Words From Vaish

A Murder On Malabar Hill Perveen Mistry Investigates Sujata Massey Penguin Books 2018                                                426 Pages There are some “whodunnits” that greatly benefit from a strong sense of place such as Sherlock Holmes’ fog-shrouded Victorian London of 1897 and the 1930s-1940s California of Raymond Chandler’s private eye Philip Marlowe.  Sujata Massey’s excellent A Murder On Malabar Hill set in 1920s colonial Bombay (now Mumbai) is just such a work. The sights, smells and sounds of this period are so richly evoked that this novel has the heft and feel of an epic, rather than just a simple mystery. The teeming city - with its evocative architecture and cuisine, its social interactions, complex ethnic politic...

War At The Edge Of The World Ian Ross Head Of Zeus 2015                                       387 Pages The long twilight of the Roman Empire during the period of late antiquity continues to exert a peculiar fascination on historians, novelists - and the reading public. Ian James Ross is the latest entrant in this field, with his military adventure War At The Edge Of The World set in Roman Britain during the twilight of the Tetrarchy (305 AD) and before the rise of the Emperor Constantine. The Tetrarchy was the reform inaugurated by the Emperor Diocletian in which the Roman Empire was divided into Eastern and Western provinces for administrative convenience, each ruled by an Emperor assisted by a junior colleague.   This system of four co-emperors held good for over twenty year...