Mal Bernhardt
04 October 2025
56m 51s
Out of Order Book Club: Smoke and Ashes (2018)
00:00
56:51
Out of Order Book Club
This week's podcast looks at 'Smoke and Ashes' by Abir Mukherjee, the third book in the very successful Wyndham and Bannerjee series. In fact, the sixth book in the series comes out next month, so it seems like a good time to visit this series as an 'out of order' reader.
In this episode, Mal sees connections between the events and themes in this book and 2025. Plus, she goes off on a tangent about the content of her history lessons at school, gets a little obsessed (confused?) with how much research is involved in writing a historical novel, and the importance of historical novels shining a light on things we know nothing about. Spoiler: It's important!
Contents: Contains some swearing
You can contact Mal on Blue Sky: outoforderbookclub.bsky.social
Helpful resources and useful links:
Harrogate Crime Writing Festival Interview (2018)
Author Series - Hudson Library and Historical Society (2022)
Les Artisans De La Fiction (2023)
The Scoundrel Harry Larkyns and his pitiless killing by the photographer Eadweard Muybridge by Rebecca Gowers (2019): This is a book I mention in the podcast, and it is well worth a read. It is a microscopic study of the life of someone dismissed in favour of the more famous person he 'crossed paths with', to put it politely. It's both a history lesson, and a lesson in how people can be made victims over again by the retelling of history.