Murder at the Grand Raj Palace

Starred review from April 16, 2018
In Khan’s outstanding fourth mystery featuring Mumbai PI Ashwin Chopra (after 2017’s The Strange Disappearance of a Bollywood Star), a friend on the force, Rohan Tripathi, asks Chopra to look into the death of American billionaire Hollis Burbank, who was found in his room at the opulent Grand Raj Palace hotel. Burbank was stabbed through the chest by a knife bearing only his fingerprints. Shortly before his demise, the tycoon bid $10 million to win a painting at auction, making suicide unlikely. Chopra is fired as a police consultant by a rival of Tripathi’s invested in the suicide explanation, but he’s back in the game after Lisa Taylor, an attractive employee of the auction house who stood to get a hefty commission had the transaction been finalized, hires him to continue. Khan’s depiction of Chopra’s marriage to Poppy, a restaurateur who has her own mystery to solve involving a vanished bride, adds emotional depth to the often funny plot. This is the best entry in the series to date. Agent: Euan Thorneycroft, A.M. Heath (U.K.).

Starred review from May 1, 2018
The fourth in a series that started off brilliantly and just keeps getting better, Khan's latest brings Inspector Chopra (retired), late of the Mumbai Police and current private investigator, and his sidekick, a canny young elephant named Baby Ganesh, into the cutthroat world of art auctions. A sumptuous 100-year-old hotel, the Grand Raj Palace, functions as a great enclosed space containing both crime scene and suspects. The crime scene is the beyond-opulent suite of very abrasive American billionaire Hollis Burbank, who no sooner bought the world's most expensive painting at an art auction held at the Palace than he was stabbed to death in bed. The Mumbai police are eager to avoid negative publicity by dismissing the case as a suicide, but the chief investigator wants Chopra, always an individualist, to look into it. Things really get interesting when Chopra is ordered off the case but keeps persisting. So much to love here: Khan's depiction of the over-the-top hotel; his plotting, which keeps on surprising (an unhappy bride-to-be disappears from a locked bathroom); and his introduction of new characters, including a wordly female auction dealer and Burbank's very nervous assistant. Readers returning to the series will especially appreciate the character arcs Khan draws, particularly in showing the gradual rebirth of Chopra and his wife from a somewhat arid life at the beginning of the series to one now filled with purpose and love.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)