Abir Mukherjee

It's an absolute pleasure, Kate.

Thank you for having me on.

Oh, that's a good question.

For me, how do I describe it?

It is set during the British Raj in the 20s and it follows the adventures of a British detective called Sam Wyndham and his Indian colleague, Sergeant Surendranath Banerjee, as they try and solve crimes across Calcutta and across India.

But essentially what it is, is it's my look at the real history of that period that we tend to have forgotten or in Britain, you know, just tend to either look at through rose-tinted specks or brush under the carpet.

So really I'm looking at that history, but with a lot of dead bodies along the way.

Well, to be fair, I think I wanted to look at that whole period starting after the First World War and leading up to Indian independence.

Now, when I started the series five years ago, looking at a book a year for 20 years seemed like a very rational thing to do.

You know, four books in or four and a half books and I'm writing the fifth one.

I'm not sure that was such a good idea, but in terms of, you know, looking at that history, it stems from my background.

It was really, it started off as a search for my own identity.

My parents come from, from India and my dad moved to Scotland.

I think he looked at a map and said, what's the coldest, wettest place I can raise a family.

And so I grew up in Glasgow or just outside of Glasgow.

And for me,

It was really about figuring out who I was.

I would go to school and I would learn something and I'd come home and I would tell my parents and I'd say, I learnt this today in history.

And my dad would say, oh, very good, very good.

It's not right.