The Shadows of Men

by Abir Mukherjee

The books in Abir Mukherjee’s Wyndham and Banerjee series are set in India in the last decades of the Raj. In this book, Gandhi is in the background and communal violence in the foreground, but like all the books in the series, The Shadows of Men is very lighthearted in tone. India’s first elections had taken place a few years before, in 1920. The two main protagonists, Sam Wyndham and Surendranath Banerjee, are based in colonial Calcutta but in this book also travel to Bombay. If you like your mysteries set in the past but not too heavy, this series is ideal. The Shadows of Men is the fifth book in the series, if you want to start at the beginning, the first is A Rising Man.