The Rita Ferriera Series

1982. Three teenage girls planning a flight from the Soviet Union to the West end up being sold in Mumbai’s red-light area instead. The murders start a quarter of a century later. The victims are all men. All of them tricks, waiting for trysts with high-class escorts. DCP Rita Ferreira is quick to recognize the serial-killer strain; the media isn’t far behind. The news sends shockwaves through the city. The first serial killer in living memory of Mumbai is out on the streets. As Rita grapples to establish a pattern, the killer gives her twenty-four hours to stop the next murder.

Ron Jogani, a jeweler from Mumbai, is in Belgium to buy a consignment of loose diamonds worth over ten million Euros. Hours later he’s dead in his hotel room in Brussels—murdered. The perpetrators are extremely tech-savvy and have defeated all the​ CCTV cameras in the hotel … but one concealed camera in the elevator has snapped one of the guys. When one of the stolen diamonds is sold in Mumbai, the Belgian Police reach out to their Indian counterparts. The case is assigned to DCP Rita Ferreira.

DCP Rita Ferreira is called into the investigation after a third corpse is discovered in Mumbai, which confirms it is the work of the same killer who paints his victims’s lips with dark red lipstick. The Lipstick Killer, like all serial killers, is fast decompensating—the time interval between the murders shortening, the victims shifting from street-side hookers to high-heeled wives … and he watches everything and everyone—the news of his exploits, Rita, the investigation—and talks.