Review: THE SATAPUR MOONSTONE, Sujata Massey

• 
  This edition an e-book from Libby through my local library
  
• ISBN: 9781760529420
• Publisher: Allen & Unwin, May 2020
• Page Extent: 384
• #2 in the Perveen Mistry series
• Winner of the Lefty Award for Best Historical Mystery!
• Nominated for the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction!
• Nominated for the The G.P. Putnam’s Sons Sue Grafton Memorial Award and the Macavity Award for Best Historical Mystery! 
• author website
  

Synopsis (publisher) 

The delightfully clever Perveen Mistry, Bombay's first female lawyer, returns in an adventure of treacherous intrigues and suspicious deaths.

India, 1922: It is rainy season in the lush, remote Sahyadri Mountains southeast of Bombay, where the kingdom of Satapur is tucked away. A curse has fallen upon Satapur's royal family, whose maharaja and his teenage son are both dead. The kingdom is now ruled by an agent of the British Raj on behalf of Satapur's two maharanis, the dowager queen and the maharaja's widow.

The royal ladies are in dispute over the education of the young crown prince, and a lawyer's council is required - but the maharanis live in purdah and do not speak to men. Just one woman can help them: Perveen Mistry.

Perveen is determined to bring peace to the royal house, but when she arrives she finds that the Satapur palace is full of cold-blooded power plays and ancient vendettas. Too late, she realises she has walked into a trap. But whose? And how can she protect the royal children from the deadly curse on the palace?

My Take

Perveen Mistry is commissioned to visit the small kingdom of Satapur to talk to its two maharanis about what needs to be done about the education of its young maharajah. His father and older brother have both died in the past year, and the kingdom currently comes under the agency of the British Raj. The local agent has been unable to talk to the maharanis because they observe strict purdah and his visits have been rejected.

They will not have the same objection to Perveen Mistry because she is female and she is a lawyer. Perveen's father, head of their legal firm in Bombay, thinks the journey to Satapur will be dangerous, and he is not keen for her to take the task on. Perveen on the other hand sees the commission as a great opportunity to branch out on her own. She is to travel to the British circuit house to meet the local agent by palanquin, and then go on to the Satapur palace to meet with the maharanis.

I was impressed by the evident research undertaken by the author, and feeling of authenticity and depth of historical background to the story. The characters are well fleshed out, and it is apparent that Perveen is not going to find her task an easy one. Here is India 100 years ago, Gandhiji is a young man and is admired by Perveen, and independence is a long way off.

Well worth reading.

My rating: 4.5

I've also read

• 4.5, THE KIZUNA COAST
• 4.6, A MURDER AT MALABAR HILL 

Review: A MURDER AT MALABAR HILL, Sujata Massey

• 
  this edition on Kindle (Amazon)
  
• ASIN : B07YTGHYT7 (Amazon)
• Publisher : Allen & Unwin (January 7, 2020)
• Publication date : January 7, 2020
• Language : English
• File size : 5731 KB
• Print length : 390 pages
• Page numbers source ISBN : 0143428233
• author website 
• multiple award winning author
• aka WIDOWS OF MALABAR HILL
  

Synopsis (Amazon)

Introducing Miss Perveen Mistry, the star of an outstanding new crime series. This courageous, likeable and determined young lawyer-turned-sleuth will appeal to readers of Phryne Fisher and Precious Ramotswe in a stunning combination of crime and mystery set in 1920s Bombay.

Armed with a legal education from Oxford, Perveen Mistry has joined her father's law firm, becoming one of the first female lawyers in India.

Mistry Law has been appointed to execute the will of Mr Omar Farid, a wealthy mill owner who has left three widows behind. But as Perveen examines the paperwork, she notices something strange: all three wives have signed over their full inheritance to a charity. What future will they have?

Perveen is suspicious, especially since one of the widows has signed her form with an X-could she even read the document? The Farid widows live in strict seclusion, never leaving the women's quarters or speaking to any men. With her own tragic history close to her heart, Perveen worries that the women are vulnerable to injustice.

As Perveen comes closer to the truth, tensions escalate to murder, the widows fall under suspicion and Perveen must figure out what's really happening on Malabar Hill. 

My Take

It is always nice to start at the beginning of a new series, with a new sleuth, set in a different culture, especially when the author is as talented as Sujata Massey.

The story has a ring of authenticity about it, taking readers into a world we will know very little about. Perveen is a recently qualified solicitor, in fact the only female solicitor in Bombay, Parsi background, in British India. The story gives considerable background to her own failed marriage, which gives her some understanding of the position of the three widows in the household of Mr Omar Fareed, deceased. Perveen is determined that these women who are living in purdah, and their children, will not be duped out of their inheritances by an unscrupulous house manager. Things get complicated when he is murdered.

Highly recommended.

My rating: 4.6

I've also read 

4.5, THE KIZUNA COAST

About this author:

• Winner and Top Pick of the 2019 American Library Association Reading List for Mystery
• Winner of the 2019 Mary Higgins Clark Award
• Winner of the 2019 Lefty Award for Best Historical Novel
• Winner of the the 2018 Agatha Award for Best Historical Novel
• Finalist for the 2019 Shamus Award
• Finalist for the 2019 Harper Lee Legal Fiction Prize
  

Review: THE KIZUNA COAST, Sujata Massey

• first published 2014
  
• e-book review copy kindly supplied by the author
• available for Kindle from Amazon
• #11 in the Rei Shimura series
• author website

Synopsis (author website)

When a devastating earthquake rocks Japan’s northeast coast, a tsunami follows and Rei Shimura is swept into her most rugged adventure yet.

The mystery begins with an SOS from Rei’s friend, the antiques dealer Mr. Ishida, trapped among thousands of displaced and dead on the Tohoku coast. Rei rushes to Tokyo, where she discovers Ishida Antiques may have been burglarized. Rei takes Mr. Ishida’s abandoned dog, Hachiko, on a volunteer bus to the ravaged town of Sugihama.

But Mr. Ishida’s got more work for her, since he lost contact with his antiques apprentice Mayumi and is frantic with worry. He won’t leave Sugihama without knowing the fate of the troubled 19-year-old girl from a famous lacquer-making family.

My take

Sujata Massey says

Because of the real framework of the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster, this book could probably qualify as a modern historical novel within the Rei mystery series.

As Rei Shimura ventures to the Tohoju coast in search of her mentor Ishida-san as a Helping Hand volunteer vivid description builds of the impact of the tsunami on coastal towns and villages, and of the way the Japanese community works together to rebuild lives. There is an authentic feel to the narrative which told me things about the tsunami that I had no way of knowing: the pervading smell of the rotting fish left behind as the water retreated, the stories of people who survived while those with them were washed away, the after shocks that continued for days, and so on.

Against this background Massey has woven the story of the search for Mayumi who disappeared after the earthquake, and then of Rei's search for justice.

It is always a delight to discover an author and enjoy your first read so much. It is like making a new friend.

My rating: 4.5

About the author

Sujata Massey was born in England to parents from India and Germany and grew up mostly in St. Paul, Minnesota. She holds a BA in Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University and started her working life as a features reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun. After leaving the newspaper, she moved to Japan, where she studied Japanese, taught English and began writing her first novel, The Salaryman’s Wife. This novel became the first of many in the Rei Shimura mystery series, which has won Agatha and Macavity awards and been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, and Mary Higgins Clark awards. Her August 2013 release, The Sleeping Dictionary, is a trade paperback with Simon & Schuster’s Gallery line, and also an audiobook published by Dreamscape. It’s the first in a series of historical suspense novels featuring Bengali women who each play a role in making modern India.
Sujata’s books have been published in more than 18 countries, and if she could redo her youth, she would have double-majored in history and a foreign language and spent a gap year (or two) abroad. Currently, she’s based near Washington, D.C. and can be contacted through these Internet sites: Facebook, Togather, and sujatamassey.com.