By the end of this first well-paced, badass Gabriel Præst novel, not only will you fall in love with the man but also with Copenhagen and its coolest clubs, finest restaurants, hippest districts. In the past, Malladi centered firmly and compassionately on women’s issues. Now, she has branched out and written something so different in which she exceeds the satisfaction quotient, featuring a male lead in the city she loves.
Forty-one-year-old private investigator Gabriel Præst is as complicated and robust as the wine he loves: smooth and debonair on the surface with a blush of sex and notes of the blues he plays regularly at his favorite haunt. He loves excellent food and even better Scotch. He favors an haute wardrobe of designer suits and designer fedoras to cover his baldness. Let’s face it: he knows he’s a sharp-dressed man. He knows just about everyone in town and has a loyal group of friends and extended family. He also loves to quote Kierkegaard.
Gabriel Præst IS Copenhagen. The city sways with him, dances with him, gets tough with him, and sometimes rewards him.
When the lovely lawyer Leila—an ex-lover whose transgression in their relationship caused a deep wound tempered by a simmering anger —comes to him with a supposed open-and-shut case that has already been tried, and the defendant convicted and sentenced, Præst accepts the investigation as much for his questionable allegiance to Leila as for his piqued interest. Why, after all, turn down a paying challenge when it involves a dead politician and an immigrant Muslim who might be innocent of murder?
Author Amulya Malladi
Tackling a complex and multi-layered mystery that exhumes Denmark’s shameful love-hate affair with Nazi Germany, occupation, and antisemitism, and moving forward to the current anti-Muslim drift, Malladi takes the reader on a whiplash roller coaster ride as she deftly engages the decades-long debate between action vs. avoidance and being brown in one of the whitest countries in the world. Through Gabriel’s investigation, she addresses racism, white supremacy, and the idea of the “fabric of Danish society” being at stake if certain names were to be revealed regarding actions taken (or not) during WWII.
Danes may live by the concept of having had “a good few (weather) days in May,” but every day is a kickass day to read the explosively delicious launch of a new mystery series, Amulya Malladi’s A Death in Denmark.
● ● ●
A Death in Denmark Publishes March 28, 2023. Connect with her on Facebook at Books By Amulya Malladi or on her website at http://www.amulyamalladi.com.
When Loose Ends Meet 