The Case of the Hail Mary Celeste; Malcolm Pryce, Bloomsbury, Rs.399.
Jack Wenlock is the last of the Railway Goslings: that fabled cadre of railway detectives created at the Weeping Cross Railway Servants’ Orphanage. Wenlock is investigating a case that begins with an abducted great-aunt, but soon develops into something far darker and more dangerous — the greatest mystery in all the annals of railway lore — the disappearance in 1915 of 23 nuns from the 7.25 Swindon to Bristol Temple Meads, or the case of the ‘Hail Mary’ Celeste.
The Lady from Zagreb;Philip Kerr, Hachette, Rs.699.
Set amid World War II, Bernie Gunther finds himself having to persuade a beautiful young actress — a rising star of the giant German film company UFA, now controlled by the Propaganda Ministry — for ‘favours’ at the behest of the very clever, very dangerous Propaganda Minister, a close confidant of Hitler, an ambitious schemer and flagrant libertine. But nothing is as it seems.
Karan Ghelo: Gujarat’s Last Rajput King; Nandshankar Mehta, trs. Tulsi Vatsal & Aban Mukherji, Penguin/Viking, Rs.499.
Acting against Kshatriya dharma, Karan Vaghela, the raja of Gujarat, lusts after and abducts Roopsundari, his Prime Minister Madhav’s wife. That sets Madhav on the path of revenge and he persuades Sultan Alauddin Khilji of Delhi to invade Gujarat. Nandshankar Mehta’s Karan Ghelo tells the spellbinding tale of a man who tragically failed his land and its people.
