- Paperback: 448 pages
- Publisher: Phoenix; New Ed edition (4 Mar 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 075380672X
- ISBN-13: 978-0753806722
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.8 x 3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 490,720 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
What happens when the glitzy world of moviemaking Bombay meets the gritty conventions of film noir? With luck, something like this dazzlingly ambitious novel from Canadian journalist Leslie Forbes. "I haven't seen the eunuch in almost four weeks. Ignore what I wrote you before. No need to come here and rescue me," Miranda Sharma writes her sister from Bombay, in a disconcertingly "schizophrenic" postcard that sends Rosalind Bengal across continents and deep into a world where nothing is what it seems. Part Scottish, part Indian, Roz is a crime journalist who can't help following a good lead when it appears, especially when her sister's welfare is at stake. Miranda recently married one of the Indian film industry's most prominent directors, Prosper Sharma, a man who's spent 20 years working on a movie version of The Tempest and who is rumoured to have murdered his first wife. After her postcard, four hijra--eunuchs or transvestites--are found drowned in an eight-week period, one of them with alleged connections to the film industry. Coincidence or not, Roz feels compelled to investigate.
What follows is a most unusual thriller, and not just by virtue of its setting. Crackling with wordplay and allusion, and set against a city that resembles nothing so much as a stage set under construction, the hyper-literate Bombay Ice sports influences ranging from Shakespeare to Sunset Boulevard, chaos theory to Raymond Chandler. In between meditations on alchemy, entropy, and the science of weather, Forbes constructs an intricate story charged with all the tension of the coming monsoon. The result is never less than interesting, even when, as occasionally happens, the book's intellectual concerns threaten to overpower its plot. --Amazon.com --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
Roz Benegal, a feisty young BBC researcher, goes to India to pick up the threads of her life there (she spent part of her childhood growing up in Kerala). She goes to Bombay to visit her sister Miranda, who is married to a prominent Bollywood film director, Prosper. Roz arrives to news headlines announcing the deaths of 8 eunuchs in four months and to rumours that her sister's husband may have murdered his first wife Maya, a film star past her prime. Not satisfied to leave the investigations of these allegations to the Indian police, Roz Benegal begins a dangerous search for the truth. Interwoven with this utterly gripping detective story is a remarkable layering of knowledge gleaned from old books on storms, the monsoon, poisons and magical transformations, the narrator's fascination with chaos theory and her passionate interest in fate.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I loved it but with its 'Ruth Rendelesque' cover I can understand that it might not be what every reader is expecting. Facing a business trip to Bombay and finding no suitable guidebooks available, I bought novels on the city, read this one 'in situ' and found it absolutely outstanding. From the outside, the plot may seem a little far-fetched but when you are in Bombay almost nothing seems impossible. My one concern was just how realistic it would be for someone who insists they don't 'look Indian' to fit so easily into the underbelly of the Bombay slums. But regardless of that, it's a great read. Roz faces a cast of diverse characters from the hijras (eunuchs) and lepers through to the seedy Bollywood brother-in-law with his obsession about making an Indian film of 'The Tempest'. Themes of weather prediction and the change brought about by the introduction of ice into India run through the book. Well worth a read
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Forbes writes in the 'me' form; she is able to give a brilliant, sometimes depressing picture of modern Bombay, all wrapped in a thrilling crime story which keeps you nailed to this book.
Format:Paperback
I absolutely loved reading "Bombay Ice." The novel is quirky & different from the main stream mystery novel. I read Bombay Ice and subsequently purchased her other two novels. She has a very effocative style & has the abilty through her prose to conjure up a sense of place.
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