Cover image of "City of Destruction," a novel about an assassination investigation

Four times in the less than 80 years of their joint history, India and Pakistan have gone to war. The first erupted when the ink was barely dry on the Indian Independence Act 1947 that resulted in the Partition of India into the two nations. But the cessation of the shooting war in 1948 left the causes unresolved. So it was no surprise that a hotheaded Indian Defence Minister would agitate for the resumption of the fighting as Vaseem Khan’s novel, City of Destruction, opens in 1950. Then, a young would-be assailant attempts to assassinate him. He fails, but only because Inspector Persis Wadia of the Bombay Police shoots him dead in the act. With barely a pause, Persis then sets out to learn the assailant’s identify and determine whether he acted alone. Against orders, as usual. Because her boss at Malabar House, Roshan Seth, has assigned the assassination investigation to the brutal and incompetent detective who has been working to undermine her since Day One.

A stubborn female detective—India’s first—grabs hold of the case

The failed assassin misses Persis when attempting to defend himself. Instead, he shoots Archie Blackfinch, her on-again, off-again British love interest. Archie is the expert who set up Bombay’s outstanding forensic lab. He is in demand to do the same for Delhi, Calcutta, and other cities, but he now lies in a coma. Persis’s conflicted feelings for him prevent her from visiting him in the hospital. Overcompensating, she pours all her energy into investigating the assassin. And she persists even after two MI6 officers show up in her boss’s office, claiming to be working for the Delhi Intelligence Bureau to take over the assassination investigation. It’s her case, and nobody, but nobody, not Seth, and not the British interlopers, is going to take it away from her. And she will withhold the clues she turns up to give herself an edge.

City of Destruction (Malabar House #5) by Vaseem Khan (2024) 359 pages ★★★★★

Photo montage of scenes from wars between India and Pakistan, background to this novel about an assassination investigation
Four times in their short history, India and Pakistan have gone to war. 1947. 1965. 1971. 1999. This novel’s postulate, that war threatened in 1950-51, is entirely in keeping with the historical reality. Image: Jagran Josh

A snapshot of urban India post-Partition

Naturally, Persis will eventually solve the case. It will take months of intense effort and inspired guesswork. And she will be forced to risk her life more than once as she works to disentangle a story that defies understanding until the final clues turn up. It’s devilishly complex. And in the telling author Vaseem Khan treats us to a detailed snapshot of urban India just three years after Partition. Then, the wounds inflicted in the separation are still raw, and the defence minister’s demands for war with Pakistan fall on receptive ears. But Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru will not act, knowing that the country’s economy cannot stand the strain.

City of Destruction is the fifth book in Khan’s outstanding Malabar House series of historical detective novels. The setting is Bombay’s smallest police station. Persis Wadia has been sent there to join others who are out of favor with the brass, some as punishment for their misdeeds, real or imagined, others (including Persis) simply because they don’t fit the bosses’ notion of proper police officers. Their punishment is to take on the politically sensitive and seemingly unsolvable cases nobody else in the Bombay police is willing to touch.

But Persis is a special case. As the country’s only female police detective, she faces sexism, even misogyny, at every turn—despite her stellar record of tackling and solving complex cases that baffle her colleagues and her boss. She is heroic but no classical hero. She’s impulsive, essentially friendless, hot-tempered, and almost pathologically incapable of following orders. These traits may help explain her success as an investigator. But they don’t make her easy to be around.

About the author

Photo of Vaseem Khan, author of this novel about an assassination investigation
Vaseem Khan. Image: The Bookseller

Vaseem Khan wrote seven novels and novellas about the Baby Ganesh Detective Agency, which feature a retired Mumbai police Inspector and his sidekick, a baby elephant named Ganesha. (I haven’t read any of these because the concept doesn’t appeal to me.) More recently, he has written the five novels in the Malabar House series, which are much more to my liking.

Khan was born in London in 1973 and studied accounting and finance at the London School of Economics. He worked for a decade in the Indian subcontinent as a management consultant. Since then he has been at University College London in the Department of Security and Crime Science.

I’ve reviewed all four of the earlier novels in the Malabar House series:

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