A Fan's Playground

This is the third book in a mystery series set in 1920's India, starring a woman who's the country's first female solicitor. I liked the first book, but the second book had enough issues that I was seriously doubting whether it would be worthwhile to continue with the third. But I gave it a chance, and I'm glad I did, because I really liked this one!

The prose continues to feel mildly awkward to me, but not to a degree that was a problem, and the kind of major issues that were present in the second book were not present here in the same way so I could just enjoy it for its strengths.

This book is set during the very specific historical time period of the British prince's royal visit to India in 1921, and the independence related riots it provoked. A fascinating time to be exploring, and this created a great context full of societal upheaval and the complexities of diverse viewpoints, as Perveen attempts to solve the latest mystery.

A love interest for Perveen was introduced in the previous book, and I'm not particularly interested in him, so I was disappointed to see him reappear in this book. I was a little eye-rolly about the ~forbidden romance between them. But it wasn't too big an element of the book so I could deal.

Seeing Perveen navigate all her various complex social and family relationships as well as her public reputation within Bombay was much more interesting than the isolated setting of the last book. This was really great! I love her relationship with her father particularly. He's unusually progressive, supporting his daughter in taking a career that has never previously been open for women, but still more conservative than Perveen in a number of ways. And they work together well, and Perveen loves and respects him, and also gets frustrated with him and disagrees with him but doesn't want that to get in the way of their good relationship.

I also love Perveen's best friendship with a lesbian schoolteacher! Glad to see her back from the first book. Alice is great.

The mystery.... I'm probably not qualified to judge, I am not a mystery aficionado, but it worked for me. I do feel like there were some questions that were brought up in the course of seeing various suspects as suspicious that were never addressed, once the actual perpetrator was determined, but you know, sometimes life is like that, you don't get to know everything you want to know. The things I pressingly wanted to know WERE addressed, so that's fine.

And I liked that even though Perveen clearly cared about the wellbeing of the victim's parents, and was working to help them, the parents were not interested in taking Perveen into their confidence, they had their own struggles and sorrows and supportive community. When you experience the devastating loss of your only remaining child, not everyone's ready to respond perfectly to outsiders butting in!

That's something I liked in general about the book; a lot of interconnections between various characters who do not always like each other even if they're all decent and reasonable people! And it's balanced out with enough of people who do like each other. Together it made the community it takes place in feel real.

A mystery novel starring a female lawyer in 1920's India, the premise immediately intrigued me.

The book goes back and forth in between two times in the life of its main character, Perveen: 1916/1917 as a young student, featuring her difficulties in school and in her relationship, and then in 1921 as she gets caught up in a murder case featuring three widows who are observing purdah (exclusion from men).

The author was inspired by the two real-life first female lawyers in India, during the era she's writing about, which is really cool. And I loved how the author wove threads throughout the book about the issues of women's rights and how they were being addressed in India at the time. And it doesn't take too much of a didactic modern view; for example, the narrative is understanding of why women might voluntarily choose to observe purdah.

Also: Perveen's best friend is queer! NICE.

I liked Perveen a lot, and the complexities in her relationship between her and her father, and her and her white English friend during an era of British rule in India. And Perveen is believably both capable and really rather young and inexperienced.

And I loved being immersed in the setting, 1920's India is not a place I've read much about before!

The biggest negative about the book is that the prose felt kinda awkward to me, but as I got more into the story it stopped feeling as intrusive even though I never really stopped noticing. And overall I definitely enjoyed the book.

But also: sometimes you finish a book and then you're done, but sometimes a book won't leave you alone. This, unexpectedly, turned out to be one of the latter. For several days after I finished, all I wanted to do was spend more time in the world of the book and in Perveen's life! Both the period that was skipped while she was at school with Alice, and then whatever happens after the end of the book. And ao3 was no help. Alas.