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Aftab Arbiyani is a software engineer and debut novelist whose psychological mystery The Probationers is a locked-room murder set in a snowbound Italian monastery.

Short (approx. 50 words)

Aftab Arbiyani is a psychological mystery writer and software engineer based in India. His debut novel, The Probationers, is a closed-circle murder mystery set inside a snowbound Benedictine monastery in the Umbrian hills. He writes locked-room fiction for readers who believe a mystery should earn its ending. A second novel is underway.

Long (approx. 150 words)

Aftab Arbiyani is a software engineer, technical lead, and debut novelist based in India. By day he designs and builds large-scale backend systems. He has done this for more than five years and now leads engineering at SolGuruz; he studied Computer Engineering at Government Engineering College, Bhavnagar. By night he writes psychological mystery fiction.

His debut novel, The Probationers, is a closed-circle murder mystery set across seven snowbound days in a Benedictine monastery in the Umbrian hills, where a priest is found dead at the foot of the bell tower and a canon lawyer is sent to find the truth before the civil authorities arrive. The book grew out of a long fascination with closed systems and hidden logic, the same instincts that shape good software, turned on a locked-room mystery. He writes for readers who believe a mystery should earn its ending, and a second novel is on the way.

Title

The Probationers

Author

Aftab Arbiyani

Genre

Psychological murder mystery / closed-circle whodunit

Formats

Kindle ebook and paperback (361 pages)

Paperback ISBN

9798197795472

Kindle ASIN

B0GX33TZC3

Publication date

May 15, 2026

Publisher

Independently published

Language

English

Buy

Amazon · Book page

Logline

The Probationers is a closed-circle mystery set across seven snowbound days in a Benedictine enclosure in the Umbrian hills. A priest is found dead at the base of the bell tower. A canon lawyer is sent from Rome to find out what happened before the civil authorities arrive. She has seven days, and six novices.

Full synopsis

At the Abbazia di San Gerolamo, a Benedictine monastery high in the Umbrian hills, six postulants are halfway through the year that will decide the rest of their lives. On the morning of the mid-winter feast, the novice master, Father Tomaso Ricci, is found at the foot of the bell tower. It looks like a fall. It isn't. And by nightfall the snow has closed every road off the mountain.

Sister Aude Bellamy, a Dominican canon lawyer and former French magistrate, is sent to establish what happened before the civil authorities can reach the abbey. What she finds is a community bound by the Great Silence, where each postulant is guarding a secret they would do almost anything to keep, and where the line between confession and survival has quietly disappeared.

The Probationers is a locked-room mystery about belonging and exile, about what a person will do to stay inside the world they have built for themselves. It is written for readers who believe a mystery should earn its ending.

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A high-resolution cover and an author photograph are available on request: email for assets. Please credit the cover art to the author.

A starting point for interviews, podcasts, and features: use, adapt, or ignore as you like.

1. You're a software engineer by profession. How did that lead you to writing a locked-room murder mystery?
2. Why set the novel inside a snowbound Benedictine monastery? What drew you to that closed world?
3. The Probationers is a “closed-circle” mystery. What makes that structure satisfying to write, and to read?
4. Your investigator is a canon lawyer rather than a detective. Why that choice?
5. The book is about belonging and exile. What does that theme mean to you?
6. What do you mean when you say a mystery should “earn its ending”?
7. Which mystery writers shaped how you approach the genre?
8. What can you tell us about the second novel?