The Widows of Malabar Hill, by Sujata Massey, blends two of my favorite things to read about: a vibrant, distant, historical setting and a twisty, surprising mystery. Perveen Mistry is a Bombay lawyer’s daughter, and almost a lawyer herself. She attended Oxford at the time when women were permitted to read and attend classes, but not matriculate, and now she’s a qualified, educated lawyer who can’t actually take the bar exam and speak in court. The Mistry family law firm are the executors of a will, in which the recently deceased husband has made provisions for his three very different wives and their children.  The three wives live in purdah, the Muslim seclusion from men, so Perveen’s uniquely qualified to take on the case, and she’s right in the middle when it turns out not to be nearly as simple as it first seemed.

After recently finishing a novel where the setting was so A+ that I almost didn’t notice the total lack of a plot, I was really pleased by just how mush happens in this one.  There’s a murder mystery, and like in my favorite historical Roman mysteries, solving the whodunit relies on customs of the time. There’s also a flashback storyline that explains Perveen’s character and motivation, and while I really wanted to get back to the mystery (It goes from widows’ jointures to murder so fast!), I also enjoyed learning more about Perveen and Zoroastrianism. Throughout the novel, the general daily life scenes have a lot going on with women’s roles, and with different cultures colliding in Bombay.

Perveen’s Oxford classmate, Alice, returns from England, and while the two young women are delighted to be back together, their friendship is strained by the gap between the ruling British expats and the ruled Indian nationals. I enjoyed seeing a close friendship affected by political constraints especially when it would have been easy to just never mention Alice’s privileges. After I read The Widows of Malabar Hill, I tracked down India Gray, a short story collection that includes a short mystery set during Alice and Perveen’s Oxford days, for more of these mystery-solving pals. Perveen is definitely the Sherlock Holmes, but Alice is a respectable Watson.

It’s always difficult to review a mystery without revealing too much, but I will say that the central mystery is the right mix of surprising events and believable characters.