Can a white man receive justice in post-colonial India?
It’s Bombay in 1950. James Whitby, sentenced to death for the murder of prominent lawyer and former Quit India activist Fareed Mazumdar, is less than two weeks from a date with the gallows.
In a last-ditch attempt to save his son, Whitby’s father forces a new investigation into the killing.
The investigation leads Inspector Persis Wadia of the Bombay Police to the old colonial capital of Calcutta.
There, with the help of Scotland Yard criminalist Archie Blackfinch, she uncovers a possible link to a second case, the brutal murder of an African-American GI during the Calcutta Killings of 1946.
Death of a Lesser God by Vaseem Khan is published on 10 August, 2023. It‘s the fourth in his Malabar House series.
Vaseem has written about the conflicted attitudes of British colonials towards India and its peoples in Calcutta Blues: why Kipling despised the city.
