Vaseem Khan

Born in 1973 in England, Vaseem Khan spent a formative decade in India, arriving at twenty-three to work as a management consultant for an environmentally friendly hotel group. It was during that first year, in 1997, that he saw an elephant lumbering down a busy road – an image that lodged in his imagination and eventually sparked his first published novel.

Khan had been writing fiction for twenty-three years, producing six unpublished manuscripts before breaking through at forty with The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra – a charming crime novel about a retired Mumbai policeman who must solve a murder while coping with the gift of a baby elephant named Ganesha. Published in 2015, the book became a Times bestseller, was translated into sixteen languages, and was named one of the Sunday Times’ forty best crime novels published between 2015 and 2020.

“The reason I write about India is because those were the best years of my life. I fell in love with the country, the people, and the city of Mumbai.”

Khan then took a bold creative leap with the Malabar House series, set in 1950s Bombay during the turbulent early years of Indian independence. Beginning with Midnight at Malabar House in 2020, the series follows Inspector Persis Wadia, India’s first female police detective, as she navigates complex murder cases and the deeply patriarchal world of post-colonial Indian policing. Midnight at Malabar House won the CWA Historical Dagger, the most prestigious award for historical crime fiction in the world.

In 2025, he launched yet another series with Quantum of Menace, featuring the character Q from the James Bond franchise, authorised by the Ian Fleming estate.

Quick Facts

• Debut age: 40 (after 23 years of writing)
• Award: CWA Historical Dagger (Midnight at Malabar House)
• Role: Former Chair of the UK Crime Writers’ Association
• Series span: Modern Mumbai to 1950s Bombay to James Bond
• Languages: Translated into 16 languages
• Other awards: Shamus Award, Eastern Eye Arts Award for Literature

Few authors move so confidently between lighthearted cosy crime and richly atmospheric historical fiction – Khan brings meticulous research, sharp wit, and deep empathy to everything he writes.