Sujata Massey's novel The Widows of Malabar Hill won the Mary Higgins Clark Award at the 2019 Edgar Awards on April 25.
Sujata Massey's award-winning Perveen Mistry series set in 1920s Bombay continues with The Satapur Moonstone, the highly anticipated follow-up to 2018's The Widows of Malabar Hill. The second novel in the series finds Perveen, Bombay's first female lawyer, reluctantly traveling north while in the employment of the British Raj to assist in a dispute over a late maharaja's estate. But instead of a straightforward legal matter she finds a treacherous web of palace intrigue and a history of suspicious deaths.
Perveen Mistry is becoming something of a phenomenon. Agatha and Macavity Award–winning author Sujata Massey’s progressive and noble heroine took more than the mystery world by storm. The fascinatingly detailed setting, meticulously researched historical plot, and cast of complex secondary characters found a warm spot in the hearts of readers hungry for a sophisticated read with a feminist hero.
So it is no surprise that The Widows of Malabar Hill found itself on numerous lists from the start to end of 2018, including those of The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, The Boston Globe, Publishers Weekly, Amazon's Editors' Picks, Book Riot, CrimeReads, and Times of India, among others. This all makes the follow-up, The Satapur Moonstone, one of the most anticipated books of 2019.
If you’ve noted the "moonstone" in the title and wondered if it might allude to Wilkie Collins's seminal classic of the suspense genre, then you’re probably a book critic. It would be wrong to spoil the details of Massey’s homage to Collins, so instead we'll just point out that it's fitting for an Indian-American author to take back that narrative. Certainly, Perveen would think so.
About The Satapur Moonstone
Read SHOTS' review HERE
India, 1922: It is the rainy season in the lush, remote Sahyadri mountains, where the princely state of Satapur is tucked away. A curse seems to have fallen upon Satapur’s royal family, whose maharaja died of a sudden illness shortly before his teenage son was struck down in a tragic accident. The state is now ruled by an agent of the British Raj on behalf of Satapur’s two maharanis, the dowager queen, and her daughter-in-law.
The royal ladies are in a dispute over the education of the young crown prince, and a lawyer’s counsel is required. However, the maharanis live in purdah and do not speak to men. Just one person can help them: Perveen Mistry, India’s only female lawyer. Perveen is determined to bring peace to the royal house and make a sound recommendation for the young prince’s future, but she knows she is breaking a rule by traveling alone as a woman from Bombay into the remote countryside. She arrives to find that the Satapur palace is full of cold-blooded power plays and ancient vendettas. Too late, she realizes she has walked into a trap. But whose? And how can she protect the royal children from the palace’s deadly curse?
|
|
|
Click here to read about Cornelia Sorabji, the real-life woman who inspired Perveen Mistry!
|
