Abir Mukherjee is hardly a new author, just new to me. I ran across a review of this book, The Burning Grounds, and chose to take it on. This story turns out to be the sixth mystery novel in the Wyndham & Banerjee series. This is a story about former partners who have been estranged for several years as the result of the outcome of a prior case. It takes place in Calcutta in the 1920’s when India was a colony of England. Both men have left India and have only recently returned to the country. The murder of a prominent man, a wealthy philanthropist with a hidden dark side, was assigned to Wyndam, and then a relative of Banerjee, a female photographer went missing. The cases are intertwined which essentially forced the two men to work together again. The body of the philanthropist was found with his neck sliced open in the grounds where corpses were taken to be burned. It turned out that man had financed a movie with a rising female star who seemed to be attracted to Wyndam.
As much as this story was a murder mystery, it was also a dive into the social struggles of the time, India with its cast system, and the palpable race and economic divisions of the populace which had to be taken into constant account. This is a great book, a good plot, with excellent characters. Now I have a new author to explore. There are five novels that precede this one in the mystery series, and three other books already published by this author. When I can get to it, I’ll read the first one, A Rising Man, which was published in 2016.
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