Her Nightly Embrace (Ravi Pi, #1)

by Adi Tantimedh

The first in a trilogy of whip-smart novels--currently in development as a TV series set to star Sendhil Ramamurthy (NBC's Heroes and Heroes Reborn)--about a destructive private investigator and his eccentric coworkers, who handle cases so high-profile that they never make the headlines.

Ravi Chandra Singh is the last guy you'd expect to become a private detective. A failed religious scholar, he now works for Golden Sentinels, an upmarket London private investigations agency. His colleagues are a band of gleefully amoral and brilliant screw-ups: Ken and Clive, a pair of brutal ex-cops who are also a gay couple; Mark Chapman, a burned-out stoner hiding a great mind; Marcie Holder, a cheerful former publicist; Benjamin Lee, a techie prankster from South London; David Okri, an ambitious lawyer from a well-connected Nigerian immigrant family; and Olivia Wong, an upper-class Hong Kong financial analyst hiding her true skills as one of the most dangerous hackers in the world--all under the watchful eye of Roger Golden, wheeler-dealer extraordinaire, and his mysterious office manager, Cheryl Hughes.

Thrust into a world where the rich, famous, and powerful hire him to solve their problems and wash their dirty laundry, Ravi finds himself in over his head with increasingly gonzo and complex cases - and the recent visions that he's been having of Hindu gods aren't helping. As Ravi struggles to stay ahead of danger, he wonders if the things he's seeing are a delusion - or if he might, in fact, be an unrecognized shaman of the modern world...

• ISBN10: 1501130579
• ISBN13: 9781501130571
• Publish Date: 1 November 2016
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Simon & Schuster
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 320
• Language: English

Reviews

[Heather]

I loved this story of a private eye handling high profile cases while the Hindu gods watch him and text on their phones.  There are several cases discussed here and they were well done.  I want to read more in this series to see what happens with the gods.

BUT....

The first case in the book is super problematic.  It only covers maybe the first 1/3 of the book so discussing it isn't going to going spoil the whole thing but here's your warning.



A politician comes to the agency because he says that his dead girlfriend is having sex with him at night.  It turns out that the politician takes a lot of sleeping pills at night so he isn't fully aware of what is going on.  His former girlfriend was a transwoman and he didn't know.  She was mid-transition when she got sick and then met him.  Instead of talking to him about, you know, her life or anything, she would have her twin sister switch places with her at night.  Her sister had sex with him.  Then the girlfriend died of her illness and the sister kept sneaking into the house and having sex with the drugged guy because she was a sex addict.

(Go ahead and pick all the nonsense out of that paragraph at your leisure.)

Ok, so no matter how you dress that up, that's a rape case.  But, the word rape is never uttered.  I think the closest they get is saying assault.  I believe you are meant to feel bad for the woman who might get prosecuted if the politician decides to go public.  I didn't.

But then ..... wait for it.....

The woman who should be in jail for rape not only starts dating the main character but she gets a job in the agency.


via GIPHY
I kept listening in hope that something was going to happen to get them to all see that this was wrong. They don't. The rest of the book is so much better than this.  This story could easily have been gotten rid of and not affect the rest of the book.  I would love to think that when they adapt this for TV that they will live this case out but these things never work out the way I'd like.This review was originally posted on Based On A True Story

[Lianne]

I was provided an ARC of this book by the publishers in exchange for an honest review. This review was originally posted at eclectictales.com: http://www.eclectictales.com/blog/2016/11/02/review-her-nightly-embrace/

This book is divided to four sections, four different cases in which Ravi and the Golden Sentinels are hired to investigate different cases–a politician who thinks a ghost is haunting him, a missing daughter, amongst others. It’s interesting and fast-paced, nothing is what it seems and it’s just absolutely nutty, an aspect of his job that isn’t lost on Ravi. And to top things off he can see the Hindu gods, something that doesn’t quite make sense right now and why it’s happening to him, but it does colour the situation further. It should make for an interesting television show, especially how the book ends.

What also added to the experience of reading this book was the cast of characters. Ravi is a fascinating character with quite the background–definitely the last person you’d see become a private detective–and family life that weaves in and out of the story. Seeing the Hindu gods of course also adds to his character and his backstory and I’m curious to see how it plays in further in the next books. The other members of Roger’s Golden Sentinels are also interesting with their own respective backstories; each of them are highlighted with each story, but I feel we’ve only scratched the surface with these characters and they should be more fleshed out later on. Nonetheless I’ve enjoyed reading the scenes and camraderie amongst the characters, even Ravi’s home life.

Overall I really enjoyed Her Nightly Embrace. It’s fast-paced, the characters are quite the motley crew with great interaction (and did I mention diverse?), and there’s a lot of intrigue as well. The cases were interesting, though I wasn’t terribly interested in the last case (even though that case just blew a hole on what’s really going on in the firm that Ravi works for). I highly recommend this book if you’re looking for a fast and interesting mesh of genres read, I look forward to the next installment in the trilogy as well as the television show and how the story will unfold there.