Harini Negendra on Coffee Planting and Sleuthing.

RHYS BOWEN:  A few years ago I was asked to blurb a book by a new writer. She was an Indian professor from Bangalore and her heroine was an upper class young woman in the 1920s. Absolutely fascinating with all the details of how she tried to fit into the norms of society while sleuthing.

The book did very well and put Harini Negendra on the map. She's back today with her fourth in the series and we're delighted to welcome her back.

HARINI NEGENDRA:

It’s a joy to be back on Jungle Red Writers, to talk about the place and context that inspired my latest book, Into the Leopard’s Den – book 4 in The Bangalore Detectives Club series. Set in 1922, this book takes my amateur detective, young Kaveri Murthy, out of Bangalore for the first time in the series - into the misty hills of Coorg, where coffee plantations thrive amidst dense rain forests, and ghostly leopards slink through the jungle.

So what inspired me to take Kaveri to Coorg? Well, after three books in Bangalore, my fingers were itching to explore a new place. As an ecologist writing a series set in British India, I’ve always wanted to write more about the interface between ecology and the colonial empire. The hill station of Mercara and its surroundings, in the hills of Coorg, were known for coffee as far back as the 17th century. Legend has it that Baba Budan, a revered local saint, smuggled coffee seeds from Yemen to the hill slopes of Coorg, and these seeds grew into the first coffee plants of South India, kickstarting a craze for the bitter brew. Yet until the 1820s, coffee was grown mostly by the local Indigenous communities who lived here – the Kodava or Coorgi tribes – who raised coffee in small patches near their homesteads, for local consumption. In the 1820s, European growers stumbled across these landscapes, deciding that they were ideal for commercial coffee production. Local cultivators produced shade-grown coffee, keeping local forests intact, but European planters denounced such biodiversity-friendly, sustainable approaches to production, labeling local cultivators as slothful and incompetent. From a brew enjoyed at home, coffee became a commodity crop, with biodiversity becoming the biggest casualty.

Thus began the massive transformation of Coorg’s forests, with British planters clearing trees from entire hill slopes to produce coffee slated for export. But with the commercial production of coffee, pests arrived. First, the invasive weed Lantana began to grow on the sun-exposed slopes – next came the coffee borer insect. The lure of easy profits dwindled, but by then it was too late for Coorg’s forests. The hills that once teemed with wildlife were silent, with elephants, bison, leopards and tigers becoming fair game for hunters. 

By the 1900s, when the growth of Brazilian coffee began to make inroads into India’s exports, the British had successfully pivoted to create a domestic market for coffee, in the provinces of Mysore and Madras. Many people think of Indians as tea drinkers – but in South Indian we prefer coffee, brewed with chicory the traditional way - using a brass or steel filter – with milk, liberally laced with sugar. That’s the way coffee was made at my home when I was young. Hot, sweet, bitter and delicious. 

What better way to pay homage to the spectacular forests and coffee plantations of Coorg, which produce coffee that is an integral part of homes across South India - than by writing a mystery that centers around them? 

In April 2024, my family and I visited one of the oldest bungalows in this region – a stately old home called the School Estate, which once belonged to Reverend Georg Richter, a German missionary, school principal and coffee planter who built this home in 1878. From there, thanks to our generous host and the current owner Mr. K. K. Aiyappa and his family, we toured his 200 acre coffee plantation and viewed the heritage machines they still use to pulp coffee and extract the seeds. We also visited the 100-year old bungalow of Doddamane Sakamma, the woman coffee entrepreneur from Coorg who was the inspiration behind the character of Coffeepudi Lakamma, a central figure in my series. And finally, an old British Club with mournful-looking stuffed animal heads adorning the walls, and a motheaten stuffed leopard in a glass case in the central hall. After seeing this, how could I not let a ghost leopard work its way into the book?

(Is it really a ghost? Well, read and find out!)

Into the Leopard’s Den

Amateur detective Kaveri Murthy returns with her most complex case yet: investigating a series of murders that take her from the bungalows of Bangalore to the mist-enshrouded mountains of Coorg.

Bangalore, 1922: Pregnant and confined to the house by her protective mother-in-law, Kaveri Murthy has resolved to take a break from detection. But when an elderly woman is murdered at night and dies clutching a photograph of Kaveri while asking for her help—how can she refuse? Missing the assistance of her husband Ramu, who is working in Coorg, Kaveri investigates her new case with her able assistants, milk boy Venu and housemaid Anandi. They find a trail of secrets that lead them to suspect the killer may be in Coorg.

Eager to be reunited with her husband, Kaveri sets off to Coorg to investigate. When she arrives, she encounters a thorny thicket of cases. Why does a ghost leopard prowl the forests at night, terrorizing the plantation workers? And who is trying to kill Colonel Boyd, the Coffee King of Coorg? She finds suspects in every coffee bush and estate—from Boyd’s surly plantation manager and security guard to the feuding brothers who own the neighboring plantation—and the many women the Coffee King has pursued and abandoned.

When two vulnerable children appeal for her help, Kaveri is drawn deeper into the case, becoming emotionally involved in finding the killer. Soon, one murder turns into two—and then a few days later into three. Now the killer has tasted blood and needs to be stopped. Racing against time, Kaveri must take on her most complex challenge so far, with the assistance of Anandi and Venu in Bangalore, and with Ramu and Inspector Ismail in Coorg. In this stunning new novel by an acclaimed master of the form, the Bangalore Detectives Club must find and expose a brutally intelligent killer before they strike again.

About the author:

Harini Nagendra is a professor of ecology at Azim Premji University, where she is Director, School of Climate Change and Sustainability. She is internationally recognized for her scholarship on sustainability, and received an honorary doctorate from Utrecht University in 2025. Harini is the author of four non-fiction books on ecology. She also writes the acclaimed Bangalore Detectives Club series, set in 1920s colonial India – the first book in the series was featured as a New York Times Notable Book of 2022, and shortlisted for a Lefty, Agatha, Anthony and Historical Dagger Award. The fourth book in the series, Into the Leopard’s Den, was published in July 2025.

Harini lives in Bangalore with her family, in a home filled with maps. She loves trees, mysteries, and traditional recipes. You can find out more about her books and writing at www.harininagendra.com 

RHYS: I really recommend these books and I learn so much about a very different world when I read them. My kind of fiction.

Oh, and the winner of a signed copy of Mrs. Endicott's Splendid Adventure from Tuesday is Kait. Kait, contact me at authorrhysbowen@gmail.com and I'll send you your book.