After five novels and two novellas in the Baby Ganesh Agency series, my next book will be a historical crime novel set in 1950 in India. It’s called Midnight at Malabar House and introduces Inspector Persis Wadia of the Bombay Police, India’s first female police detective.

My reasons for writing this book are simple.

The Baby Ganesh books are set in modern India, featuring Inspector Ashwin Chopra and the baby elephant sent into his care. I lived in India for a decade and these books are my chronicle of a country that has undergone an incredible transformation over the past two decades.

But modern India is also a reflection of her past.

India’s historical legacy permeates everything you see on the streets of a place like Mumbai (once Bombay), from the ubiquitous slums to antiquated cultural attitudes. A large part of that legacy is also tied up with the 300 years of the Raj, and the cataclysmic end to that period in late 1947.

Midnight at Malabar House opens on New Year’s Eve 1949, just two years after Independence, the horrors of Partition, and the assassination of Gandhi. India is still trying to work out what sort of democracy it is going to be. Social, political and religious turmoil is rife in the country. Economic reform is pitting the old nawabs, maharajas and feudal classes against the newly enfranchised masses. Yet Bombay remains in its own bubble, incredibly cosmopolitan, a city of jazz and self-indulgence, with tens of thousands of foreigners still living and working in the city.

As India celebrates the arrival of this momentous new decade, Inspector Persis Wadia stands vigil in the basement of Malabar House, home to the city’s most unwanted unit of police officers. Six months after joining the force she remains India’s first female police detective, mistrusted, sidelined and now consigned to the midnight shift. And so, when the phone rings to report the murder of prominent English diplomat Sir James Herriot, the country’s most sensational case falls into her lap. As 1950 dawns and India prepares to become the world’s largest republic, Persis, accompanied by Scotland Yard criminalist Archie Blackfinch, finds herself investigating a case that becomes more political by the second. Navigating a country and society in turmoil, Persis, smart, stubborn and untested in the crucible of male hostility that surrounds her, must find a way to solve the murder – whatever the cost.

This new series is my way of drawing together the threads of India’s past and using them to shed light on India’s present. It is also a celebration of female pioneers on the subcontinent. Indian society has a reputation for being intensely patriarchal. Even now many women struggle to enjoy the same rights that women in other countries take for granted. Persis, however, is a woman who refuses to be told what her place in the new India should be. She believes in herself and in her right to pursue the career that speaks to her own notions of justice and equality. She is a singular woman, fierce, committed, intelligent, a trailblazer in a sea of antipathy.

I would love for you to join her on this journey.

Competition

This is your chance to be immortalised in my new novel and become a part of Persis’ remarkable story. One lucky reader will have their name given to a minor character in the novel. All you have to do is answer the following question: “Who do you think is the greatest female pioneer of all and why? – Answer in max. 50 words.”

You can answer via this form. Deadline to enter is midnight, 31st December 2019. I shall announce a winner in the New Year on my social media (so follow me on Twitter https://twitter.com/VaseemKhanUK or Facebook if you don’t already) and in my next newsletter (which you can join here: https://vaseemkhan.com/book-club/ ).

You can find out more about the novel here and pre-order if you wish.

Although we haven’t finalised a cover for the book yet, here is a little flavour of India in the 1950s… This advert demonstrates how Indian society saw the role of women. Clearly, Persis has her work cut out as the nation’s first policewoman. I want to invite you on that journey with her. She could do with a few more of us in her corner!