A Fine Balance

The game by

Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes have returned home to Sussex in order to enjoy the new year, but soon enough they travel to London to visit Holmes’ brother, Mycroft, whose health is not the best. While there he suggests that perhaps they might look into a case for him. A possibly-missing person. In India.

Of course they head off, and the person they are looking for, none other than Kimball O’Hara, known to many from Rudyard Kipling’s Kim.

East of the Sun by

by Julia Gregson

I wasn’t too sure about this book when I first started to read it. It didn’t quite grab my attention, and I wasn’t sure that I’d like any of the three main characters. But I persevered. And came to really quite enjoy it. The story is set in 1928, and our heroes are off to India. One to start a new life with her fiancée whom she really doesn’t know. One to serve as bridesmaid but really part of the “Fishing Fleet” off looking for a husband. And the third is looking for independence and a new life in an old home.

A Fine Balance by

Dina Dalal seldom indulged in looking back at her life with regret or bitterness, or questioning why things had turned out the way the way they had, cheating her of the bright future everyone had predicted for her when she was in school, when her name was still Dina Shroff.

I’m not really sure where to begin with this review. This is a big book, both in the amount of pages and in the amount of ground it covers. Set in an un-named city in India during the State of Emergency after India’s founding it deals with four main characters whose lives intersect in the house of Dina Dalal who hires two tailors and rents out a room to a young student in an attempt to keep her independence.