This my second Sujata Massey novel. It is a pleasant read, with a not too hard to guess twist in the end.

Solid 3.5 stars. The middle got a little boring for me, but I enjoyed the ending. I enjoyed this one more than the first.

What a pleasure to read The Satapur Moonstone after a sluggish start to the year with some rather less engaging reads. This is the second of a series of three books based on cases investigated by the fictional Perveen Mistry, the first female lawyer in Bombay. Like the other two novels, it has been well researched and delightfully written, so as to immerse the reader into 1920s pre-independence India.

I have commented in previous posts that Sujata Massey is somewhat like an Indian version of Agatha Christie. In this particular novel, her writing evokes a subcontinental Willkie Collins. In this particular whodunnit, instead of being set in Bombay, we see Perveen sent out to the remote mountainous princely kingdom of Satapur, to resolve a conflict between its two maharanis, the mother and grandmother of the young crown prince, whose education they disagree over. The local agent for the British Raj, Colin Sandringham, has engaged Perveen after being unable to meet with the maharanis himself, since they live under strict purdah in their royal palaces within the forests. Apart from the matter of whether the crown prince should be educated at home or abroad, Perveen, our lawyer turned detective, becomes increasingly suspicious of the circumstances under which the prince’s father and older brother have both come to untimely deaths.

Now I have read all three of the series, I look forward to the next instalment.

(3.5) While this was another interesting glimpse at a part of colonial India that I didn't know anything about - India's royal provinces & families - it wasn't as impactful as the first book. I do look forward to seeing if anything develops between Perveen and Colin, though.

I was riveted. Love this series. Highly recommended for adult mystery and historical fiction fans.

The first book in this series was on Time Magazine’s top 100 mysteries so I thought I’d give this series another shot. My original opinion stands. This series is not for me. The characters feel stilted and the mysteries aren’t that intriguing. While I love learning about other countries, that wasn’t enough to make me want to read more.

Our detective, Perveen Mistry, is one of the first women admitted to the bar in 1920s Bombay, and like most in the legal profession at the time, she's a Parsi: an ethnic Persian Zoroastrian. She has an advantage over her male colleagues: she can talk to women in purdah (cut off entirely from men outside their families). When the British government hires Perveen to investigate the welfare of a young maharajah in an princely state whose mother and grandmother are in purdah, she discovers that his elder brother may have been murdered. Will the young boy--or Perveen herself--be next? A fun and fascinating mystorical with a lot of plot elements going on.

J'ai fini tard, mais ça en valait la peine! J'ai passé un très bon moment avec ce deuxième tome de la série de Perveen Mistry. Franchement, j'adore son personnage, elle est hyper courageuse et volontaire malgré ce qu'elle a vécu et j'espère qu'elle aura l'occasion de vivre autre chose de beau par la suite.
Plus ça va et plus la littérature indienne m'intéresse. J'ai envie d'en lire plus et de lire aussi des choses plus modernes (si quelqu'un a une idée!)
Je conseille cette série qui me plaît vraiment dans ce deuxième opus. (J'avais lu le tome 1 en français et c'est peut-être la traduction mais ça m'avait moins plu).