100,000+ Books, Games & Puzzles in-stock 🇳🇿

Enjoy overnight NZ-wide delivery from our NZ-owned independent bookstore! 🎉

A Cut-Like Wound

Series: Inspector Gowda
3.41 goodreads logo

Ratings/reviews counts are updated frequently.

Check link for latest rating.
( 855 ratings, 134 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
A Cut-Like Wound by Anita Nair, a gripping entry in the crime and thriller genre, follows Inspector Borei Gowda as he tackles a complex murder case during the vibrant festival of Eid in Bangalore. The narrative intricately weaves through the bustling city landscape, delving into dark secrets and human psyches. Anita Nair crafts a suspenseful and atmospheric tale, exploring themes of identity and justice.
Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
TEMPORARILY OUT OF STOCK Please add to wishlist to be notified when back in stock

Sorry, we're currently out of stock of A Cut-Like Wound. Please add to your Wishlist and we'll send you an email as soon as it's back in stock.

Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

You might enjoy this book if you are intrigued by atmospheric crime stories set in Bangalore, blending rich cultural textures with a gripping murder mystery. This story appeals to those who appreciate complex characters, particularly a determined inspector navigating a labyrinth of societal and personal challenges.

Book Hero thinking about your next read

A series of murders in the streets of Bangalore, India, set in the mysterious world of hijras, the local transgenders.Introducing Inspector Borei Gowda 49, going to seed, and at odds with those around him, including the wife, son and everyone in the police hierarchy.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

It's the first day of Ramadan in heat-soaked Bangalore, and a young man begins to dress: makeup, a sari, and expensive pearl earrings. Before the mirror, he is transformed into Bhuvana. She is a hijra, a transgender person seeking love in the bazaars of the city.

What Bhuvana wants, she nearly gets: a passing man is attracted to this elusive young woman, but someone points out that Bhuvana is no woman. For that, the interloper's throat is cut.

This becomes a case for Inspector Borei Gowda, a man going to seed and at odds with those around him, including his wife, his colleagues, and even the informers he must deal with. As the investigation unfolds, more corpses appear and Urmila, Gowda's ex-flame, are added to this spicy concoction of a mystery novel.

A Cut-Like Wound by Anita Nair is a gripping tale that intertwines crime, passion, and societal challenges, all set against the backdrop of a vibrant Indian city.

Series: Inspector Gowda

View all
  • Chain of Custody
    Inspector Gowda is back in another nail-biting thriller set in Bangalore, India, the city now a hub for child trafficking. How is twelve-year-old Nandita's disappearance connected to the murder of a well-known lawyer? What services has college student Rekha been persuaded to perform by her 'boyfriend'? Who is the mysterious crime lord lurking just out of sight? And who, just...
    Paperback
    Sold Out
  • A Cut-Like Wound
    It's the first day of Ramadan in heat-soaked Bangalore, and a young man begins to dress: makeup, a sari, and expensive pearl earrings. Before the mirror, he is transformed into Bhuvana. She is a hijra, a transgender person seeking love in the bazaars of the city. What Bhuvana wants, she nearly gets: a passing man is attracted to this elusive...
    Paperback
    Sold Out

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

A Cut-Like Wound by Anita Nair is more than just a tale of a clever cop pursuing a serial killer; it's an intricate exploration of a killer's psyche, drawing readers into a web of unexpected empathy. The narrative delivers intense, vivid depictions of murder, juxtaposed with the protagonist's visceral reactions, while offering startling moments of revelation that plunge readers into shock. The character development of Inspector Borei Gowda reflects a blend of realism and wish fulfillment, making the anticipation for further installments both exciting and torturous.

Book Hero reading reviews

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781908524362

Publisher: Bitter Lemon Press

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 15 May 2014

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Bitter Lemon Press

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Width: 127.0mm

Height: 195.0mm

Weight: 250g

Pages: 364

About the Author

Anita Nair lives in Bangalore and is a prize winning, internationally acclaimed author, playwright, essayist, lecturer and literary personality. Her novel Ladies Coupe, first published in the US ten years ago by St. Martin's Griffin, is a feminist classic which has been published in thirty languages all over the world. The Daily Telegraph called it 'one of the most important feminist novels to come out of South India'. The movie adaptation of her previous book, Lessons in Forgetting, has just won the Indian national award for the best feature film in English language, and an Indian language film based on this new book is already being discussed. Anita Nair has never shied away from the darker underside of life but Cut Like Wound is a new departure for her into noir and literary crime. St Martin's Press has recently published her latest novel, The Lilac House, in the US.

Also by Anita Nair

View all
  • Chain of Custody
    Inspector Gowda is back in another nail-biting thriller set in Bangalore, India, the city now a hub for child trafficking. How is twelve-year-old Nandita's disappearance connected to the murder of a well-known lawyer? What services has college student Rekha been persuaded to perform by her 'boyfriend'? Who is the mysterious crime lord lurking just out of sight? And who, just...
    Paperback
    Sold Out
  • Hot Stage
    Nair captures the seedy side of shiny new India vividly Guardian When elderly Professor Mudgood, a well-known rationalist and fervent critic of right-wing forces in India, is found dead in his home in Bangalore by his daughter, Assistant Commissioner of Police Borei Gowda is quite certain that this is a homicide. Although all evidence points to the murder being politically...
    Paperback
    Sold Out

More from Crime & Thriller

View all
  • New Release
    Dying Days
    Award-winning writer delivers a pulse-pounding espionage thriller. Missing soldiers, MI6 secrets and European partisans collide in a deadly game where the lines between lies and reality are fast disintegrating. In the dying days of the Second World War, a new conflict is about to ignite. May, 1945: After fighting to liberate Europe from the Nazis, Tito's Yugoslav Army and Allied...
    Paperback
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3699
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Country Road Murders
    New Release
    The Country Road Murders
    From the Sunday Times bestselling author comes a pulse-pounding thriller about justice, vengeance and the roads that lead us home. No one gets this big without amazing natural storytelling talent - which is what Jim has, in spades — LEE CHILD Cross Rivers is the kind of small town where everyone knows your name – and your secrets. Silas Tucker...
    Paperback
    $3000
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • New Release
    Every Lake
    Scary stories are fun... until your life becomes one. When Alice was fifteen, her father killed Mia Heywood in their lakefront cottage before vanishing into the trees. At least that's what the locals think happened. Over a decade later, Alice has lost her job as a journalist, she's going through an expensive divorce and she desperately needs to sell the...
    Paperback
    $3299
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    (2)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Nautilus
    New Release
    Nautilus
    The follow-up to the bestselling novel The Turing Protocol. Nautilus is a machine with the astonishing power to send messages eight weeks back in time. Its users must follow a set of protocols established by its inventor, Alan Turing, including that it can only be used by a descendant of his family, and only to avert global disasters. But what...
    Paperback
    $2999
    Elsewhere:
    $3699
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Cold River
    New Release
    Cold River
    The sensational new novel from the author of the bestselling thriller, The Creeper, winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction 2025. Deep in the mountains, secrets grow deadly... Detective Constable Sally White knows how easily hikers can go missing in Victoria's high country. But there's something about the disappearance of Louis Taylor, a young man lost up...
    Paperback
    $3000
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • New Release
    It Could Have Been Her
    PREPARE TO BE HOOKED: The no. 1 Sunday Times and MULTI-million-copy bestselling author is back with a brand-new spine tingling thriller. It was the night she almost died. Jane Trevally, newly divorced and feeling a little lost, agrees to accompany a man she doesn't know to his house in the darkest corner of Hampstead Heath. She's offered a drink, goes in, and...
    Paperback
    $3000
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • 26 Beauties
    The twenty-sixth thrilling novel in the globally bestselling Women's Murder Club series. Beautiful young women are disappearing by the dozen. A celebration is cut short when a concerned father crashes Detective Inspector Lindsay Boxer's party. His daughter is missing - and she's not the only one. DI Lindsay Boxer has been tracking a chilling pattern: a Jane Doe washed ashore,...
    Paperback
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • New Release
    The Secrets We Hide
    The stunning new North Falls thriller by the bestselling author of We Are All Guilty Here 'Quite simply, Karin Slaughter is the best of us' Dervla McTiernan Welcome back to North Falls -- a small town with big secrets. The house at 1601 Iris Drive looks like any other in the quiet, residential street. But rumours are rife about the Vickery...
    Paperback
    $3099
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    (2)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • New Release
    The Parkwood Murders
    They came for an escape, but can they escape a killer? Detective Nicola Bridge returns in another gripping and immersive mystery For its loyal guests, Parkwood Holiday Village in west Dorset is a haven- woodland walks, a tranquil lake, service around the clock. Until, just after midsummer, a body is found floating in the swimming pool. Detective Nicola Bridge, exhausted...
    Paperback
    $3000
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Hope Rises
    'BALDACCI IS STILL PEERLESS' - THE SUNDAY TIMES REVENGE IS A DISH BEST SERVED COLD . . . Walter Nash, working under the alias of Dillon Hope, is on the road to revenge after becoming an informant for the FBI against a global criminal operation headed up by Victoria Steers. Steers has ripped everything Nash held dear away from him....
    Paperback
    $3099
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    (2)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Slash
    A year after a brutal shootout left her lover dead, ex-police sergeant Honey Chalmers is a hot mess, drinking too much and eating too little, working casual gigs for a shady firm of private investigators — while holding conversations with a ghost. A desperate father asks her to investigate his missing son — a double-murder suspect last seen during the...
    Paperback
    $3200
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • A River Red With Blood
    The players call it the Game, and its aim is simple: to abduct and kill a stranger without getting caught. They're very good at it. They've been playing it for a long time. And they can keep playing as long as everyone sticks to the rules: No Killing Close to Home and No Killing Outside the Game. But those rules...
    Paperback
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    In Stock
    Ships today

Why buy from us?

Book Hero is not a chain store or big box retailer. We're an independent 100% NZ-owned business on a mission to help more Kiwis rediscover a love of books and reading!

Service & Delivery

Service & Delivery

Our warehouse in Auckland holds over 100,000 books, toys, board games and puzzles in-stock so you're not waiting for your order to arrive from overseas.

Auckland Bookstore

Auckland Bookstore

We're primarily an online store, but for your convenience you can pick up your order for free from our bookstore, which is right next door to our warehouse in Hobsonville.

Our Gifting Service

Our Gifting Service

Books make wonderful thoughtful gifts and we're here to help with gift-wrapping and cards. We can even send your gift directly to your loved one.