A Madras Miasma introduces Chris Le Fanu of the Crime Unit in the 1920s Madras branch of the Indian Police Service. After serving in the war he sees India, and his colleagues differently, and sympathises with Indian aspirations to independence. That puts him on a crash course with his immediate boss and with his colleagues.
Personally, his wife has left him and he is now involved with his Anglo-Indian housekeepr, risking further enmity from the European community in Madras which despises mixed race liaisons.
A young woman visiting from England is murdered, and Le Fanu, along with his Muslim sergeant, uncover a drug ring run by the city's leading European businessman.
By the end of the book, the first in a series, Le Fanu is wondering about his personal and professional futures
