Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

The fifth installment in the Perveen Mistry series, The Star from Calcutta by Sujata Massey, is to be published March 3, 2026. I started this series in 2019, when I was recuperating from surgery to repair a a broken ankle, and read the first two books in quick succession. I really enjoyed the third and fourth books from this Baltimore author (local to me), so I was excited to get an advanced reading copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher SoHo Press.

This latest Perveen mystery was a mixed bag for me. I am still intrigued with the setting of India during this challenging time period of British rule. Book 5 is set in 1922, and the British would continue to hold India as its colony for another 25 years, until 1947, when India finally regained its independence.

Massey’s protagonist is a first in many ways. She is not the oldest son, not even the youngest son, but she still manages to join her father’s law firm as one of the first female lawyers in India, thanks to a legal education from Oxford and a somewhat open-minded father. She is also greatly aided by having a brother who was not interested in working in his father’s law firm, paving the way for Perveen.

Even with the seemingly progressive professional career path Perveen has been allowed to pursue, her personal life is a constant source of distress for her. Briefly married, she left the marriage (no spoilers here) and is now unable to pursue (or at least publicly) a relationship with the love of her life, Colin Sandringham, because of her religion and the societal restraints of the time period.

Also trapped in her own personal life while thriving in her professional life is Alice Hobson-Jones, Perveen’s best friend from her Oxford days, whose father is Lord David Hobson-Jones, a British government official stationed in Bombay. Alice’s parents are desperate to get Alice married off to a socially acceptable Brit who can finally turn Alice into a lady of the house befitting her position in society, causing Alice great distress of her own.

While I enjoyed the peek into the early film industry in India and the murder mystery part of this novel quite a bit, I didn’t enjoy the prolonged back and forth of the romantic lives of first Perveen and her beloved Colin (which one reviewer described as “will they or won’t they”), and secondly Alice fervently trying to dodge the romantic (male) prospects her parents bring before her. If this series continues on, I do hope Massey brings some resolution to both of these subplots.

On the plus side, I do like Massey’s writing style for this series. It is formal and a bit stiff, as would be expected for this time period in this part of the world. I love learning about the foods being served, the etiquette required in every situation, the fashions of the time, the live-in servants, and even the weather in Bombay, with its dreary rainy season matching the ongoing mood of both Perveen and Alice.

Fully acknowledging that this was an ARC that I was generously given to read, I did find a few inconsistencies that I’m sure will be cleared up before publication. The first one I noticed sent me back to the beginning to reread to see what I had missed as the “star of Calcutta” Rochana’s dog Bubbles is described first as a small brown poodle and just a few pages later is described as a small white poodle.

While not my favorite of the series, I did enjoy The Star from Calcutta, and I look forward to the next in the series to see if Massey’s characters resolve some of their ongoing issues so that the murder mystery itself can shine.