by Vee Kumari
Meet Rekha Rao, a thirty-something Indian American professor of art history. Disillusioned by academia and haunted by the murder of her father, for which she believes police convicted the wrong person, she moves away from her match-making family. While focused on managing her PTSD and healing herself from an abusive boyfriend, her family sets her up to meet a suitor, an Indian attorney who turns out to be a very likable man. She becomes entangled in a second murder — that of her mentor and fellow professor. An unusual idol of the Hindu Goddess Durga is the murder weapon left on his body. Rekha is asked to help Detective Al Newton understand the relationship, if any, between the meaning of the statue and the motive for the murder. They constantly clash, starting a love-hate relationship. When police arrest one of her students, and suspect her murdered mentor of idol theft, Rekha’s dharma, her sense of duty, propels her into looking for the killer on her own. Despite admonitions from the police detective and being physically assaulted by an intruder who broke into her home, Rekha continues her search for the killer, and in the process, emerges from the cocoon of a protected upbringing, to taste the prospect of romance, and discover her true identity.
About the Author
Vee Kumari grew up in the south of India. A lover of books, her favorite authors were Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. She would hide to read, to avoid her mother, who might want her to do a chore or two. It was her mother who directed her to use the dictionary to learn the meanings of new words and construct sentences with them. Vee wanted to become an English professor but went to medical school, where she excelled.
Upon coming to the US, Vee earned a doctorate in Anatomy and became a faculty member at the UC Davis Medical Center, where she worked for over thirty-five years, and later at the Keck School of Medicine for five years. Teaching neuroanatomy to medical students became another passion for her. She published many scientific papers and won several teaching awards. During this time, she continued to read contemporary mystery fiction.
When she retired in 2012, she took classes from The Gotham Writers’ Workshop and UCLA Writers Program, and had the privilege to have authors Lynn Hightower and Caroline Leavitt as her mentors. Dharma, A Rekha Rao Mystery, is her debut fiction that incorporates her observations on the lives of Indian immigrants and Indian Americans in the US.
Product Details
Softcover, 6×9, 302 pages
Print ISBN: 978-1-938394-42-3
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-938394-43-0
Forthcoming April 2020
Services Provided
Copy editing, proofreading, and book design/layout. Assistance with all aspects of self-publishing.