Ragtime in Simla
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- €3.99
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- €3.99
Publisher Description
Simla 1922. The summer capital of the British Raj is fizzing with the energy of the jazz age.
Commander Joe Sandilands is looking forward to spending a month here in the cool of the Himalayan hills as the guest of Sir George Jardine, the Governor of Bengal. When Joe's travelling companion, a Russian opera singer, is shot dead at his side in the back of the Governor's car on the road up to Simla, he finds himself plunged into a murder investigation.
Confronted by the mystery of an identical unsolved killing a year before, Joe realizes that Sir George's hospitality comes at a price. Behind the sparkling façade of social life in Simla he finds a trail of murder, vice and blackmail. Someone in this close-knit community has a secret and the nearer Joe comes to uncovering it, the nearer he comes to his own death.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fully developed characters and a convincing portrayal of time and place lift Cleverly's second historical (after 2002's The Last Kashmiri Rose) featuring Commander Joe Sandilands, a Scotland Yard detective stationed in post WWI India. Sandilands has a personal stake in catching a cunning murderer, as the victim was struck down just inches away from him as they paused to admire the view from a spot known as Devil's Elbow in Simla, the summer capital of the Raj. Despite his fleeting acquaintance with the murdered man, a noted Russian singer, the sleuth feels compelled to put all his energies into avenging him, a challenge that's compounded when he learns of a nearly identical killing at the same spot a year earlier. The circumstances of that crime lead him to a young, attractive British expat, who's managed to successfully run a major trading house despite numerous personal tragedies. Working with the local superintendent, Sandilands maneuvers through the interlocking threads of Simla's colonial power base, which include a well-protected brothel, a spiritualist and Indian nationalists. The murderer's identity comes as a nice and logical surprise. While the ending suggests that Sandilands may next apply his considerable gifts outside India, the author's talent seems capable of transcending any shift in scene.
