This is the fourth outing for Captain Sam Wyndham and Saranthadra Bannerjee (Surrender-not), but you don’t need to have read previous books to be absorbed by the case facing Sam Wyndham. The book cleverly weaves between the present (1922 India) and an early case for Wyndham when he was a police constable in Whitechapel in 1905. For the first two thirds of the book, the chapters alternate which I enjoyed, as there were many tense endings to chapters which couldn’t be relieved straight away, as you flitted back to the other story.
The 1922 story took a while to get going, as we follow Sam Wyndham through an opium rehab facility first. This is interesting to those who have read the other books in the series but perhaps a little jolting for those coming to the stories for the first time. The 1905 story involved the death of a woman inside a locked room, which was complicated by the woman being a previous ‘squeeze’ of Sam Wyndham. Inevitably, the two stories end up overlapping and they are brought to a conclusion. We only see Bannerjee in the final part of the book, which is a shame for those who enjoy his character, but in the context of the story that is understandable.
Abir Mukerjee builds tension very well and although I predicted where the story was going, I fully enjoyed meandering my way there!

There’s a reason Death in the East was selected by the Telegraph, FT and Guardian as one of the best crime books of 2019.Abir Mukherjee certainly has a way with words and he’s consistently been producing great novels since his debut novel, A Rising Man, won the CWA endeavour dagger for the best historical crime novel of 2017.

Please read the rest of my review online (link below)

4.5 stars

For me, this is by far the most personal of Abir's books, delving into English class distinctions and the shifting of power near the end of the British Raj in India. Much of this is deeply painful, and yet Abir celebrates his own acceptance and success in modern Britain today.

These two views frame the action of the two stories: The first is a young copper Sam Wyndham in east London in 1905, and the second is Sam's retreat into an ashram in 1922 to recover from his growing opium addiction.

The marvellous Surendranath Bannerjee does not appear until the final quarter of the book, and his presence is very different from the previous books. Both Sam and Suren have matured significantly since they last worked together, and Suren's direction of the murder mystery near the ashram is superb.

The two timelines are brought together through a chance siting of a villain on his way to the ashram. And as with all of this series, a kind of justice is served. Wonderful stuff.


Full size image here

The young Sam as a new copper in the east end of London is frustratingly naive.

Sam possibly sees a villain
And while the thought that after all these years I should suddenly hallucinate about a long-dead murderer was perplexing, what really terrified me was the fear that I might be descending into madness.

Sam remembers the murder mystery in the east end of London, when he was a very young man
My first View of Bessie had been of her head poking out of the second-storey window of her ramshackle tenement, bold as the bust on the prow of a ship, and aiming curses at the crowd in the street below. She had the dark hair and sharp features of a Boudicca and the tongue of a dock worker, and she couldn’t have been much older than twenty. But when you saw her close-up, it was the eyes you really noticed: deep and brown and quick. You couldn’t read them, but one glance from them and you knew, you just knew, this girl was smart, smarter than most men at any rate, and that given half a chance she’d show you just how much smarter. She was pretty too, but the eyes: the spark within them and the window they afforded into the mind beyond, they made her special.

In 1922, Sam considers how he has arrived in India
St Francis was changing back into Brother Shankar, and suddenly I was struck by a deep clarity: a chain of events that had begun that day in 1918 when I was blown up by a German shell; which had continued with the death of my wife, and my decision to leave England for India and opium; all of it led to and culminated here, in this moment, with me lying collapsed and wretched in the dust of a monastery courtyard under the pitying gaze of the goddess Kali.

Sam considers the melting pot (or not) of the east end of London in 1905
Why Whitechalpel? Because this is where they got off the boats, and because no one with any other choice wanted to live there. It had always been this way. Before the Jews had come the Irish, fleeing famine, and before them the Huguenots, running from religious wars. Always someone escaping something, and coming here with nothing because they had no choice, and because a life of nothing was better than no life at all.

Strange events near the ashram in 1922
And suddenly I remembered my scripture: the story of Legion, the demons cast out by Jesus into a herd of swine. And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them. And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and were choked in the sea. Like every schoolboy in England, I’d been taught the story, but I’d never believed in its literal truth. Not until now.

Sam has a revelation, and his respect, understanding and appreciation of Suren deepens
Not for the first time, I was forced to contemplate the nature of my compatriots. We liked to think of ourselves as a noble race, the architects ofthe greatest empire the world had ever known, but our behaviour was still rooted in the narrow-minded mentality of that wet little island whence we came. The truth was we wasted an inordinate amount of time and energy on our petty hierarchies and hypocrisies.

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Book 4 in the Sam Wyndham series. In Death in the East, Sam is heading to the hills of Assam to the Hindu temple of Ashram to beat his Opium addiction. As he arrives at the station he sees a ghost from the past, a ghost he'd thought long dead. This chance encounter brings back troubled memories of a failed murder investigation.
This story alternates between 1905 - Sam's time as a young Constable in Whitechapel and to the present day 1922 and his battle with his Opium addiction. I'd worked out who the killer was but it didn't take nothing away from the story.
Surrender-not is still my favourite character.
Thanks Netgalley for the ARC

This is totally terrific... Wyndham is trying a cure in Assam for opium addiction at least a decade after an earlier case in east London when a woman is unaccountably killed in her own house. The two periods in his life now and then coincide in a plausible and legal coincidence. The character and place are unique and the pursuit of the killer nearly killed him then, and looks like it light be successful now. Refreshing and helping, I talky could not put this down .. twists in the plotting abound. Great characters .. highly recommended.

Cracking good read which has you gripped from the very first page.
It is clever how events of when Wyndham was a young constable in Whitechapel catch up with him years later in India.
After service in the Great War Wyndham is now a police captain in Calcutta who is addicted to Opium. Searching for a cure for his addiction he has traveled to Ashram to a Buddhist monastery and finds events and memories from his past becoming very relevant.
Although this is a book in the Captain Wyndham series it can be read as a stand alone novel without any detriment to the story line.

This is one of the best historical mystery I read this year.
It's an unputdownable book, gripping and entertaining and I kept turning pages as fast as I could because I wanted to know what was going to happen.
It's well written, well researched and the cast of characters are well thought and interesting.
I loved the well crafted plot and the solid mystery that kept me guessing.
It's the first book I read in this series and I had no issues with the characters or the plot. I think it can be read as a standalone.
I can't wait to read the other books in this series.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

I love mysteries, and I especially love historical mysteries, so that, combined with my love of this series up until now, meant that I was always expecting to enjoy this book. Which I did! A whole lot.

In Death in the East, we get to see more of Sam Wyndham’s backstory, through the first case he ever worked on as a constable. That storyline is interspersed by the present day, with Sam’s efforts to get clean from opium. As such, there’s not really a present day mystery for a good chunk of the book. But that’s okay, because it’s so well done, the switching between his first mystery and his current developing one.

As with the previous three books, the writing and the characters are amazing. The writing draws you in, builds the tension, and the characters keep you going because you want to find out more and more. Especially near the end when we see the way Banerjee and Wyndham’s relationship has changed (and what Suren asks at the end! We’re in for it now!). Because unlike the rest of the books, where the mystery in part drives the story, this one is almost fully driven by the characters (at least until the last quarter or so where the present day mystery starts to unfold). And, actually, I think it works really well here. You know the characters well enough to (hopefully) be invested in them by now so it doesn’t drag like it might if you didn’t. (If any of that makes sense because I’m definitely rambling with very little point right now.)

In fact, I don’t think there was anything I actively disliked about this book (besides maybe Wyndham’s complete uselessness around beautiful women which, firstly is a whole mood, but secondly, Jesus Sam can you do your job already?). This series is one I will devour every book of, and Abir Mukherjee is fast becoming one of my favourite mystery writers (if not already there).

Captain Sam Wyndham is struggling with his opium addiction and sets off for a retreat in the middle of nowhere in 1920's India.

As he is recovering from his treatment, a case from his early days in East London comes back to haunt his recuperation.

Using his wits and with the help of locals he pieces together a seemingly unfathomable mystery.

Thoroughly enjoyable and really takes you back in time.

I've not read Abir before but after this I'm going back to read the back catalogue.

Excellent.

After surviving WW1 and bereft of wife and family a Met Detective gets transferred to the Calcutta CID India. Unable to leave his demons behind he becomes an Opium addict and realises that this is no help and goes off to a remote Hindu Monastery for a cure. The book describes in graphic detail the horrors of addiction and the hell of withdrawal. When he recovers he joins the local expat community to convalescence. The story is told of his life in recovery and what happen 20 years before as a PC in the East End of London in alterative episodes which are easy to follow. It is a fascinating tale of murder and poetical justice, a most engaging and intriguing story.

Thank you RH and Netgalley for giving me a copy of this amazing book, in exchange for an honest review.
This is my first contact with Mukherjee, and I had no trouble reading the book alone, outside of its series. The characters were likable and the story was really interesting. I loved getting into the head of an addicted police constable in rural India, really outside my normal comfort reading zone, and damn, it was worth it, it made for an easygoing read.

This was a title I wanted for quite a while, pretty much since finishing Smoke and Ashes, and Abir Mukherjee delivered once more, offering us another brilliant historical crime novel.

After three books, it is only fair to say that I am fully invested in Sam Wyndham. We find him finally dealing with his opium addiction, going to a ashram in Assam, on the advice of his doctor, to seek treatment. He knows he will go through hell, but what he doesn’t expect is to see a ghost from his past.

The narration switches between the India of 1922 and the London East End of 1905 when Sam was a young police constable. As he did for Calcutta, Mukherjee brings Whitechapel into relief, in all its poverty, a veritable melting pot of cultures, but also with rampant crime and anti-immigrant hysteria. Sounds sadly familiar... Sad, yes, but not devoid of hope.

I personally loved this, both for the excellent plot and writing style, but even more the development of the characters. Sam, of course, but also Banerjee, who grows in confidence, and their resulting friendship.


I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review. My thanks to Random House UK, Vintage Publishing, and to Abir Mukherjee for the opportunity.

DEATH IN THE EAST is the fourth, and possibly the best to date, in Abir Mukherjee’s Raj-set Wyndham and Banerjee mysteries. The story alternates between 1922 India and 1905 London as Sam Wyndham, who, in an attempt to finally kick the opium addiction with which he has struggled through the previous three books in the series, has travelled to an ashram in remote Assam. An event on the way causes him to recall the earlier events when, as an inexperienced and rash bobby on the East End beat he investigated a violent attack on, and subsequent murder of, a young woman of his acquaintance.
In truth the two narratives initially seem unconnected and the intriguing 1905 London mystery feels a little broken up by the 1922 story of Sam’s ‘cure’ but around the two thirds mark the stories collide in startling fashion and the novel resolves very satisfyingly. Along the way there are chillingly atmospheric meetings in crime-ridden, dark London backstreets, two locked-room puzzles, an Agatha Christie-like examination of suspects and a significant change in the relationship between Captain Wyndham and Sergeant Banerjee.
As in previous novels, Mukherjee comments on the racism, the subtle and unconscious as well as the overt, of the English, particularly of the upper classes, against those who are ‘different’ be it the Jewish immigrant population in London or the native Indian ‘blithely dismissing the fact that this was his country and we were the foreigners in it.’ Unfortunately, things are not noticeably different a century later.

Death in the East is the fourth novel in the Calcutta-based detective, Captain Sam Wyndham, series and is one of the most compulsively readable and interesting historical fiction series' out there at the moment. It isn't necessary to have read the previous instalments but you will probably want to if you enjoy this one. Set in 1922, Sam Wyndham has had the shock of his life and is shaken to the core. On a train journey to Shyam, he alights at Assam despite his important reason for travelling. Wyndham has an opiate addiction and is in desperate need of help. However, the face he sees in Assam is one he never thought he would see again (it's not the drugs) because the guy was reported dead. So was exactly is going on and will Sam get up again having been knocked for six? The potent combination of history, mystery and social commentary really make this a must-read if you appreciate substance as well as style in a thriller.

There arent many crime thrillers set in India so I adored reading about the places that are described so vividly in the text that you feel as if you're actually there with the characters. I particularly enjoyed the social commentary and critique of the time and it made the whole book full of depth and complexity. As a UK colony at the time we bear witness to some awful racist remarks amongst the pages but I would say it's, sadly, accurate of the time and of sentiments. It is structured as a dual narrative with events taking place in present-day but with flashbacks to 1905 in which Bessie Drummond was brutally killed. It is a real page-turner with twists around each corner and a cleverly woven plot with so many different layers to it. This is a slow-burn novel for the majority of the time but towards the end, the action is kicked up a couple of gears and the conclusion both shocks and amazes. Many thanks to Harvill Secker for an ARC.

An interesting story with twists and turns that keep you hooked until the final page. Definitely recommended to those readers who enjoy reading this type of book in the historical setting in India.

This is a well-crafted book with two timelines - 1905 East London and 1922 Assam. One (or more) character ties these timelines together. The storyteller is a policeman with problems, not least of which is an addiction to opium. At the start of his 1922 adventures our "hero" is at an ashram specialising in the cure of addictions. The treatment and his old addiction lead him to be confused about some events, adding to the complexities of solving crimes. Something different to read.

I am a sucker for Abir Murkherjee’s historical crime series set featuring sergeant police detective Sam Wyndham of the Calcutta police and his trusted, smart side kick, Indian Sergeant Surrender-not Banerjee. “Death in the East” is the fourth in the series, have read them all and they are all equally fabulous. His first, “A rising man”, won the CWA Dagger Award in 2017 for historical crime fiction and rightly so. There is something fascinating about the atmospheric Raj setting that has pulled me in from the start, the description of India, its society and politics during the Indian independence movement and the last days of the Raj, not to forget the very clever plots.

“Death in the East” has two separate murder cases running parallel, one set in 1905 London and the other in Assam in 1922. Towards 3/4th of the book they merge into one thrilling development with an unexpected turn in the story.

1905 London: a very rookie constable Sam has to investigate the murder of his ex- girlfriend Bessie Drummond who was found brutally beaten to death in her room in the East End with the door locked from the inside. He vows to find her murderer despite some inexplicable facts bringing him into contact with very dangerous East End characters. The chain of events he sets into motion has a different effect than anticipated, costing him dearly.

1922 A much older, sicker Sam has finally decided to end his opium addiction travelling to an ashram in the hills of Assam which is known for a miraculous cure concocted by a sacred monk. While puking his heart out during his opium withdrawal, the ghost of Bessie arises from the past in his dreams and Sam is sure he has also seen someone linked to her murder at a train station who was considered long dead. When a young fellow inmate from the monastery is found dead, Sam’s detective instinct tell him he did not die by accident and he starts digging...

I loved the atmospheric parallel stories set at very different times all coming together in the end leading to a grand finale.

Abir Mukherjee’s Sam Wyndham/ Surendranath Banerjee series is one of the best crime series around and I am delighted that Death in the East is another sure fire hit.
Mukherjee’s writing has grown throughout this series and here he shows confidence in his characters by giving Sergeant Surendranath Banerjee lead status in the locked room mystery that poses a real conundrum for our two investigators.
The case this time has its origins in Sam Wyndham’s past. As a young Police Constable, Wyndham came up against a rich and vicious thug whom he suspects of being behind the death of Bessie Drummond, a young woman whom Sam had once had feelings for. The narrative switches between the young P.C. in 1905 where he is stationed in the heart of London’s deeply impoverished East End and 1922, where a seriously opium addicted Wyndham is determined once and for all to throw off his addiction. He travels to Assam for treatment from a Hindu holy man who treats addictions through a strict regime which brooks no recidivism.
Wyndham is travelling when he sees someone that he thought long gone; a foe he will never forget. That sighting brings alive all his memories of Bessie Drummond and her murder in a locked room that Sam knows was wrongly attributed to someone else. So when that man whom Sam knows to be the murderer is found dead, also in a locked room, it is clear that Sam cannot be an impartial investigator. Fortunately, he has already called on Sergeant Banerjee for assistance.
Here Mukherjee draws attention to the decades of prejudice and ill treatment meted out to those who arrive in Britain as immigrants; poor and in need of refuge. In 1905 it is the Jews who are the brunt of prejudice and racism; in later decades it will be the Bengalis and then the Serbs and Romanians. Britain’s history is one of deeply ingrained prejudice against those who seek asylum and to make their living in our country and Mukherjee shows us how deeply ingrained it is in out psyche when he portrays the relationship between Sam and Surendranath. Because Sam is not a bad man, he is simply unable to get over his own sense of cultural superiority and ingrained racism to Surendranath, a man whose name he has never bothered to learn to pronounce, despite calling him a friend.
But this book is set predominantly in 1922 and in India things are changing and changing rapidly. The move towards self-rule is gaining pace thanks to the adoption of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's policy of non-violence and civil disobedience, and the days of the Raj, while by no means over are beginning to look at least numbered.
This is reflected in the way that Surendranath and Sam interact in this book. Sam, because of his previous experience with the dead man, is deemed inappropriate to lead on the case, and so Surendranath finds himself in the position of being the lead police investigator in the death of a rich Englishman, working from a member’s club in Jatinga which would never allow any Indian to be a member.
It was terrific to see Surendranath taking more of a centre stage, albeit towards the end of the book. His relationship with Sam is changing, just as India’s relationship with the British is changing. The British see no irony at all in being incomers to India and yet asserting their (self-perceived) authority, while simultaneously doing all they can to suppress immigrants to Britain’s shores.
Mukherjee is beginning to assert Sergeant Banerjee’s character more now and as the Sergeant gains confidence so we should see the relationship between Sam and Surendranath shift to one which is more based on equals than the previous ‘enlightened colonialism’.
Oh, and the locked room mystery is a good one, which is solved neatly and with style. But this book is about so much more and Mukherjee’s characters grow in depth and complexity with every book. I think this is the best one yet and can’t wait for more.
Verdict: An elegant double locked room mystery layered with complex characterisation, atmospheric descriptions and conveying messages which resonate from 1905 through to the present day. This is class storytelling of importance in a series not to be missed.

Absolutely brilliant! I loved this book, and the main characters. I particularly enjoyed the interspersed back-story, which was very well written, and the way in which the British in India are portrayed, without reverting to excessive stereotyping.. I haven't come across this author before, but I will definitely be reading more of his books (and this one would make a cracking film!)

I have thoroughly enjoyed this series except for the unfortunate aspect of the lead character being addicted to opium, and the reader being treated to endless descriptions of cravings, opium dreams and withdrawal symptoms, all of which has been increasing in each new book. In this one, he's undergoing a cure, so I decided to stick with the series for one more book. But now we're getting all of the above, plus the side-effects of the cure. I have no desire to read endless descriptions of people vomiting. Does anyone enjoy that? Is there an actual mystery? I'm at 20% and there is one from Sam's past in London years ago, but nothing in the current timeline.

I give up. I may resume the series if reviews of future books tell me that Sam is cured and plot takes precedence over addiction descriptions, as it did in the first couple of excellent books. What a pity. This looked set to become a favourite series. I wonder why Mukherjee thought this would be an interesting addition to Sam's already interesting character and interesting setting? It really isn't.