The Little Victim
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- $0.99
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- $0.99
Publisher Description
It promised to be the perfect holiday every modern convenience, exotic terraced gardens complete with an 'English' folly, thirty-eight varieties of ice-cream, cocktails with names like 'Widow's Wink' and 'Mumbay Mule'. Antonia and Hugh Payne never seriously imagined they would encounter anything worse than extravagance in this idyllic setting...
But an uninvited guest at the garden party given in their honour makes Antonia Darcy his confidante. Not only does he claim to have witnessed the strangling of beautiful, wayward Marigold Leighton, he also insists it was their host Roman Songhera, the 'uncrowned king of Goa', who had committed the murder. 'You are the kind of woman who lets her imagination run riot', the Hon. Mrs Depleche warns Antonia - but then the murder witness mysteriously disappears and later turns up dead.
And so, rather reluctantly, Antonia and Major Payne decide to set aside their pleasure-filled days, and investigate.
Praise for R.T. Raichev's Previous Novels
'Fascinating and surreal.' Lady Antonia Fraser
'Clever and complex.' Francis Wyndham
'Splendidly oldfashioned sleuthery ... skilfully probes the surface smoothness of country houses ...couldn't put it down.' Hugh Massingberd
'This auspicious first in a new mystery series from Raichev... Agatha Christie fans will find much to like in this traditional whodunit.' Publishers Weekly
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mystery novelist Antonia Darcy and her husband, Maj. Hugh Payne, travel to India in Raichev's witty fourth mystery to feature the amateur sleuths (after 2008's Assassins at Ospreys). The couple stay at Coconut Grove in Goa, the hacienda-style home of Roman Songhera, an Indian gangster. The scandalous behavior of Songhera's mistress, Marigold Ria Leighton, the daughter of Lord Justice Toby Leighton, has driven Songhera to the brink. At a lavish garden party at Coconut Grove, a drunken Englishman claiming to be in the employ of Lord Leighton tells Antonia that he saw Songhera kill Ria and fears for his life. With nods to Agatha Christie, John Buchan, P.D. James and other mystery greats, the amiable detectives sort out motives and suspects to arrive at the truth and a poetic justice more fitting than a mere jail sentence for the culprit. Clever chapter titles echoing classic detective fiction titles (e.g., Christie's The Mirror Cracked) add to the fun.
