‘Artefact’ by Gigi Pandian
Published by The Henery
Press,2013. ISBN (trade pb): 978-1-938383-68-7
‘Pirate Vishnu’ by Gigi
Pandian
Published by The Henery
Press, 2013. ISBN (trade pb): 978-1-938383-97-7
Dr Jaya Jones who
narrates the story in both these novels is a young history professor at Berkeley
University, San Francisco, California. Her hippy father whom she sees little of
is American; her mother, now dead, was a Tamil from South India. It was that
which influenced Jaya in the direction that her studies took; her subject is
the history of the East India Company which preceded the absorption of South
Asia into the British Empire. Another instance of Jaya’s interest in her South
Asian heritage is her love of bhangra music – a fusion of traditional Indian
music and Western rock – which she plays in clubs with her friend Sanjay, he on
the sitar, she on the tabla (small drums). Sanjay also works as a magician.
In Artefact the story begins when Jaya
is distressed to read in a newspaper that a young English archaeologist, Rupert
Chadwick, and a former lover, has been killed in a road accident on a winding
coastal road in Scotland. Almost simultaneously, Jaya receives a parcel
addressed to her in Rupert’s handwriting. In the parcel is a heavy gold anklet
with a large ruby and tucked away in the wrapping is a note from Rupert saying
that he is sending the ruby to her for safekeeping, that someone is on to it,
that she is the only person he can trust, and asking her to call him. This she
cannot do; after all, he is dead and Jaya is beginning to suspect murder. She
recognises that the anklet is old and of Indian workmanship. She consults Lane
Peters, an art historian, who says that it is in fact a bracelet and is indeed
old and would have formed part of a priceless collection. He is clearly
intrigued and would like to do further research. Jaya, however, has established
not only where Rupert was staying but that he was taking part in an
archaeological excavation of a Pictish site in Scotland and she determines to set
off there and investigate the circumstances of Rupert’s death, and of the rest
of the collection. However, she finds that Lane is bent on the same quest. Her
travels take her first to London where she becomes aware that she is being
followed and then to Scotland. There she and Lane eventually unravel the true
story of the collection and the mystery of what happened to Rupert, a search
which lands them both in peril and calls into question the motives of all the
people involved in the excavation.
Pirate
Vishnu concerns
one of Jaya’s ancestors, her great-great-uncle, Anand Paravar, who had
emigrated from what is now Kerala in Southern India to California and was
killed trying to save the life of his friend in the great earthquake of 1906.
The story begins when Jaya is consulted by a retired lawyer, Steven Healy,
about a map of San Francisco he has found showing the whereabouts of a
treasure. He tells Jaya that the treasure is one that her ancestor, Anand
Paravar, stole from his ancestor, and that so far from dying a hero’s death
Anand had been killed over the treasure. When Jaya tells Healy that Anand wrote
letters to her great-grandfather back in India and if there had been references
in the letters to a treasure the family would have known, Healy insists that he
must see the letters so that they will lead him to the treasure. But that night
he is murdered. And Jaya finds evidence that Uncle Anand was also known as
Pirate Vishnu; if that is so that could explain how he came to possess the
treasure. Then Healy’s son Connor accuses Jaya of being involved in his
father’s death, and although the police do not think she was she resolves in
order to settle all doubts she will go to the city of Kochi (Cochin) in Kerala
and find out the truth for herself. She is accompanied by the art historian
Lane Peters and while it is clear that his feelings for her match her feelings
for him he is reluctant to become more involved for reasons which he will not
disclose. And Sanjay too travels to Kochi. Although they do discover more clues
in India the mystery is not unravelled until all three return to San Francisco.
And throughout the narrative there is a parallel narrative in which we learn of
Anand’s time in San Francisco and the true story of his life and death.
Like many crime
fiction readers I was a great fan of Elizabeth Peters and her many novels such
as her long series about Amelia Peabody and her Egyptologist husband Radcliffe
Emerson, her shorter series about the historian Vicky Bliss and the sardonic
librarian Jacqueline Kirby, not to mention a number of one-offs, all equally
enjoyable yet clearly founded on a considerable knowledge of history. So it is
good to see a new series which combines suspenseful and exciting stories told
with lightness of touch yet at the same time substantial scholarship.
Recommended.
------
Reviewer:
Radmila May
Gigi Pandian is the USA Today bestselling
author of the Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt mystery series (Artifact, Pirate
Vishnu, and Quicksand) and the Accidental Alchemist
mysteries (The Accidental Alchemist and The Masquerading Magician).
Gigi’s debut mystery novel, Artifact, was awarded a Malice
Domestic Grant and named a “Best of 2012” Debut Novel by Suspense Magazine.
The follow-up, Pirate Vishnu, was awarded the Left
Coast Crime Rose Award, and her short fiction has been shortlisted
for Agatha and Macavity awards. Gigi spent her childhood being dragged around
the world by her cultural anthropologist parents, and now lives in the San
Francisco Bay Area.
Radmila May was born
in the US but has lived in the UK ever since apart from seven years in The
Hague. She read law at university but did not go into practice. Instead
she worked for many years for a firm of law publishers and has been working for
them off and on ever since. For the last few years she was one of three editors
working on a new edition of a practitioners' text book on Criminal Evidence by
her late husband; the book has now been published thus giving her time to
concentrate on her own writing. She also has an interest in archaeology in
which subject she has a Diploma.
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