R.V. RAMAN'S PAGE: Harith Athreya series 1 & 2...GRAVE INTENTIONS, and A WILL TO KILL

A WILL TO KILL (Harith Athreya #1)
R.V. RAMAN
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$2.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: MIST, MOUNTAINS, MURDER.

Ageing millionaire Bhaskar Fernandez has invited his relatives to the remote, and possibly haunted, Greybrooke Manor, high up in the misty Nilgiris.

He knows his guests expect to gain from his death, so he writes two conflicting wills. Which one of them comes into force will depend on how he dies.

Fernandez also invites Harith Athreya, a seasoned investigator, to watch what unfolds.

When a landslide leaves the estate temporarily isolated, and a body is discovered, Athreya finds that death is not the only thing that the mist conceals. . .

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: First in a new series of private-investigator mysteries set in India. This Golden-Age style story about a murder yet to occur and fully expected by its purported victim that then morphs into a locked-room mystery is investigated by a Poirot-level famous private investigator. Or so we're told...I'm as always just a bit annoyed that I'm vouchsafed no evidence of this assertion, but that complaint is not one bit new or unusual.

I was set to love the read from the get-go because I read these reissues this summer. It's set in cool, misty mountains, and I about sobbed with jealousy as I compared that to the supersummer outside. *sigh* As I encountered more and more characters, beginning to wonder about a dramatis personae being notably absent. Such a simple thing to add, I mused, and so very helpful. It also struck me that the characters were more or less in the highwayman school: stand and deliver their piece of the narrative. That's a lot of time spent outside the narrative stagecoach waiting to get moving again.

A body is discovered. It means we're all in the stagecoach again, moving at a slightly bouncy, uncushioned pace. It becomes a locked-room mystery as we're moving along; no change of bouncing rocking pace as we clunk shins and bonk shoulders with characters who *are* going to say their piece, despite earlier attitudinal tics. It could have something to do with the sausage-fest we're having here, everyone is male and don't they just show it. A second body is discovered and there is more stand-and-deliver set-piece delivery. A big problem for me is no one who's died is at all, in any way, undeserving of their murder.

It's like a lesser Poirot story meant to convey the eerieness of The Pale Horseman. It works as a story well enough because we know where we're going. It's a bit less effective if the reader's not already on board with the Golden-Age conventions because then the solution, and its delivery by Athreya, ties everything to objects we're aware exist but not filled in on particulars about. It makes the solution a bit less impactful, more like the delivery of a sermon that we and everyone else, simply accept is true and so must be correct.

Points for period appropriateness, then, fewer for fair-play mystery solution, and please dear goddesses give me a damn list of who's who at the beginning. As a series starter I'm most definitely glad I've got all four in their reissue; I don't think I'd've picked up the second one (see below) if it had come out a year or more later.

The ebook is on sale, so definitely go get one!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


GRAVE INTENTIONS (Harith Athreya #2)
R.V. RAMAN
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Death, a cursed archaeological dig, and a beloved detective feature in this cozy stand-alone mystery set in contemporary India.

SECRETS

Seasoned detective Harith Athreya is back, this time to investigate suspicious incidences on a riverside dig in the heart of remote Bundelkhand.

SUPERSTITION

In this place, rich in myth and history, the legend goes that anyone who sets foot on nearby island Naaz Tapu would be cursed forever.

SLAUGHTER

When an archaeologist defies local folklore, the fallout is swift and deadly. Is the death a result of the ancient curse, or is it a more down-to-earth case of murder? Athreya needs to unravel the truth from legend before the curse strikes again….

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Archaeology! Possible supernatural stuff! A Dramatis Personae! Yes, yes, yes to all of these as good omens, and ways to get my repeat business.

On to the story.

Book two sets itself the task of telling us binaries exist for a reason, there is nothing we do not want to be expressed in a well-matched faceoff between, eg, two young women who are chilly career driven professional/warm, inclusive, family-loving opposites. Athreya is on a holiday with the latter, a nibling of his, and the former is the director of a "cursed" archaeological dig where a local wise guy seems to be stealing artifacts the dig is uncovering. A local legend of lovers kept apart by centuries old political feuding placing the area under a curse offers a modern murderer cover is the first thought a mystery fan would have; but who wants the specific person dead and why? What is the dig site looking for? Do local customs only matter if the people flouting them are white/colonizer people?

Again requested to solve a crime yet to take place, Athreya immediately zooms in on the artifact thefts but...well...are they thefts or rescues of cultural patrimony? Who decides this? What difference does it make, if the end result is the object ends up far far away leaving nothing in its place? Knowledge of the past that will never be accessible to the cultural descendants is no more complete a theft than a profitably sold antiquity....

In the quest to solve the mysteries via fair play, Author Raman snuck a valuable clue past me...in plain sight! Well done, sir. I enjoyed the Murder in Mesopotamia meets The White Tiger vibes. It felt more cohesive and less speechifyin' in tone than A Will to Kill (above) did. The read passed with admirable velocity, the Dramatis Personae made a big difference to my sense of the read as under my control, and Athreya's enough more familiar to me this time around that I felt prepared from the off to invest in his resolution.

A career spent making corporate presentations and mentoring young entrepreneurs has taught Author Raman to stay nimble, to choose a principle at the center of the story he wants to tell then to be sure his story relates to that principle all the way through. That serves him well in this second Athreya mystery/thriller.