It’s a spring evening in 1921 in Bangalore. Nineteen year-old newlywed Kaveri Murthy is dining with her husband at the posh Century Club when there’s a murder.
The night—and Harini Nagendra’s new crime mystery The Bangalore Detectives Club—starts out hopeful as Kaveri takes in the surroundings of the club as she and her physician husband Ramu arrive for dinner.
The main hall of the Century Club glowed in the yellow light of the electric lamps, the sturdy furnishings of teak and rosewood offset by the delicate garlands of white jasmine, red roses and orange marigold draped around the pillars like serpents. The lamps were particularly impressive, mounted on tall iron pillars enhanced by ornate cornices and curls. Outside, the gentle scritch-scritch of a broomstick announced the presence of a gardener, sweeping up the fallen leaves from the grassy lawn where dinner would later be laid out.
Kaveri is new to Bangalore. She’s educated and wants to study more, but doesn’t know how Ramu or her mother-in-law will take to that. A big fan of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, she starts to look into the crime scene. By coincidence, Kaveri’s mother-in-law leaves town for a while to take care of an ailing relative so won’t be in the way.
In thinking about the night of the crime, Kaveri remembers witnessing a strikingly beautiful woman in an altercation with the man who would be dead before the end of that evening. Kaveri learns through her inquiries that the beautiful woman is a prostitute named Mala. Also at the club that night was a woman named Munimamma, the wife of the Murthys’ milkman, who is later beaten into a coma. Someone doesn’t want Munimamma alive. Kaveri figures the two attacks are related.

The result is the eponymous “Bangalore Detectives Club”. The cast of characters in the story is diverse and entertaining. Kaveri goes on to team up with her neighbor, a grandmother named Uma aunty, who becomes a perfect cover when the two start trailing suspects. No one would expect this pair of doing anything but shopping for dinner ingredients or visiting friends for coffee. There’s also a police inspector named Ismail. He accepts Kaveri’s “help” in the investigation and works well with her husband Ramu when it’s more proper for Ramu to make inquiries than it is for his wife. It is 1921, after all. And then there is Dr Roberts, Ramu’s boss at the hospital, and his wife Daphne, a moody memsahib.
Politics enters the story briefly, mainly in anticipation of Gandhi’s visit to Bangalore later that year. Ramu wonders about Ismail’s politics when he visits the police inspector at his office soon after this historic visit is announced in the newspapers.
After they had been given the flyers, Kaveri had sent off for a subscription to the Indian National Congress by mail. Ramu wondered if Ismail was a member. It was a sensitive question, and he hesitated to ask him. After all, Ismail worked for the British government too. How many of us work for one government, while holding loyalty in our hearts to another, he thought. He only wished he could see a transition in his lifetime.
But Nagendra tackles misogyny more than politics and writes feminist characters that seem realistic for the times. Kaveri is especially sympathetic towards Mala, who is arrested as a murder suspect since she was seen in the Century Club garden with the victim.. While the others seem content with letting Mala rot in prison, Kaveri insists on visiting Mala in prison to make sure she is treated well. Ramu needs some convincing.
“I don’t believe Mala is at fault.” Kaveri’s face is set in stubborn lines. “No woman would want to be in her situation,” she argued fiercely. “She could help us. I don’t know you’re being so stubborn about this.”
The story moves at a quick pace thanks to Nagendra’s colorful characters and her 1921 Bangalore setting. To add texture, Nagendra includes an illustrated map of central Bangalore at the front of the book and a glossary of terms unfamiliar to some readers, as well as a handful of recipes that newlywed Kaveri learns to cook for Ramu in between her sleuthing. Feminism only goes so far.
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