Perveen Mistry attends a party at the home of Sir Dwarkanath's home. His daughter-in-law, Uma is raising funds for a hospital for women. She meets Dr. Miriam Penkar, the only Indian female obstetrician-gynocologist. While the Lord is talking about the hospital, Uma's only son Ishan suddenly has fire on his sleeve. His Ayah, Sunanda helps put out the fire and got her stomach burned.

When Perveen finds out that Sunanda has been laid off, and then charged with having aborted a fetus and taken to prison from her brother's home, Perveen takes on her case. The case is very strange, because the person who supposedly made the accusation is unknown by anyone, including the accused, and cannot be found. Perveen brings Sunanda to her home to stay with Sunanda's servant, Gita, in a cottage behind the house. Gulnaz, Perveen's sister-in-law has just come home with baby Khushy. When the cottage burns in the middle of the night with the door blocked. Perveen knows someone is desperately trying to get rid of Perveen.

Perveen is doggedly determined to save Sunanda. She tries signing up several solicitors, each of whom comes to see her and then says he can't take the case. Perveen finds out that although Sunanda was not pregnant, she was raped by a very wealthy man when Sununda took the children to a beach party at a wealthy home just before the party where she worked. Unfortunately, she didn't see the face of the man. Will Perveen be able to find justice for Sunanda and keep her father and brother happy?

This series gets better and better. I thank Soho Press and Netgalley for providing me with an ARC. The opinions expressed are my own.

Sujata Massey brings us back to mid-1920s Bombay (Mumbai) in the fourth historical mystery featuring India’s first female lawyer, Perveen Mistry, in The Mistress of Bhatia House. Previous installments of the series have set up Perveen’s somewhat circumscribed world. As a woman, she’s prevented from taking the bar and representing clients in court, but she can draft contracts, write threatening legal letters, and meet with clients—especially women who are reluctant or unable to meet with a male lawyer. While the constraints chafe, especially in this latest installment, Perveen has gotten very good at finding her way around (or through) the limits placed on her gender, race, and religion.

The Mistress of Bhatia House opens with a party. Perveen, along with other leading lights of Bombay society, to celebrate the last round of fundraising for a planned women’s hospital. Perveen quickly picks up on the strife at Bhatia House—there are too many chefs in this particular kitchen—but even she’s surprised when an accident burns a child and his ayah. She’s even more surprised to learn when she returns to Bhatia House a few days later with additional donations for the planned hospital that the ayah, Sunanda, has been arrested on flimsy charges and fired from her position. Perveen marches straight from the House to the jail where the still-healing Sunanda has been incarcerated and gets her out on bail.

Perveen, as usual, cannot help but investigate why on earth anyone would want to send the gifted nanny to jail. Sunanda is a hero for helping to save her charge from terrible injury or even death; she ought to be swimming in rewards and recognition. Instead, someone has essentially tried to disappear the poor woman.

At the same time that she’s wading into Sunanda’s mystery, Perveen is also puzzled by the strange behavior of her sister-in-law, Gulnaz, who has just given birth to her first child. Modern readers will recognize postpartum depression and anxiety in Gulnaz’s insomniac fretting and paranoia. Perveen and her family, however, are helpless to calm Gulnaz’s fears that she isn’t maternal enough or that everything and anything could hurt her baby girl. Seeing Gulnaz and Sunanda in juxtaposition with each other brings up some very interesting questions about what our societies expect of new mothers and mothers in general, who may have suddenly found themselves in the position of keeping alive a fragile human who can only cry to ask for what they want. It’s a wonder our species is here at all.

With some help from the lovely Colin Sandringham, Perveen’s impossible love (due to her status as separated-but-not-divorced), Perveen pushes deep into the mystery surrounding Sunanda to discover the truth, mete some justice, and put things to right once more. The Mistress of Bhatia House has some unfinished business left at its conclusion but, overall, it’s another excellent episode in the series.

I really like all the Perveen Mistry books I've read previous to this one, and I wasn't disappointed by this latest addition to the series.

“Mistress of Bhatia House” is the latest book in Sujata Massey’s mystery series featuring solicitor Perveen Mistry. In this story, Oxford-educated Perveen grapples with her own complex feelings about women’s treatment in Indian culture and law while trying to exonerate her client, a former ayah, AND figure out who poisoned a leading businessman in Bombay. She knows the two cases must be connected, but will she figure it out before a killer strikes again?

A host of changes in Perveen’s life, including a new baby in the family and a forbidden relationship, challenge her interactions with others at the beginning of the story. I like that as the story progresses Perveen comes to terms with the changes in her life and finds a way to move forward. This story focuses particularly on the issues women faced in 1920s India, including access to healthcare and status in the justice system. Though Perveen has always been aware of the injustices women face, these issues make her more aware that some women, including herself, have an easier time in society than others.

“Mistress of Bhatia House” is an enjoyable mystery with many twists and turns, while also providing good food for thought on the treatment of women by society and the legal system (and, yes, the reader can easily make connections to today).

This is a great book for those who like historical mysteries. CW: stories of rape.

I received a free e-ARC from NetGalley and Soho Crime. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I am really invested in Perveen at this point, but I struggle sometimes with how much action happens offscreen/in between books, and how little happens in the book itself. Characters are forgotten or fade in and out all too briefly and we spend a lot of time with Perveen who doesn't seem to evolve much herself. That said, these books are always a comforting and compelling read and I look forward to reading more.

Enjoying read! I had missed Perveen Mistry and was so glad to see her return in The Mistress of Bhatia House. The way author Sujata Massey writes about Perveen, and the good works Perveen accomplishes as Bombay's only female solicitor, feels very realistic.

If you want a gripping and suspenseful mystery that offers a compelling glimpse of the some of the class, caste, gender, and political restrictions in 1920s Bombay, clear your schedule and jump in. Even better, the main character is a compelling rule breaker who plays the long game under particularly constrained conditions. Perveen Mistry is a fish swimming upstream in her upper crust milieu, a maritally separated Parsi woman, a status which carries a certain amount of scandal. She is also Bombay’s first female solicitor, though not a barrister, that access is denied to women. She has recently become a partner with her father, whose support of her career is radically progressive, although he is a strict guardian of the propriety of her social position, which is quite limited. In her previous cases Perveen has encountered massive, sometimes dangerous, resistance to her vocation, but she is patient, smart, and intrepid, and knows which customs and rules to bend, even as she inwardly chafes at the many barriers she faces.

In this instance, Perveen seeks to defend Sunanda, a selfless ayah, who has been anonymously accused of taking an herbal mixture to induce an abortion, which leads to a spiraling trail of disaster for her, and a net which widens to include the reach of misogyny, colonialism, sabotage, coverups, conspiracy and violence through the elite societal, business, and police sector, The issue-driven plot is complex and then gets more so, but author Sujata Massey is skillful at smoothly driving the narrative , while showing layers of social inequity and tension through nuanced dynamic dialogue. It shows in even the briefest exchange with a business associate, servant, family member, or shop keeper, which speaks volumes about entitlement, prejudice, condescension, and affection… or lack of it.

As in previous books in the series, the secondary characters are well drawn and arresting, including her mercurial sister in law, Gulnaz, suffering a frustrating and fiercely detailed post-partum depression; Princess Cora, a striking Australian uberwealthy newlywed who is trying to trying to brave the intricacies of upper crust Anglo-Indian society; and Dr Miriam Penkar, who is another trail blazer, a female Jewish obstetrician that wants to build a women’s hospital, in a culture that does not seem to value women. Threaded throughout the plot is Perveen’s absolutely forbidden romance with a handsome English cartographer; their bittersweet clandestine meetings are heartfelt and spellbinding.

Also satisfying is that Perveen’s mental and emotional landscape and self-awareness expands significantly in this book. The obstacles that Sunanda faces, allows Perveen a closer look of the marginal of those who serve higher status families such as hers, how their futures and fortunes can evaporate in an instance based on a whim of their employers. She becomes more aware of her own privilege, though restricted, and of the pervasiveness of the societal lack of regard for those of a lower caste and socioeconomic standing. Perveen’s courage and her honesty, when second guessing her own motives and assumptions, make her immensely likeable. It is chilling though, that the concerns that author raises are as relevant and topical now as they were a century ago. Recommended. My thanks to NetGalley and to Soho Press for an advanced reading copy.

The Mistress of Bhatia House is a clever mystery, a cultural lesson in the lives and habits of Muslim, Hindu, and Zoroastrian characters in the book, and a recondite romance between the main character, Perveen Mistry and a British former civil servant, Colin. The book, the fourth in a series, is rich with detail, including customs, food, religions, dress, and a mix of local and foreign (colonial) persons. Perveen, the only solicitor in India who is female, is a strong, intelligent, and sensitive Oxford-trained lawyer who, because she is female, was unable to take examinations at Oxford and who must rely on her sharp mind for understanding who is behind a poisoning and a murder.

The primary focus of the book is a group, mostly women, who are collecting donations for a hospital that will care for women and children, especially childbearing women. To wit: there is a Jewish female physician, there are women who care about the poor and disenfranchised, and we also see the roles of female servants and how they are sometimes taken advantage of. We are also introduced to Perveen's love interest, Colin Sandringham, who works at the Royal Bombay Asiastic Society, a private library and scholarly group. We also meet British and Australian women whom Perveen has befriended.

The setting of the book is Bombay, and Sujata Massey, the author, wonderfully and imaginatively describes the city of the early 20th Century and the characters that vary from nabobs to street laborers and wealthy colonialists to upper class and high caste Indians.

Massey's books are rich and colorful and intriguing, and The Mistress of Bhatia House is no exception. Massey's books are imminently readable and almost impossible to put down. The compelling plot and intertwined characters create a remarkable book.

Thanks to Soho Press and Net Galley for the opportunity to read this incredible book.

The much anticipated return of Sujata Massey’s Perveen Mistry is well worth the wait. It opens with this wonderful sentence: “Sisters will fight. It’s true whether they are raised together or meet as sisters-in-law in a joint family household.” It sets the tone and theme for the novel, which is about the power of female connection. And murder, of course.

Perveen the only female lawyer in 1920’s Bombay, lives with her family after a disastrous marriage. As the book opens, she’s attending a fund-raising party for a new women’s hospital at Bhatia House. Her sister-in-law and former best friend, Gulnaz, has just given birth to the family’s first granddaughter, and she cannot attend. In her stead, Perveen is bringing Gulnaz’s donation.

The party is a mixture of wealthy Indians as well as British, and the family that lives in Bhatia House is managed by two formidable women, sisters in law: Uma and Mangela. Toward the end of the party, there’s an accident, and Uma’s young son catches on fire. He’s saved by the quick action of his ayah, Sunanda, who literally throws herself between the boy and danger, getting badly burned herself.

There’s a doctor at the party who helps the family manage the burns, and she and Perveen strike up a friendship. Massey is so good at dissecting and illuminating the many, many different slices of culture present in India. Perveen and her family are Zoroastrians, and the doctor is Jewish. Because both she and Perveen are both working in typically male professions they have a bond, one which serves them well throughout the story.
When Perveen is on an errand for her firm the next day, she sees Sunanda at the jail – she’s under arrest. Perveen can’t simply stand by and she goes to court, though as a female, she’s not allowed to advocate. Nevertheless, she gets Sunanda, who is accused of abortion, out on bail and takes her home, as one of her bail conditions is that she not return to Bhatia House. And it turns out that despite Sunanda’s heroic action, she’s been fired; and not only that, but the family also withheld the necessary burn care from her and she’s in a bad way.

Meanwhile, Gulnaz is returning home with her new baby, Khushy, and Gulnaz has been prickly, difficult and over the top emotional. It’s clear reading this with a 21st century eye that Gulnaz is probably suffering from post-natal depression, but at the time, all her of family thinks she’s merely overly emotional.
This is an excellent mystery, and there’s a death as the lynch pin, but the real crime is the accusation of Sunanda. Her accuser is known to no one, and her employers are willing to believe a stranger. Massey’s examination of the way women were treated – accused of a crime if they aborted a baby, the way they are not listened to, and the way the more powerful members of a family take away their agency, is the true theme of the novel. True to the first sentence, it’s also look at the relationship between Perveen and Gulnaz; at the dynamic between the sisters in law at Bhatia House; and even at the way Sunanda is treated by her own sister-in-law.

Perveen is fighting with all of it, in a lady like and civilized manner, of course. She will question powerful men as well as a system that imprisons women in their bodies, forcing them to have baby after baby. It’s really an incredibly timely topic. The dynamic between the treatment of women and the skillful storytelling that holds the book together makes this a compelling read, one of the best books of the year. This series has always been a standout, but this installment is one of the most powerful, addressing themes of women’s lives in a way Massey has always concerned herself with as a writer, from her Rei Shimura series through to this one. This is a writer whose work I always anticipate with delight, and I am never disappointed.

The newest installment I. The engaging mystery series of Parveen Mistry. A complex look at the challenges of women in colonial India and the struggles for equity and Justice in a time when biases, society and prejudice dictated rules and roles. Clever mystery with social Justice message.

This is the first title I read in this series and I’m sorry I didn’t start sooner. For a newbie I had some difficult initially with the various titles ascribed to individuals so I put the book down and came back to it and then I just devoured it. Well constructed, interesting characters, and informative information about India’s history with a little will they won’t they thrown in for good measure.

This is the fourth volume in the excellent Perveen Mistry series. Perveen is the only female lawyer in 1922 Bombay. Her work involves investigating fraud and extensive social injustice to save her client. This volume also moves her personal storyline along. It’s a good addition to the series and hopefully more will follow.

Thank you to Net Galley for providing an early copy of The Mistress of Bhatia House by Sujata Massey

Author Sujata Massey in her fourth novel featuring female solicitor Perveen Mistry explores the complex and unjust world of a poor woman of India unjustly accused of a crime with nowhere to turn. Enter Perveen Mistry who will tenaciously work within the confining culture of India to collect evidence and see the woman freed.
The action begins at a tea party gathering at the home of a wealthy woman who is gathering donations for a woman's hospital in town. As Perveen mingles with party guests, the stage is set for the rescue of a child by his ayah who is badly burned. An arrest follows on false charges and Perveen sets out to clear the woman. Among the many challenges Perveen faces is the fact that a male must argue the case in court.
Several subplots add to the intrigue including the plan by businessmen to falsify maps and steal land for development. Perveen's forbidden love Colin Sandringham along with Perveen will uncover the plot.
The Mistress of Bhatia House is completely faithful to the dynamic character of Perveen Mistry and will leave the reader anticipating what is next for this challenging, compassionate and driven character.

I am a fan of the Preveen Mistry series. This fourth book does not disappoint. Perveen becomes involved in the defense of a young nursemaid following some suspicious deaths connected to fund raising for a hospital charity. Once again issues of the "Raj", constraints on women and class distinctions arise as Perveen seeks to find the truth.
This is a review of an e-Galley provided by NetGalley.

When I read historical mysteries I’m always rooting for the women to break the mold and fight for the rights we have today. Perveen is working on a case for a servant that is arrested for being accused of having an abortion. The saying goes history repeats itself and I felt like I was right there fighting for equal rights for women. This is a great mystery series.
Goodreads

Each book in the Perveen Mistry series by Sujata Massey is a window into 1920s Bombay and especially the lives of the women living at that time. Preveen is a trained lawyer not allowed to speak in court, but she still manages to solve mysteries and help her clients and show us what life was like at that time.

In the latest of this strong historical series, Perveen Mistry witnesses a an accident as a child is accidentally burned at a gathering raising funds for a women's hospital. Though his ayah is also injured badly, trying to protect the boy, she is treated poorly by the boy's wealthy family. Worse yet, she is arrested and charged with abortion after taking an herbal potion provided by the housekeeper. Though Perveen, as a rare woman lawyer in 1920s India, doesn't take criminal cases, she can't help but try to aid the woman, who swears she wasn't pregnant and is falsely charged. Meanwhile, things are difficulty at home for Perveen. Her lawyer father isn't happy about the firm taking on a case that isn't in their usual line of work, and her sister-in-law has moved in with her colicky infant and is suffering from post-partum depression. Perveen is perplexed by her sister-in-law's change in personality and doesn't like having her sleep interrupted by a wailing child, but the real problem is that she's unable to have a happy marriage and a child of her own thanks to a disastrous failed union of her own (described in the first book in the series).

I love this series. The historical setting is fascinating, and the protagonist is an intriguing person. You can't help but learn a lot - about the Parsi community, colonial tensions, gender relationships, the law, and - in this case - the status of low-caste women and the struggle to provide women's health. There's a lot going on, but the plot never trips over itself. Here Perveen is allowed to be less than perfect, which is an interesting development. Altogether, a strong entry in a strong series.

Parveen Mistry, the first female lawyer in Bombay, is back with another mystery to solve. While attending a fundraiser for a womens hospital, Parveen witnesses an ayah save the life of a child who had managed to catch fire. A few days later she sees the same woman being taken to jail on charges of abortion, a crime not usually prosecuted. Parveen takes the ayah into her home and works to unravel why sunada (the ayah) is being prosecuted so aggressively and who could benefit from it.
In this book Parveen and her family are dealing with the post partum depression of sister in law Gulnaz who comes home with her new baby and struggles. I found the family’s attitude, especially Parveen’s, a little frustrating and she shows zero empathy with Gulnaz, tries to comfort her by telling her how much better the baby is now she has left, etc. I feel like Parveen has really lost some of her tact in this book as this is not the only time her decisions and actions are a little suspect.

Perveen Mistry, the first female solicitor in India, is back with a case of great delicacy. The ayah of a wealthy family's child is charged with inducing her own abortion. The young woman denies it and Perveen begins to investigate. As she does, a complex picture of corruption begins to reveal itself. Underpinning it all is the lack of power women in India have over their own bodies and lives.

Perveen is a highly relatable character, drawn with nuanced emotions, flaws, and frailties. Her family and friends are just as well-developed and the mystery is detailed and believable with all the clues laid out for the reader. The way in which the history and culture of India is interwoven in the story is fascinating in and of itself.

This is one of the best mystery series out there right now and I highly recommend it to fans of Louise Penny.

I felt like this book was a bit different than the others, focusing more on Perveen's personal life and social issues than the rest of the series has so far. Perveen's standing in her career, as the only woman in a male dominated field where the law works against her, has been a constant battle throughout the series. While we get that here, there's also familial issues, largely surrounding her sister in law, a new mother with postpartum issues, and tensions with her father, who is also her business partner, but doesn't always treat her as such. The case this time is also more personal, focusing on a woman who was wrongfully accused of having an abortion, and how the law does not protect women in these cases. We also see Perveen in a new light as she tries to navigate all of these challenges. Perveen is a strong supporter of women's rights, but is also privileged to come from a well off family who supports her and is surrounding by similarly wealthy and like-minded friends. In her conversations with working class women Perveen comes off as patronizing and hypocritical, though her interactions with them improve over the course of the book. While it did feel like the author was trying to do too much at times, the plot really comes together and we get a satisfying ending that I really enjoyed.