There are few books as instantly captivating as Society Girl: A Tale of Sex, Lies and Scandal by Tooba Masood-Khan and Saba Imtiaz. The book is a gripping read from the very first page. It is hard to put down. The language is fairly simple, the story flows quite effortlessly, and you can easily finish it in one sitting or three days at the very most.

The book is based on a case that took Pakistani society by storm in the early 1970s. And for those who lived through the times, it still remains fresh in their mind today almost 54 years later. It`s worth mentioning that several people that were interviewed for the book have since passed away.

One ill-fated October morning in 1970, the famed Pakistani poet and former bureaucrat Mustafa Zaidi was found dead in his house in Karachi. He wasn`t alone. A much younger, beautiful, popular and very married socialite, Shahnaz Gul, was found unconscious in the room next to the bedroom in which Mustafa`s body lay. She later claimed she had been drugged.

The scandal took Pakistani society by storm. The media was obsessed there were photographers tracking Shahnaz`s every move from her home to the police station, the jail and the courts. The case became front page news as desperate reporters tried to find anyone who would divulge details about Zaidi and Gul`s personal lives. For this reason, in some homes, newspapers were kept away from the eyes of young children, lest they be influenced.

All of this was happening while Pakistan as it always is was in the throes of major, cataclysmic changes. But this scandal overshadowed everything in the press, including that of the devastating 1970 Bhola cyclone in East Pakistan, in which hundreds of thousands of people died, which the authors in particular lament in their retelling of this case. Theother changes taking place included a martial law regime change and a general election that changed the face of the country. It was a turbulent time in Pakistan, but Pakistani media and society was only obsessed with one person: Shahnaz Gul.

The media`s obsession with Shahnaz Gul, or rather their obsession with demonising her, was strikingly similar to other contemporary cases in Pakistan. They were just as, if not more, obsessed with the slain social media star Qandeel Baloch, when she first went viral on social media and began being featured on TV. Until her brother`s acquittal four years after her death despite his confession to her murder earlier her family were consistently hounded by the press at every court hearing.

The media, and Pakistani society, was just as obsessed with model Ayyan Ali when she was arrested in a money laundering scandal in 2015; and with TV host and actor Dania Shah who filed for divorce after only three months of marriage to former televangelist Aamir Liaqat Hussain, whopassed away one month later in June 2022. The cause of his death, much like Zaidi`s, is yet to be confirmed. Shah`s TikTok`s are some of the most watched in Pakistan even today. And much like Shahnaz Gul, Baloch, Ali and Shah also received a lot of hate at the time their `scandals` broke.

As the authors outline in Society Girl, the media`s obsession with Mustafa Zaidi and Shahnaz Gul`s personal life and affairs had little to do with actually solving Mustafa Zaidi`s case. A total of two autopsies were conducted (one at the insistence of his German wife, Vera), the investigation changed several hands, and there was also a court trial. But, despite all this, we are still left without any closure or clarity on how Zaidi actually ended up dead.

One remembers this is what the authors were keen to get to the bottom of when they started their true crime podcast series, `Notes on a Scandal`, on the case. One popular podcast and a book later, we still have no clear definitive answer.

What Society Girl does give you is an exhaustive,intricate investigation into the case, coupled with expert analysis from contemporary professionals based on whatever case evidence is available.

The characters delve deep into our character as a society, going decades into the past and painting a vivid picture of their own stories, their evolutions, their mental state and of course, of 1970s` Pakistan a place so vastly different from the country we know now and yet, in some ways, exactly the same.

While retelling the story of this case, the authors transport you back in time in an era where the now demolished, dilapidated or converted historical buildings of hotels and clubs in Karachi were in their heyday with Society Girl, you now have their story. The book paints a picture of Karachi evenings with seemingly endless music, society `It ` girls, suave businessmen hoping to score more than a few deals, of a modern Pakistani society emerging in the world, of a culture that was more open than it is now, and of the class divides, politics and morality of the era.

When seen from a contemporary lens, the public backlash, which back then was targeted solely at Gul, might have been directed at Zaidi had the `scandal` broke out now. In society and in the press, Gul was vilified to a point where people didn`t want to name their children `Shahnaz`, because of the shame associated with it. But reading the book, with all of its investigative hindsight, Zaidi comes across as an absolutely manipulative character.

Through their investigations, the authors document a long history of Zaidi being prone to bouts of deep depression, multiple suicide attempts throughout his life, and phases of manic activity. In the book, Zaidi is a man who blackmailed and threw tantrums when he wouldn`t get his way, with little to no regard for the other person.

When it came to his work, he had, by all accounts, a very principled approach, but when it came to his personal life, Zaidi can only be described as absolutely entitled and insecure, even narcissistic.

At the same time, he was also brilliantly creative in his artistic expressions.

Spoiler alert for this next part. When Zaidi couldn`t get his way with Gul, he had prepared to either blackmail or malign her reputation by reproducing what we now know as `revenge porn.` And yet, instead of holding him accountable, the press went wild with trying to publish salaciousdetails of what was contained in those documents. The victim was shamed even more for something totally out of her control. If this had happened today, perhaps the narrative would have been very different and Zaidi would have been called out for being a sexual abuser. How times have changed! In terms of its pacing, the book becomes somewhat repetitive in the middle. At the end, there is also one part that made this reviewer a little uncomfortable. The authors include a gossipy detail about Gul, as told to them by someone who knew her, about her sexual proclivities, decades after the case had concluded. The authors criticised the press back then for trying to find salacious details about Gul`s life that had no bearing on the case itself, and well, this didn`t either. And it seemed almost like a violation of Gul again, especially considering how she has shunned the press and led a very private life since she was exonerated by the courts.

Nevertheless, Society Girl is a fascinating retelling of a case that has all the makings of a cinematic thriller: sex, lies, scandal, `it` girls and playboys, artists and power players and nostalgia for a bygone era. At first, this investigative book reads like a tabloid, but that`s because the case in itself is so for lack of a better word spicy.

The reviewer is a journalist, an award-winning documentary filmmaker and radio correspondent