A Necessary Evil
Abir Mukherjee
2017
4/5 stars
In 1920, Sam Wyndham, Detective Inspector in Calcutta's branch of the Imperial Police Force, is a first-hand witness to the assassination of a Maharaja's son. The other witness --his subordinate, Sergeant Banerjee --was a school friend of the Yuvraj, and is sent as an emissary to the funeral. As far as the Imperial Police Force is concerned, the case is solved and Wyndham is to abandon his conspiracy theories and let the matter rest. Not one to let a direct order stop him, Wyndham goes "on holiday" to join Banerjee in giving his respects to the grieving family, while actually planning to continue his investigation.
This is an intriguing and well-written novel, picking up a year after the previous book (my review here). The mystery had me guessing and the overall plot kept drawing me back. Mukherjee draws realistic characters, with the morally gray and nearly morbidly fallible Wyndham being especially so. The solution was a surprise, which I probably should have seen coming (the clues were there) but being caught off-guard made it even more enjoyable.
