Picture Imperfect: and other Byomkesh Bakshi Mysteries

Classic tales of crime detection featuring Byomkesh Bakshi, the master inquisitor
Written long before Satyajit Ray€s Feluda series, Saradindu Bandyopadhyay€s Byomkesh Bakshi mysteries heralded a new era in Bengali popular fiction. Set in the old-world Calcutta of the Raj, these stories featuring the astute investigator and his chronicler friend Ajit are still as gripping and delightful as when they first appeared.
Byomkesh€s world, peopled with wonderfully delineated characters and framed by a brilliantly captured pre-Independence urban milieu, is fascinating because of its contemporary flavor. In the first story, Byomkesh works undercover to expose an organized crime ring trafficking in drugs. In €˜The Gramophone Pin Mystery€, he must put his razor-sharp intellect to good use to unearth the pattern behind a series of bizarre roadside murders. In €˜Calamity Strikes€, the ace detective is called upon to investigate the strange and sudden death of a girl in a neighbour€s kitchen. In the next story, he has to lock horns with an old enemy who has vowed to kill him with an innocuous but deadly weapon. And in €˜Picture Imperfect€, Byomkesh Bakshi unravels a complex mystery involving a stolen group photograph, an amorous couple, and an apparently unnecessary murder.
Available in English for the first time in a superb translation, these stories will captivate every lover of crime fiction, young and old alike.