Bombay, 1951, and 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.
City of Destruction by Vaseem Khan is published in paperback on 4 September, 2025. It’s the fifth in his Malabar House series.
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