Her Beautiful Monster

September 15, 2017
Four more adventures, not so much linked as pureed, for Ravi Chandra Singh and his mates at London's Golden Sentinels Private Investigations and Security Agency (Her Nightly Embrace, 2016).Ravi sees gods. Shiva, Kali, Vishnu, Ganesha--they're as close to him as members of his cheerfully dysfunctional family, even though his friends have to take his word for their presence. Sometimes their otherworldly counsel is wise and welcome; sometimes it's a distraction from the logistical challenges of his job, which are considerable. Not so much perhaps in "The Hustle of the Gods," a curtain raiser in which Golden Sentinels, hired by the shareholders of Advance Drone Defence Technologies to get the goods on their swindling founder, Tarquin Gaskell-Bridger, wrap up the case before you've settled properly into your favorite reading chair, but a lot more in "The True Price of London Properties," which plops the gang into the middle of an inheritance slugfest between the vanished first wife and son of the late Russian oligarch Lev Sergeyevich Mayakovsky and the family of his aristocratic bride, Cecily Harkingdale--a slog whose length is almost justified by its disturbingly strong finish. The plot thickens further in "Black Bag LA," in which Ravi and Julia, his colleague and lover, supposedly on a busman's holiday to assess the effectiveness of the Golden Sentinels branch in La-La Land, tag along on a routine call to retrieve an antique pistol stolen from filmmaker Gossamer Rand Ross' Hollywood palace during a party his assistant, Keith Doyle, threw in his absence and end up having kinky sex in Ross' panic room while armed militants ransack the place for a cache of much more recent and powerful weapons--a mess so complicated that it requires an even more chaotic fourth story, "The Reluctant Despot," to straighten it out, or at least explain how it got so messy. Back home, the machinations of family friend Mrs. Dhewan, the sharpie whose neighborhood food bank turns out to be just as problematic as the CIA, provides the closest thing to a common thread. Once again, Tantimedh ebulliently spins out a world in which pandemonium doesn't reign; it pours.

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Starred review from October 2, 2017
Ravi Singh, who works for the London branch of Golden Sentinels Private Investigations and Security Agency, has the ability to see Indian gods—Ganesha, Kali, Shiva—a gift that he finds highly unsettling. His boss, however, believes that his visions actually make him a better operative, and Ravi uses them effectively in Tantimedh’s outstanding sequel to 2016’s Her Nightly Embrace. In the opening case, Ravi and his team seek economic justice for victims of a fraudster who created a fake company that claimed to have invented a revolutionary model of drone detector. Ravi and his colleagues, who use elaborate plots they consider “social engineering,” are next employed to thwart some evil British nobles with a history of marrying wealthy spouses who have a suspicious tendency to die of some sickness. Brilliantly combining an original and offbeat concept, extremely clever plotting, and fast pacing, Tantimedh offers every indication he can carry these strengths over into future volumes. Agent: Lisa Gallagher, DeFiore and Co.

December 1, 2017

The Golden Sentinels is a high-end agency composed of unusually skilled misfits well equipped to handle covert security and investigations for the elite class. Ravi Chandra Singh is a former religious scholar and teacher, whose visions of Hindu gods complicate his life. According to him, "Life is good. Well as good as it could be to do dodgy things to clean the dirty laundry of the rich and powerful, and you're hallucinating gods." This outstanding sequel to Her Nightly Embrace is a series of loosely connected cases including a search for a dead Russian oligarch's will, a missing heir, and a high-octane stint in L.A. Ravi also grapples with family issues, including dealing with his parents' sex life following his father's prostate surgery, and solving attacks on the food bank run by a family friend. VERDICT Fast-paced, inventive, idiosyncratic, and packed with screen-ready dialog, this quirky mystery is a winner and may appeal to Michael Craven aficionados. The cover features Heroes star Sendhil Ramamurthy, who is slated to play Ravi in a possible TV adaptation; a podcast is also in development.--LH

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