Daily Archives: February 27, 2015

“Pirate Vishnu” is the second in a series of mystery by Gigi Pandian. The series features Jaya Jones, a young Indian-American history professor. I really enjoyed the first book in this series “Artifact” and was hoping the second would be almost as good. Actually, it was even better. This whodunnit chases all over the map from San Francisco to India and back again.

Jaya is once again joined by her friends Lane, Nadia, and Sanjay. Along the way, we get a brief history lesson about San Francisco at the time of the Great Earthquake of 1906, some of the signs of struggle of the Indian people against the British colonial rule, and also about magicians and the “spiritualism” trend of the turn of the last century. In addition to the friends we already know, we get introduced to several new characters that I hope to see in future books – Tamarind the librarian (a kind of goth meets punk lady) and Naveen, an unpleasant fellow professor who is Jaya’s competition for tenure at their university.

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