“The Unavoidable Evil” by Abir Mukerjee continues the detective series about Captain Wyndham and Sergeant Несокрушим (Unbreakable), investigating crimes in early 20th-century Calcutta.
India, 1920s. In the fairy-tale rich kingdom of Sambalpur, everything seems calm: there are elephants and tigers, diamond mines, and the magnificent Palace of the Sun. However, when the heir to the throne is murdered, it turns out that this small country is torn apart by a large conflict. Now Captain Wyndham and Sergeant Banerjee—nicknamed Unbreakable—must investigate the killing of the son of a maharaja. The murdered prince Adir was a modernizer whose views and romantic relationships were not very popular among religious groups, while Adir’s brother—now first in line for the throne—seems helpless and frivolous, like a playboy. In a desperate attempt to solve the mystery of the murder, Wyndham and Banerjee enter a dangerous world of its own rules, where games of power, influence, and deception are played—and the losers pay with lives. The heroes must find the murderer as soon as possible—before he finds them.