and Sustainability, and she’s also the author of the nonfiction book Nature in the City.

Recommendations

All right, so I will close out with a few read alikes. If you enjoyed this book, then here are some more books that you might enjoy.

I mentioned that I’ve read several colonial mysteries set in Asia. One of those that I would recommend is Revenge in Rubies and I talked about that last season. It was season two, episode eight, Revenge in Rubies and that is the story of a woman who is British living in Singapore in the 1910s and she, of course becomes involved in a mystery. And that is a great look at colonial life from the British point of view in Singapore.

And then another recommendation would be if you enjoy colonial mysteries, check out The Inspector Silva Mysteries by Harriet Steele and that takes place in Sri Lanka.

Another mystery set during a similar time period is the Crown Colony series, and I talked about that last season as well. It was season two, episode five, The Mimosa Tree Mystery by Ovidia Yu. It also takes place in Singapore, but it takes place during the 1930s, so it’s a little bit further along the timeline. But it is from the point of view of a young girl living in Singapore during the time of the Japanese occupation. It was a fantastic story and I would recommend all of these books and series, if you enjoyed the Bangalore Detective Club.

My question for you is do you have a certain place that you enjoy reading about a city, a location, a country, somewhere that is not shown as often in mystery fiction? I would love to hear your favorites that you enjoy reading about. I enjoyed reading The Bangalore Detectives Club because it took me to a place that I don’t normally see books about. So I really enjoyed reading about Bangalore in India in the 1920s. You can answer the question on the show notes for this episode. They will be at sararosett.com/Bangalore or you can find me on Instagram. That’s Sara Rosett, no H on Sara and no E on Rosett. You can leave a comment there as well.

And thanks to the publisher for sending a review copy of this book. All comments and opinions are my own.

I hope this podcast has let you revisit a favorite book or perhaps helps you discover a new author to try. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, I hope you’ll tell a fellow mystery reader. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you next time.