Scorched City

Are the Russians plotting to destabilise Victorian India?

Hyderabad, 1895. Shots ring out at a church service in the British Residency area of the city, killing a prominent Indian man and injuring the wife of Chief Inspector Wilberforce. The assassins are identified by bystanders as Indian revolutionaries before they escape.

Chief Inspector Soobramania – Soob – is shut out of the investigation over his family links to calls for India's independence. But when an old friend asks him to help find a missing girl, the daughter of the murdered man, he agrees to look into the matter.

When the assassins strike again, this time targeting the pro-British Emir of Afghanistan in Hyderabad on a state visit, a Russian plot to expand their colonial influence in Central Asia is suspected. But is this really what’s going on?

Meanwhile, the death of a slave in the Premier Noble’s harem causes Soob and Shiraz to fall out over his handling of the death. As Shiraz launches her own investigation, she catches the eye of a new suitor, who offers to help so that he can spend more time with her…

Relations between the three friends – Soob, Wilberforce and Shiraz – are more strained than ever before. But will they be able to set their differences aside for long enough to uncover the plot at work in the shadows that threatens to set the whole region ablaze?

A intriguing, layered historical crime story from a rising star of the genre.