Smoke And Ashes (Sam Wyndham Series) by Abir Mukherjee

Paperback: From the winner of the 2017 CWA Historical Dagger Award comes the third novel in the bestselling Sam Wyndham series, the follow-up to the Waterstones Thriller of the Month, A Rising Man (2016) and its explosive sequel, A Necessary Evil (2017).

India, 1921.

Haunted by his memories of the Great War, Captain Sam Wyndham is battling a serious addiction to opium that he must keep secret from his superiors in the Calcutta police force.

When Sam is summoned to investigate a grisly murder, he is stunned at the sight of the body: he has seen this before. Last night, in a drug addled haze, he stumbled across a corpse with the same ritualistic injuries. It seems like there is a deranged killer on the loose. Unfortunately for Sam, the corpse was in an opium den and revealing his presence there could cost him his career.

With the aid of his quick-witted Indian Sergeant, Surrender-not Banerjee, Sam must try to solve the two murders, all the while keeping his personal demons secret, before somebody else turns up dead.

Set against the backdrop of the fervent fight for Indian independence, and rich with the atmosphere of 1920s Calcutta, Smoke and Ashes confirms Abir Mukherjee as one of the most exciting new authors of historical mystery writing today.

Set in a Calcutta the Telegraph called ‘so convincingly evoked that readers will find sweat bursting from their foreheads’, Mukherjee brings India’s past back to life with startling vivacity; throwing fresh light on a unique city shaped by the competing influence of British and Indian cultures.

Throw in a nail-bitingly tense mystery and two compellingly realised central characters and you have a recipe for a truly gripping thriller.

About the author: Abir Mukherjee is the Times bestselling author of the Sam Wyndham series of crime novels set in Raj era India. His debut, A Rising Man, won the CWA Endeavour Dagger for best historical crime novel of 2017 and was shortlisted for the MWA Edgar for best novel. His second novel, A Necessary Evil, won the Wilbur Smith Award for Adventure Writing and was a Zoe Ball Book Club pick. His third novel, Smoke and Ashes, was chosen by the Sunday Times as one of the 100 Best Crime & Thriller Novels since 1945. His latest book in the brilliantly conceived Captain Sam Wyndham series - Death in the East - was published in November 2019. Abir grew up in Scotland and now lives in London with his wife and two sons.

Rating: 5/5