Having absolutely LOVED Raza Mir's The Taste of Words: An Introduction to Urdu Poetry I really, REALLY wanted to like this book. The concept sounded fun, with the legendary Mirza Ghalib as a sleuth. Sadly, it din't quite work for me. The history worked into the story as background and context was very interesting, albeit also very disturbing. Being set in the week before the Rebellion  sprang into full life made reading the historical tidbits and the historically accurate interpolations very difficult to read. 

But the reason I gave up was simply that the mystery didn't work. The investigative bits read far too modern, I got no sense of time and place from them. In the end, this killed my interest in the story.