26 September 2023

The Bombay Prince

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Reviewed by Rama Gaind.

By Sujata Massey, Allen & Unwin, $29.99.

Perveen Mistry is a courageous, likeable and determined young lawyer-turned-detective. She has dramatic appeal in a striking combination of crime and mystery set in 20th century India.

As the country’s sole female solicitor, she holds a unique status in 1920s Bombay, a woman maintaining equilibrium between the weight of family tradition with her own dreams and is a trail blazer.

The title of Sujata Massey’s mystery refers to the Prince of Wales, son of King Edward VII and grandson of Queen Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India, who is about to embark on a four-month tour of India. It’s November 1921 and the citizens of Bombay are not universal in their welcome of the British heir.

Mistry isn’t surprised when local unrest spirals into riots. She is, however, horrified by the death of Freny Cuttingmaster, an 18-year-old student who falls from a second-floor gallery just as the prince’s grand procession is passing by her college.

Freny had come for a legal consultation, just days before her death, and what she confided makes Perveen suspect that her death was not an accident. When the death is ruled a murder, Perveen knows she can’t rest until justice is done.

Perveen’s third mystery propels a rich story of female empowerment during a pivotal era. The impressive Mistry makes her triumphant return to solve a shocking murder on the streets of 1920s Bombay.

Massey was compelled to write this novel because she found a “trove of research material on the Prince of Wales’s 1921-22 visit to India. These ranged from silent films to daily government records and photographs of the tour and newspaper articles that chronicled the darker side of India’s reaction to the imperial visitor”.

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