By Dennis Fischman

I have never traveled to India – except through a book.

There are several series of murder mysteries set in India. Some are current plots, some historical. You can find police procedurals, women private detectives, cozies, any subset of the mystery genre that suits your taste.

For instance, I’ve read the Perveen Mistry series by Sujata Massey, starting with The Widows of Malabar Hill. In that debut, set in 1921 Bombay, a Parsi (Zoroastrian) woman lawyer starts to suspect that something is not right when the three widows of a Muslim man all leave their inheritance to the same charity. As a woman, she is in a better position to talk with them. Throughout the series, Perveen’s position as an outsider within helps her to solve mysteries…and helps us to understand Indian society a century ago.

“The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra”
by Vaseem Khan.Redhook, 2015, 316 pages.

If you’re more in the mood for an intercultural romance, the Captain Jim and Lady Diana mysteries by Nev March may be just the ticket. Start with Murder in Old Bombay, where the couple (a wounded British soldier who’s a Sherlock Holmes fan and a high-born Parsi woman whose sisters have come under attack) explore the twin sources of violence: British imperialism and Hindu nationalism. (Spoiler alert: in a second book, the couple have come to the U.S. and solve a murder at the Chicago World’s Fair.)

Let’s come closer to the present, though, and introduce India’s answer to Alexander McCall Smith.

In The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra, by Vaseem Khan, we meet an everyman type, Inspector Ashwin Chopra (Retired). Newly retired, that is: he’s only in his fifties, but a heart problem (and his very concerned wife, Poppy) have forced him to leave his career behind. Or so it seems.

Three strange things appear on the scene just as Inspector Chopra is supposedly leaving it. There’s the body of a boy, apparently drowned in a ditch, but not a very deep one and not anywhere you would expect him to go. There’s the face of a master criminal whom Chopra thought he had killed years ago.

And then, there’s a baby elephant. Baby Ganesh, to be exact, a diminutive 200-pounder, a mysterious gift from Chopra’s faraway uncle. What will Chopra do to get the elephant, apparently in mourning, to eat? How will the retired cop solve the mysteries when he can no longer claim support from his former department? And what will Poppy (who sees him spending so much time away from home and thinks he must be having an affair) say when she finds out he is once again putting his life on the line?

This is quite obviously a first book of a series, spending so much time introducing characters and setting it seems a bit like a prequel. It is also an interesting masala of police procedural, thriller, comedy, and romance, involving a couple who have been married for decades and still don’t know each other in some fundamental ways but are starting a new life together.

Book your passage to India soon by reading these books!

Dennis Fischman is a member of the Somerville Public Library’s Mystery Book Club and an inveterate reader.