A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee

Pegasus Books, 400 pages, $15.95 (c2017)

Can I admit that the only reason I continued to read “A Rising Man” was because of the author’s name? I would probably have given up reading after the first fourth (which I did) and not gone back (which I did — go back, that is) if the author had been, say, Albert Michaelson (not intentionally a real person). I read the part introducing Captain Samuel Wyndham, a Brit displaced, misplaced, re-placed to Calcutta in 1919, as a homicide detective. After closing the book at about seventy pages because of a case of the “meh,” I ignored it for a few months. Finally, I reopened the book and began reading again, and it was as though I held a new book in my hands. The story had changed (or I was in a better head space?). I found the rest of the book quite interesting.

Recruited to Calcutta in the last days of the Raj, Sam is befuddled. Such a strange land. Such strange voices, clothes, food. And such strange fellow Brits. Some British people have never known another home, but they still identify as British, with British-style country homes, fashions, manners, appalling food. The people who would have been middle class with modest abode and habillement in England are owners of grand homes, with servants and rich trappings in Calcutta. Most of them have the arrogance and sense of entitlement that inevitably doomed them and their lifestyle in the end.

Sam has brought baggage with him, too — the emotional kind. His wife died young and before they could establish a life together. And that led him to pick up a wicked opium habit. He is probably on the last of his nine lives. Then, within a few days of his arrival in Calcutta, Sam picks up a murder. The victim, Alexander MacAuley, is an aide to the Lieutenant-Governor of the Bengal government. His body was found in a seedy part of town, a stone’s throw from a bordello.

Abir Mukherjee, who grew up in Scotland, obviously takes glee in his portraits of the transplanted Scottish community. He writes about the subjugated Indian communities with compassion. He lets us see the importance of the non-violence movement. His Indian character, Sgt. Surendranath Banerjee, is Sam’s assistant. Banerjee is known as “Surrender-not” because no one can pronounce his name. He has a law degree from England and speaks English better than some of his “superiors.” Why can’t the British pronounce his name? Why do we call Deutschland Germany? Why do we call Nippon Japan? Why can’t we learn to call a person or place by its name? Anyway …

Banerjee is the real main character, in my opinion, although he has fewer scenes and we don’t follow him around. He has the more interesting life, split as it is between the British sensibility, his tribal one, and his larger Indian community. He is the one who makes sacrifices. He is the one who understands why larger numbers of Indians are rising up against the British government. The conflict of his loyalties is the most roiling storyline.

I went back to reading this book because it is nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel. (See a partial list of nominees and links to my reviews: here.) And because the author’s name is Mukherjee, which to my thinking, erroneous assumption or not, promised a more complex view of the days of the Raj. It followed through with that, but I hope the next book stars Banerjee.