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.

A Very Different Type of Detective: a Guest Post by Harini Nagendra

 RHYS BOWEN: I was intrigued when Harini contacted me several months ago to read and blurb her new book. This is in a way familiar territory to me as my husband was for a long time sales manager for Air India, I have travelled all over India, including to Bangalore, where this book is set, and have close Indian friends. A book about an upper class Indian woman in the 1920s is fascinating for many reasons. I asked Harini what life was like for a woman in India at that time. How restricted was she? How could she possibly be a detective?

And here is her answer:

HARINI NAGENDRA:

In my day job as an academic and university professor, a great deal of my research is focused on the ecological history of Indian cities. In 2007, when the idea of the main character in my book – a feisty young Indian woman navigating colonial rule and societal expectations in 1920s Bangalore – came into my head, I was in my mother’s home, buried in a pile of digital archives. Old maps, photographs, gazettes, reports, ledger files, diaries, letters, biographies – volumes of good stuff. But all with one catch – almost all of them were written from the view of the British male traveler, missionary or administrator – with a few entertaining accounts from intrepid British women travelers.

Overall though, the voices of women in past times are fleeting, and the voices of Indian women almost completely absent in the colonial Indian archives. How is a writer to populate the characters of her world, in the absence of data? I found this lack of material to work with especially worrying – perhaps because I am so used to writing data-driven papers. Creating an entire book and a series out of thin air without real life information to base this on was intimidating!

I turned to my mother, and other relatives, to learn about the lives of women in earlier times. My husband’s aunt, now 96, went swimming in a sari in the local club’s swimming pool when she was young, in Madras/Chennai, and I know other women who did the same in the 1920s in Bangalore. So it was natural for me to put my protagonist, Kaveri, in a swimming pool in the opening scene. Kaveri swims with other young women during a time of day where the pool was reserved exclusively for the use of women, who could swim without fear of exposing themselves to strange men. This practice of reserving use of the pool and sports arenas for women at specific times is a common practice in India even today, and I knew I was unlikely to be wrong in assuming that such a convention existed in the 1920s.

Kaveri lives in a time when society dictated what women could and could not do, often enforced by other women. Her mother-in-law Bhargavi does not approve of Kaveri’s passion for mathematics, believing that too much studying makes a woman’s brains go soft. Contrast this with Kaveri’s grandmotherly neighbour Uma aunty, who always wanted to learn how to read and write, and is delighted when she learns that Kaveri is educated. Often, all it took was support from one family member, for a woman to flourish.

Ambi, a book by Vimala Murthy, documents the inspiring story of Amba Bai, Vimala’s grandmother. Married at 12 years, Ambi was widowed at the young age of 24, in 1913 – already a mother of three. With the support of her father, Ambi defied the disapproval of her mother to study further, becoming a teacher, and later Head Mistress of a girls’ high school. Sakamma was a well known coffee entrepreneur in Bangalore around the same time. A child bride, widowed early, Sakamma took over her husband’s large coffee estates. Sakamma was also one of the first women to join the Mysore Representative Assembly, in 1928 – until then the exclusive domain of men. In 1921, a woman journalist R. Kalyanamma launched Saraswati, a feminist magazine that tackled women’s issues like suffrage and child marriage. A child widow who never received a college education, Kalyanamma became a member of the Mysore University Senate, and founded a children’s association of learning that thrives even today.

The queens of Mysore State played a major role in women’s empowerment, establishing women’s schools and colleges and creating scholarships for women. But even the queens faced opposition from men in the education department, unable to establish a college of science for women in Bangalore for several years. And of course, education and empowerment was denied to so many women who did not have family support, like Uma aunty – as well as women from poor families, and from oppressed castes. Yet women, as we know, do not take subjugation lightly, or unquestioningly – they often found a way to work around societal challenges, and make things work for them, as best as they could!

From fragments of the stories of real women like Amba Bai, Sakamma and Kalyanamma, a writer must work to erect a scaffold of facts, around which imagination can take shape. If these women had not blazed the paths they did, we would not be able to do so much of what women take for granted today – from swimming in mixed-gender pools, to running industries, and contributing to university education!

 Book summary:

The Bangalore Detectives Club is the first in a charming, joyful crime series set in 1920s Bangalore, featuring sari-wearing detective Kaveri and her husband Ramu.

When clever, headstrong Kaveri moves to Bangalore to marry handsome young doctor Ramu, she's resigned herself to a quiet life. But that all changes the night of the party at the Century Club, where she escapes to the garden for some peace and quiet—and instead spots an uninvited guest in the shadows. Half an hour later, the party turns into a murder scene.

When a vulnerable woman is connected to the crime, Kaveri becomes determined to save her and launches a private investigation to find the killer, tracing his steps from an illustrious brothel to an Englishman's mansion. She soon finds that sleuthing in a sari isn't as hard as it seems when you have a talent for mathematics, a head for logic, and a doctor for a husband…

And she's going to need them all as the case leads her deeper into a hotbed of danger, sedition, and intrigue in Bangalore's darkest alleyways.

Bonus: A set of recipes for a quick, delicious south Indian meal at the end of the book!

RHYS: Definitely intriguing, isn't it? And a really good read too.

 

About the author:

Harini Nagendra is a professor of ecology from India, and has written a number of award-winning non-fiction books. The Bangalore Detectives Club is her debut crime fiction novel. Harini lives in Bangalore with her family, in a home filled with maps. She loves trees, mysteries, and traditional recipes.r