The Burning Grounds

Calcutta, 1926. A wealthy Bengali philanthropist and patron of the arts is found murdered near the city’s burning ghats, his throat cut. Sam Wyndham, professionally isolated after the events of the previous case, is assigned to investigate and is quickly drawn into the glamorous but precarious world of Indian cinema. At the same time Surendranath Banerjee returns after three years in Europe and begins searching for a missing woman photographer. When the disappearance proves connected to Wyndham’s murder enquiry, the former partners are forced to work together despite the distance that has grown between them.

The sixth novel returns to a Calcutta that has changed during Banerjee’s absence. Indian businessmen and civic leaders occupy more visible positions of power, the film industry is developing rapidly, and the authority of the British Raj is no longer as socially unquestioned as it once appeared. Mukherjee uses the investigation to examine race, caste, gender, artistic ambition and the ambiguities of a colonial society in transition. Wyndham and Banerjee’s reunion mirrors that changing world: their old hierarchy can no longer simply be restored, and solving the case requires them to renegotiate both their friendship and their place within the institutions around them.