It’s been a year since I moved to Bangalore, and I cannot believe how quickly the weeks and months have flown past. Swimming in a sari, learning how to drive my husband’s Ford, and teaching my neighbour Uma aunty how to read and write have been great, of course. But when I went to the Century Club for a swanky dinner with my husband’s British colleagues, and stumbled upon the murder of Ponnuswamy, the local pimp – that’s when the pace picked up. My dear friend Mrs. Reddy was right – 1920s Bangalore is a cosmopolitan city, a place of possibilities – perfect for the launch of The Bangalore Detectives Club!

Life is perfect – well, almost. If only my mother-in-law wasn’t so sour faced. Bhargavi athe looks down on my ‘detective work’, saying women from good families shouldn’t meddle in something as sordid as murder. She’s behaving very strangely today though. Almost as though she’s softening towards me. She’s asked me to investigate a theft in her cousin’s factory. I told her she needs to call in the police, but she never listens to me. I only agreed to do it because it’s very hard to say to no to her. Perhaps I shouldn’t have gone out during the red moon eclipse, after all – they do say it’s a time of bad luck.

Now look what’s happened. I’ve stumbled across another corpse!

Murder Under a Red Moon, A Bangalore Detectives Club Mystery Book #2
Genre: Historical
Release: March 2023
Format: Print, Digital, Audio
Purchase Link

The latest novel in the acclaimed Bangalore Detectives Club series finds amateur sleuth Kaveri Murthy uncovering a new murder during the blood moon eclipse.

When new bride Kaveri Murthy reluctantly agrees to investigate a minor crime to please her domineering mother-in-law—during the blood moon eclipse, no less—she doesn’t expect, once again, to stumble upon a murder.

With anti-British sentiment on the rise, a charismatic religious leader growing in influence, and the fight for women’s suffrage gaining steam, Bangalore is turning out to be a far more dangerous and treacherous place than Kaveri ever imagined—and everyone’s motives are suspect.

Together with the Bangalore Detectives Club—a mixed bag of street urchins, nosy neighbours, an ex-prostitute, and a policeman’s wife— Kaveri once again sleuths in her sari and hunts for clues in her beloved 1920s Ford.

But when her life is suddenly put in danger, Kaveri realizes that she might be getting uncomfortably close to the truth. So she must now draw on her wits and find the killer . . . before they find her.

Meet the author
Harini Nagendra is a professor of ecology at Azim Premji University. Her non-fiction books include Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present and Future, and the award winning ‘Cities and Canopies: Trees in Indian Cities’, with Seema Mundoli. The Bangalore Detectives Club is her first crime fiction novel. The sequel, Murder Under a Red Moon, was published in March 2023. Harini lives in Bangalore with her family, in a home filled with maps. She loves trees, mysteries, and traditional recipes.

You can contact Harini on her website harininagendra.com; and connect with her on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.

All comments are welcomed.