The Blue Bar: Blue Mumbai Thriller, Book 1

A Mumbai police officer striving to solve a spate of murders, finds himself hindered at every turn. It seems someone is keen to stop him tracking down a serial killer. Troubled by his own past, Inspector Arnav Singh Rajput can’t escape the memory of his former lover, Tara, who disappeared years before. As he discovers the remains of dismembered bodies, he must also deal with corruption within the police force.This is the first book I’ve read by this author. Initially, it was the vibrant cover and the first few pages that grabbed my attention, but when I got several chapters in, the changing POVs and the addition of several characters with similar sounding names did confuse me a bit. As you’d expect with this type of police procedural, there’s the usual storyline around police corruption and political shenanigans. I liked the central character of Arnav, although his essentially kind-hearted outlook doesn’t make up for the familiar history of challenges he faces, and it would’ve been nice to see something different. Also, the pace of the story isn’t helped by all the regular descriptions of domestic activities. While these give us an insight into the day-to-day lives of the folk involved, they do nothing to move the plot forward.Anyway, all whining aside, the author’s descriptions of Mumbai paint a vivid picture of the city, bringing the locations and atmosphere to life.

There's something about Mumbai that seems to inspire writers of murder mysteries. It's a much more interesting place than many of India's megalopolises and if you know the city, I always find that helps a lot when trying to follow the action.This book follows a serial killer with a taste for cutting up women's bodies and the policeman who is trying to find him.A Mumbai police procedural will always spend almost as much time dealing with police corruption as with trying to find the bad guy. This one follows that model.It's a slow start. The POV of multiple characters takes a while to bed in. And there are some interesting questions around whether we should feel sympathy for an evil person who was once a victim themself.Lots of interesting characters - not always entirely believable but interesting none the less. I enjoyed it a lot and will look out for the next in the series.

I couldn’t put down The Blue Bar by Damyanti Biwas and my experience of reading the book was made all the better when I started to read this on holiday in India.I’ve seen this referred to as Mumbai Noir and I can see why but this book is so much more than that. I loved the rich descriptions of Mumbai- the people, the locations, the chaotic world of Bollywood and felt so hungry with all the references to food.Arnav Singh Rajput is the Detective obsessed with solving a gruesome murder that no one really wants to him solve. As with all fictional Detectives, he has his own internal conflicts.The murder mystery is complicated by the political and celebrity landscape of Mumbai and this adds so much more complexity to the story. The corruption and the impact of this are believable, particularly how the powerful and rich can get away with the most gruesome offences ( not just in India but all over the world).The plot races along, with no slow bits and there is plenty of action and shootouts.I would recommend this book to anyone who likes edgy thrillers set in a non-western environment and with complex and interesting characters and I can’t wait to read the next book.

This book will likely "do your head in" as it did mine. The pedantic methodology of the way things seem to work in India is exemplified in this book and is, as I have found when visiting India, to be the norm. This is the first book in the series but the last for me.

It took a couple of chapters for me to get into The Blue Bar by Damyanti Biswas but once I did I really enjoyed it and it turned into a "one hit" read. The problem was that the author has a habit of throwing things into the story, mostly cultural references or allusions to character's pasts, then only explaining them several pages later which had me starting off confused and finding the book initially hard work and a bit flat.Thankfully once the characters are introduced properly.I'd got used to the author's writing style and the quite intricate story gets going it's gripping and entertaining stuff.The book begins in Mumbai with Inspector Arnav Rajput at a grisly crime scene where the decapitated and dismembered corpse of a woman has been found. When Rajput finds that there have been several similar crimes going back several years and flags up his suspicions that a serial killer is on the loose he finds a whole list of people,on both sides of the law, keen to shut him up.As well as the murder investigation the story takes in Rajput's past,part of that being former lover and Bar Dancer Tara back in Mumbai 13 years after disappearing without saying a word.With Tara being sucked into the investigation Rajput doesn't know who to trust with rampant political, business and police corruption financed by gangsters........all of them with an interest in stopping his investigation.There's plenty of action and an atmospheric depiction of Mumbai with it's shanty towns, street vendors,the Bollywood crowd and an underworld split on religious factions, it was almost like the book James Ellroy might have written if he set one of his books in Mumbai.There is the occasional editorial clanger and I did initially struggle with it but was very soon gripped.

A tense hunt for a serial killer preying on Mumbai’s ‘bar girls’. Arnav is a good empathetic protagonist and I always enjoy books set in places I’ve never been.I think it’s maybe overlong - it took me ages to read it and despite the tension it felt slow in places. A solid four star read though.

Not bad I like i story I can get into

Good easy read with some interesting plot twists. Very enjoyable thank you. Will definitely be reading more from this author!