By Gyan Prakash
Genre: MythologyWarm
The Book Club Rating : 3 Stars
A long-lost Sexton Blake mystery, 1920s detective fiction at its best
Historian Gyan Prakash of Princeton University stumbled upon part of the unpublished manuscript of Tower of Silence by Phiroshaw Jamsetjee Chevalier (or Chaiwala, as he called himself) in the British Library. After scouring several Mumbai libraries, he found the missing pages.
It is a thrilling tale that begins on a blistering April afternoon in Poona with the click of a camera shutter. An aerial photograph is taken from a small aircraft flying directly over the Tower of Silence. The Zorastrian community is thrown into turmoil and horrified grief at this heinous act.
Beram, a suave wealthy man who drives around in a Rolls Royce but is a devout Parsi, decides to exact revenge. Thus begins a sensational cat-and-mouse game between Beram and Sexton Blake, Englands most famous detective.
Historian Gyan Prakash of Princeton University stumbled upon part of the unpublished manuscript of Tower of Silence by Phiroshaw Jamsetjee Chevalier (or Chaiwala, as he called himself) in the British Library. After scouring several Mumbai libraries, he found the missing pages.
It is a thrilling tale that begins on a blistering April afternoon in Poona with the click of a camera shutter. An aerial photograph is taken from a small aircraft flying directly over the Tower of Silence. The Zorastrian community is thrown into turmoil and horrified grief at this heinous act.
Beram, a suave wealthy man who drives around in a Rolls Royce but is a devout Parsi, decides to exact revenge. Thus begins a sensational cat-and-mouse game between Beram and Sexton Blake, Englands most famous detective.
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After the attention-grabbing introduction, I found it a mite difficult getting into the story. So, it took me a few days to actually begin reading the book. But once I got my teeth into it, it turned out to be very absorbing and I managed to read it fast.
The language is quaint fitting in with that used in the 1920s. I enjoyed reading about ‘Bombay’ and ‘Poona’. To be truthful, I miss ‘Bombay’.
Then there were these details about the Parsee community that I had never known. The book is a mine of information about them and one can be confident about its authenticity considering that the book was written by a Parsee. It makes for a very interesting read.
The main characters – Beram and Sexton Blake – are well etched. While Sexton Blake is a detective who appears in many mystery thrillers by different authors during the 20th century, Beram is unique to The Tower of Silence.
The language is quaint fitting in with that used in the 1920s. I enjoyed reading about ‘Bombay’ and ‘Poona’. To be truthful, I miss ‘Bombay’.
Then there were these details about the Parsee community that I had never known. The book is a mine of information about them and one can be confident about its authenticity considering that the book was written by a Parsee. It makes for a very interesting read.
The main characters – Beram and Sexton Blake – are well etched. While Sexton Blake is a detective who appears in many mystery thrillers by different authors during the 20th century, Beram is unique to The Tower of Silence.
Publisher:HarperCollins Publishers India (July 31, 2013)
