The Star From Calcutta

A movie censor murdered a leading lady vanished—the glamour and intrigue of India’s silent film era come to life in the thrilling fifth installment of the award-winning Perveen Mistry series.India 1922: Perveen Mistry the only female lawyer in Bombay is on the verge of securing her biggest client yet: Champa Films a movie studio run by director Subhas Ghoshal and his wife Rochana the hottest box office ticket in Indian cinema. In the public eye Rochana is notorious for her beauty and her daring stunts—behind the scenes she has recently left the Calcutta studio that made her famous and the studio owner is enraged by what he claims is a breach of contract. Rochana needs Perveen’s legal help to extricate Champa Films from the impending controversy.With her work cut out for her Perveen attends a screening party at the Champa Films’ mansion-cum-studio to study Rochana’s glamorous world. She brings her film-fanatic best friend Alice Hobson-Jones the white English daughter of the British Raj governor as her companion. But in the aftermath of the party one of the party guests a Bombay film censor is found dead on the property. To make matters worse Rochana has disappeared.Now with a different legal obligation to her clients—to protect them in the face of a developing murder case—Perveen begins to investigate peeling back the glitz to reveal a salacious web of blackmail deceit and romantic affairs. Perveen has her own secret: her relationship with a handsome former civil service officer which is becoming harder to hide by the day. For the first time in their friendship Alice seems to be keeping a secret from Perveen too and Perveen begins to suspect that Alice is hiding key information about the night of the murder. Will Perveen be able to detangle the truth from lies while protecting herself—and her closest friend?