The Star From Calcutta by Sujata Massey
The Star from Calcutta is the fifth in Sujata Massey’s acclaimed, award-winning Perveen Mistry historical mysteries set in the 1920s. Her previous engaging series took place in contemporary Japan, featuring protagonist Rei Shimura, an expert antique and art dealer. Perveen Mistry is the sole female lawyer in Bombay who, after earning a law degree from Oxford University, could only find work as an associate at her renowned father, Jamshedji Mistry’s, law firm. She is deeply concerned about civil rights, social injustices, discrimination and inequities in the legal and criminal justice system in early 20th-century India, when women were viewed as little more than chattel.
Divorce, as Perveen can bitterly attest, is nearly impossible to obtain. Married at 18, she has been estranged from her abusive husband, Cyrus Sodawalla, a thorough-going scoundrel who wed her for her dowry and to be associated with her influential family. Eyes opened, Perveen swiftly returned to her gracious family home, where her brother Rustom and his toddler daughter Khushy also reside. His wife, Gulnaz, has not adjusted well to motherhood and is currently traveling with her parents in Paris.
The Mistry family are wealthy, well-educated members of the ethnic minority Parsi/Zoroastrian, followers of the Iranian prophet Zarathustra/ Zoroaster who emigrated to India as early as the 8th century to avoid religious persecution by Muslims. Their primary languages are English and Gujarati, with Avestan as their sacred language, and many speak several European languages.
A Missing Movie Star, A Murdered Censor
Although Bollywood is decades away, Bombay and Calcutta are at the forefront of the burgeoning film industry. Perveen has the opportunity to represent a new movie studio, Champa Films, operated by director Subhas Ghoshal and his superstar wife, Rochana. Renowned for both her beauty and her stunt work, particularly as a tiger tamer, Rochana would be considered India’s first female action hero. The couple requires legal help as her former employer, a studio head in Calcutta, is threatening to sue her for breach of contract.
With her best friend, Alice Hobson-Jones, Perveen attends a glamorous film screening at the estate and studio they are renting. Alice is star-struck and seems smitten with Rochana and unwilling to leave the party at a reasonable hour. Torrential monsoon rains keep them overnight on the property. In the eyes of their strict families, the stain of this perceived scandalous behavior is vastly multiplied when Joe Morgan, an undercover movie censor employed by the government, is found murdered there the following morning. Mysteriously, Rochana has vanished. Suspicion falls on the director. To clear him of murder charges, Perveen begins to investigate.
Corruption, Secrets and Lies
Joe Morgan was a lewd, loudmouthed heavy drinker and gambler who was heavily in debt and decidedly not mourned by anyone who personally knew him. His appointment to the recently created post of movie censor provided the perfect opportunity to bribe and blackmail studio heads eager to obtain the official government seal of approval, allowing their films to be screened and begin earning back production costs. Alice has become secretive and might be protecting her new friend. Rochana’s official biography conceals truths about her background and true origin that might easily prove damaging.
Perveen conceals her forbidden and deepening relationship with former civil servant Colin Sandringham, a handsome Englishman who reciprocates her love.
Having initially faced difficulties securing clients, perhaps this budding attorney may have a brighter future as a legal counselor to the emerging giants in the film industry. Readers may be excused for wishing, for her sake, that the undesired appendage of a despicable spouse is somehow eliminated in a future installment.
The Star from Calcutta is a lavishly detailed, atmospheric and thoroughly entertaining mystery. Sujata Massey has created a tangled web while introducing readers to the darker side of the glitz and glamour of India’s nascent film industry. Impeccable research and deft storytelling combine to make her novels irresistible.
About Sujata Massey
Sujata Massey is the author of 14 novels, two novellas and numerous short stories. Her work has been published in 18 countries, and her novels have won the Agatha, Lefty, Macavity and Mary Higgins Clark prizes and been finalists for the Edgar, Anthony, and Harper Lee literary awards. Sujata writes mystery and suspense fiction set in pre-Independence India, as well as a modern mystery series set in Japan.
Born in England to parents from India and Germany, Sujata was raised primarily in St. Paul, Minnesota, although her home for almost 30 years has been Baltimore, Maryland. She earned a B.A. in Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and wrote features for the Baltimore Evening Sun newspaper before becoming a novelist.
