Bombay, 1951. A political rally ends in tragedy when India’s first female police detective, Persis Wadia, kills a lone gunman as he attempts to assassinate the divisive new defence minister, a man calling for war with India’s new post-Independence neighbours. With the Malabar House team tasked to hunt down the assassin’s co-conspirators, aided by agents from Britain’s MI6 security service, Persis is quickly relegated to the sidelines. But then she is given a second case, the burned body of an unidentified white man found on a Bombay beach. As she pursues both investigations with and without official sanction, she soon finds herself headed to the country’s capital, New Delhi, a city where ancient and modern India openly clash. Meanwhile, Persis’s colleague, Scotland Yard criminalist Archie Blackfinch, lies in a hospital fighting for his life as all around him the country tears itself apart in the prelude to war.
