It’s India in 1951. After wilfully ignoring orders, Persis Wadia, India’s first female police detective, is exiled from Bombay to the wild and mountainous Naga Hills District.
As India’s first post-Independence election looms, and tensions rise across the country, Persis finds herself banished to the Hotel Victoria, a crumbling colonial-era relic, her career in tatters.
But when a prominent politician is murdered in his locked room at the Victoria, his head missing, she is thrust back into the fray.
Is the murderer one of the foreigners staying at the hotel or an insurgent from the surrounding jungle?
As the political situation threatens to explode, Persis has only days to stop a killer operating at the very edge of darkness.
The Edge of Darkness by Vaseem Khan is published on 22 January, 2026. It’s the sixth in his Malabar House series.
And Vaseem’s written a feature about the head-hunters of the Naga Hills for Historia.
To see more historical books coming out this year, have a look at Historia’s round-up of over 110 new titles.
