The Jasmine Murders
An Uma Jayan Mystery
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Description
Awards & Endorsements
Author(s)
Roopa Unnikrishnan
Related Titles
| Publisher | Roopa Unnikrishnan Publishing |
| Publication | Jan 17, 2026 |
| Format | Hardback |
| ISBN | 9365236290 |
| Pages | 231 |
| Dimensions | 5 x 7 in |
| Age | Adult 18+ |
| Price | 10 |
The Jasmine Murders
An Uma Jayan Mystery
The Jasmine Murders is Sujata Massey’s The Bombay Prince meets Erica Neubauer’s Murder at Wedgefield Manor, or in movie terms Death on the Nile meets the Hulu series Only Murders In The Building. The book is the first in a series with the second book, The Mermaid Murders already in development.
The Jasmine Murders has proven itself in India, where it has been published by Aleph Books, edited personally by David Davidar, formerly Managing Editor of Penguin Canada. It is on track to very real commercial success, having gone into a second reprint three months after it's pub date (January 10, 2026.) It has very strong reviews and ratings in Amazon (4.7) and Goodreads (4.2) and seems to be a crowd-pleaser.
In The Jasmine Murders, Uma, the newly-wed wife of a police chief trapped in a sleepy town in 1960s South India, needs to solve a gruesome murder before communal bloodshed is unleashed. When a two murders shock community, Uma begins to piece together clues that she gathers from her maid, the all-knowing doctor, a gentle priest, the rookie policeman, rumors in the women's club, and her husband's daily reports. Struggling to identify the headless corpse, Uma's husband is knocked unconscious when he faces down a rumor-fueled mob. With simmering tensions and time running out, the elegant Uma must embrace her inner sleuth to save an innocent woman's honor, but also to untangle what it means to be a wife and minor celebrity in this dusty town.
Set in post-colonial 1960s India, where the exuberance of independence and the ‘60s sexual revolution was crashing head-long into ancient traditions - with women and their bodies at the epicenter of that conflict.
Reviews, Awards & Endorsements
Personally acquired and edited by David Davidar, former Managing Editor of Pengion Canada, and current Manageing Editor or Aleph Books publication.
The book was published in January 2026 and was already in the second reprint within three months of publication. Rave reviews in National magazines and newspapers, e.g., The Hindustan Times (February 2026), The Hindu Literary Review coverage (March 2026), and The Week (June 2026). High ratings on Amazon (4.6 from 51 reviews) and Goodreads (4.24 from 79 ratings.)
Some relevant excerpts are below:
The Hindustan Times: The Arjuna Awardee athlete turns fiction writer as she presents a layered, unputdownable mystery thriller.
The Week: "You think you are walking into a neat procedural—a severed head, a confession, a young cop—and then,before you realise it, you are in a far denser thicket of marriage, class and memory, and of the cruelties that can flourish inside ‘good’ homes.
The Hindu: "In her debut work of fiction, Roopa Unnikrishnan crafts an interesting murder mystery, positioning it in the early 1960s and setting it in a deceptively ordinary small town. Of course, what we see is not what we get, and the place in Tamil Nadu is a cauldron teeming with age-old taboos, seething communal tensions, secrets and lies, dirty deeds done in the dark, all waiting for that lit matchstick to go off."
Author
Roopa Unnikrishnan
Roopa's essays on strategy and creativity have appeared in Knowledge@Wharton and the Economic Times, showcasing her versatility as an author.
Roopa lives in New York City with her professor husband, their beagle Tara, and an ever-growing stash of notebooks filled with clues, red herrings, and suspicious characters. Her twins, Durga and Krishna, have launched into the world—though they still occasionally serve as sounding boards for particularly devious plots.