THE STAR FROM CALCUTTA

What’s the connection between the murder of a film censor and the simultaneous disappearance of a glamorous actress?

Perveen Mistry, “the sole female solicitor” in Bombay, is excited to meet her new prospective clients, the high-powered Calcutta couple Subhas Ghoshal, a director for Champa Films, and Rochana, his wife and leading lady. Perveen’s fifth case, set in 1922, again tucks a whodunit into a detailed portrait of colonial India and a relevant period topic, here the beginning of the Bollywood film industry. Perveen and Jamshedji Mistry, her father and boss, visit the Ghoshals’ lush digs to discuss a contract dispute. After the meeting, Perveen invites her friend Alice Hobson-Jones, a Rochana superfan who’s the entitled daughter of Lady Gwendolyn Hobson-Jones, to an advance screening of Rochana’s new film. The evening is memorable, and not in a good way. Blithe Alice brings along Diana, an adorable dog who runs amok and disrupts the luxe event. In the confusion, government film censor Joseph Morgan turns up dead and Rochana goes missing. Throughout Perveen's ensuing investigation, Alice doubles as insightful sidekick and comic relief. Massey, who’s generous in her historical color, devotes equal attention to Perveen’s singular life and the tangled whodunit. Perveen’s world includes meticulous chief maid Gita, tennis-playing debutante Kitty Daboo, and a secret paramour, British civil servant Colin Sandringham, who’s mentioned on page 1 but doesn’t appear until after the novel’s midpoint, as Massey’s tale moves with stately elegance to its complex solution.

A lush and leisurely period mystery with a proto-feminist heroine.