The Bombay Prince

I was excited to read The Bombay Prince (A Perveen Mistry Novel Book 3) by Sujata Massey because I really enjoyed The Widows of Malabar Hill, The Satapur Moonstone, and the Perveen short story in India Grey. Once again, Perveen is faced with a confusing and twisty mystery, and she uses her unique abilities (and setbacks) as the only female lawyer in Bombay to solve it.

Freny Cuttingmaster, a young college student, first visits Perveen to a consult with lawyer and a fellow Parsi. (Freny knows about Peveen from Alice, Perveen’s bestie from Oxford, who’s now a math teacher at the college. So yeah, there’s more Alice in this story, too!) Freny wants to protest the prince’s royal visit to India, but her college has a coveted and mandatory place on the princes route, and all students are expected to attend. She’s worried that she could be expelled from college if she protests or skips the event, and she doesn’t want to go against her principles by cheering for the British crown.

But during the prince’s procession, another student attempts to disrupt the royal spectacle. Freny is nowhere to be found, instead, she’s found dead on campus. Perveen is instantly suspicious that her death was not the accident it seems. I usually skim any dead-body scenes in mysteries in case I accidentally read something gross, but this one was very different. Perveen’s actions blend her Parsi traditions, her investigative mind, and her concern for a promising young girl.

With the prince’s arrival, the city is an uproar.  First, there’s the royal entourage. English expats are visiting, proud to see their future king, and Parveen’s old friend Colin from the other book reappears. Then, certain locals publicly support independence and want nothing to do with a royal colonizer, and others just use the chaos to riot. Without revealing too much of the central mystery, since discovering it is so much of the enjoyment, the different groups in the city play a big part in the investigation. Very different social classes, religions and backgrounds are shown here.

An American journalist, J D Singer, hopes to get a good story out of the uproar.  One line in particular stood out to me. “I believe that Singer is a German Jewish name,” Jamshedji mused. “Just like our Mayor Sassoon, his ancestors could be from another destination.” The Sassoons are a real historical family of Baghdadi Jews who lived in Bombay, also fictionalized in the historical family drama Flowers in the Blood.  Another example of the wide array of blended cultures found in the city.

I enjoyed seeing Perveen solve another mystery in The Bombay Prince. In all the stories, she uses her observations and the way she is treated by others to investigate and solve the crime.  This mystery was also quite sad, as Perveen and Alice never lose sight of Freny’s death. This isn’t just a device to move the mystery along, readers can really see how a girl attending a co-ed mission college is following Perveen and Alice’s path to education, and that connection is very moving.