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9781616959760
Overview
Overview
1920s India: Perveen Mistry, Bombay's only female lawyer, is investigating a suspicious will on behalf of three Muslim widows living in full purdah when the case takes a turn toward the murderous. The author of the Agatha and Macavity Award-winning Rei Shimura novels brings us an atmospheric new historical mystery with a captivating heroine. This Deluxe Paperback Edition features: an interview with the author, discussion questions, essays on the real-life inspirations behind the novel, delicious recipes taken from the story, and previews of The Satapur Moonstone (May 2019). Perveen Mistry, the daughter of a respected Zoroastrian family, has just joined her father's law firm, becoming one of the first female lawyers in India. Armed with a legal education from Oxford, Perveen also has a tragic personal history that makes women's legal rights especially important to her. Mistry Law has been appointed to execute the will of Mr. Omar Farid, a wealthy Muslim mill owner who has left three widows behind. But as Perveen examines the paperwork, she notices something strange: all three of the wives have signed over their full inheritance to a charity. What will they live on? Perveen is suspicious, especially since one of the widows has signed her form with an X--meaning she probably couldn't even read the document. The Farid widows live in full purdah--in strict seclusion, never leaving the women's quarters or speaking to any men. Are they being taken advantage of by an unscrupulous guardian? Perveen tries to investigate, and realizes her instincts were correct when tensions escalate to murder. Now it is her responsibility to figure out what really happened on Malabar Hill, and to ensure that no innocent women or children are in further danger. Inspired in part by the woman who made history as India's first female attorney, The Widows of Malabar Hill is a richly wrought story of multicultural 1920s Bombay as well as the debut of a sharp new sleuth.
- Format: TradePaperback
- Author: Massey, Sujata
- ISBN: 9781616959760
- Condition: Used
- Dimensions: 8.25 x 1.25
- Number Of Pages: 432
- Publication Year: 2018
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She had been meant to die, yet shed cut her way out of that fate and back to the world she loved.
Samantha C. - 1 year 8 months agoA mystery novel about the first female solicitor in Bombay, set in the 1920s. When a murder happens to a family she represents, Perveen Mistry must find the real culprit before one of her clients is wrongly imprisoned...or becomes the next victim. Truly unexpected twists and turns throughout the book, and the flashbacks into our heroine's own life illuminates much of why she is the person she is. I did not accurately predict the murderer, which is always a treat. So glad there are more in the series!
HPB Staff Review -
“Bombay is a hard city for girls. Everywhere there is a villain.”
Jennifer N. - 5 years 10 months ago“I’m Perveen...I live in Dadar Parsi Colony, and I work with my father in an area called Fort. We are lawyers, which means we help people keep what belongs to them.” “Perveen refused to engage in typical prejudices and didn’t want [others] to absorb them. ‘Here’s what I think. Because there are so many more poor people in India than rich people, they receive most of the convictions. Their fate is decided by judges who come from the elite...The widows had lived a life at the mercy of men who were supposed to serve them.” Mumtaz has “the worry of [a] growing baby. Razia has the sorrow of a missing child. And Sakina is worried for everyone in the house. And her children are at risk, too.” But these widows are anything but helpless. In true feminist form, they use their agency to advocate for their rights and those of their children. When the wily household guardian Faisal Mukri is found stabbed to death on their property, Razia’s daughter Amina goes missing, and Perveen herself is kidnapped, all of the widows are suspect. “Razia had the most powerful motivation against him: keeping her child from being married off. Sakina might have gone against Mukri because she hadn’t liked the way he’d threatened Razia, and she might have feared for the future wellbeing of her own daughters. And Mumtaz would have wished him gone if there was a chance he could claim parental rights to her child.” Perveen discovers surprising parallels with the culprit’s betrayal and develops deeper empathy when she realizes the culprit’s story could have been her own. Perveen, too, was once a wife. “What did she have to show for the marriage? A husband who thought she was shrewish. The gonorrhea infection. One quarter of every month spent in sinking solitude. Perveen stared at her mother-in-law’s loom and thought about the unseen threads that had spun around her, creating an unbreakable trap.” One of the central themes interwoven throughout the novel is binamazi or “being without prayer,” a Zoroastrian tradition dating back from the faith’s origins in Persia. During menstruation, Parsi women were imprisoned in a resting place, a small room of about twelve by eight feet with a back door that leads to a space with no sink or bath, only a toilet. The room contained a narrow cot, straight backed chair, and small table all made of iron. On the table were menstrual cloths, stained towels, rough cotton saris (women are not supposed to wear religious garments or pray while menstruating) as well as two pitchers. The tall pitcher was water, the small pitcher was taro, the urine from a white bull collected for use as antiseptic. Women rang a bell for their meals and remained three paces from anyone they encountered throughout menstruation and one day after. Punishment until pregnant! While Perveen is a Parsi, a Zoroastrian born in India, “The way our family practices our religion every day is through our actions...We worship differently, but we are not so far apart in our hearts, don’t you think?” “Good thoughts, good words, good deeds is the Parsi credo....Goodbye, Miss Mistry,” I echo Sir David as I turn the final page of this intriguing novel, “Although I’m certain it’s not for long…Your life will become a new book once you become a widow.” I can’t wait to read the sequel The Satapur Moonstone! “To the power of women!”