I saw this novel, the first of a series, recommended recently in the New York Times in a feature on cozy mysteries. Cozies aren’t my favorites, but as long as the mystery itself is well-constructed, I can enjoy them just fine.
Sadly, this is not the case with The Bangalore Detectives Club, a frankly amateurish effort in which the mystery is a transparent afterthought. Now, I don’t mind authors using genre fiction, especially detective novels, as a vehicle for social commentary, but there are two principals that should apply: first, the central mystery still has to work, and second, the social commentary has to be interesting and not just surface-level girlboss feminism mixed with “gee, wasn’t the past backwards-thinking?” historicity.
The Bangalore Detectives Club is set in the title city, in the year 1921. Kaveri Murthy is a young bride newly moved into her husband Ramu’s house. He’s a respected doctor and, thankfully for Kaveri, a bit more progressive than his parents. He doesn’t mind that Kaveri wants to continue studying mathematics, for example. When the Murthys attend a fancy-dinner at their club (prestigious enough that even the white doctors are in attendance) the festivities are interrupted by a dead body. The victim turns out to be a local pimp, and the chief suspect is an acquaintance of the Murthys.
Despite Ramu’s misgivings, Kaveri takes a keen interest in the case, poking her head in whenever possible, often behind her husband’s back. She is determined to find the killer. Along the way, she collects a variety of unexpected allies, as she has to navigate the notorious caste system and the limitations on women’s participation in society.
Unfortunately, there is not much in the crime to intrigue the reader. The victim was not a character in the story before his death, and very few of the suspects get enough time on the page to become meaningful parts of the story. Events transpire in a haphazard way, providing revelations to Kaveri as opposed to her actually “detecting” anything. Similarly, the dramatic reveal of the killer is underwhelming, and terribly obvious in a way.
The Bangalore Detectives Club is a failure as a mystery, without any real local history or social commentary of interest enough to compensate.