Death of a Lesser God by Vaseem Khan

In the fourth rip-roaring thriller in the award-winning Malabar House series, Persis and Archie travel to the old colonial capital of Calcutta, where they collide head-on with the prejudices and bloody politics of an era engulfed in flame.

Can a white man receive justice in post-colonial India?
Bombay, 1950

James Whitby, sentenced to death for the murder of prominent lawyer and former Quit India activist Fareed Mazumdar, is less than two weeks from a date with the gallows. In a last-ditch attempt to save his son, Whitby's father, arch-colonialist, Charles Whitby, forces a new investigation into the killing.

The investigation leads Inspector Persis Wadia of the Bombay Police to the old colonial capital of Calcutta, where, with the help of Scotland Yard criminalist Archie Blackfinch, she uncovers a possible link to a second case, the brutal murder of an African-American G.I. during the Calcutta Killings of 1946.

How are the cases connected? If Whitby didn't murder Mazumdar, then who did? And why?

Vaseem Khan is the author of two crime series set in India: the Baby Ganesh Agency series, and the Malabar House historical crime novels.


His first book, The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra, was a Times bestseller and has been translated into 16 languages. Midnight at Malabar House won the CWA Historical Fiction Dagger in 2021 and was shortlisted for the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year.


Vaseem was born in London, but spent a decade working in India as a management consultant.