"A good crime thriller"

In 1919 Alice Conyers reaches Paris, the first leg of her trek to India to take over the reigns of the Imperial and Colonial Trading Corporation. Since the death of her brother Lionel during World War I, she inherited 51% of the stock while her second cousin who she plans to marry owns the rest. However, their train falls into a ravine killing almost all on board. Alice continues on to India where she makes her firm a success.

In 1922 Northern India, Scotland Yard Detective Joe Sandilands has finished up his tour of duty in India and is now the guest of Sir George Jardine, Lieutenant Governor of Bengal. He plans to spend a month in the guest cottage at Simla at the base of the Himalayas. Joe gives a lift to Russian opera singer Feador Korosovsky and witnesses his murder in the car driving them to Sir George. He reports the homicide and learns that Lionel, Alice brother died in the same spot with the same MO. Sir George asks Joe to help the authorities. He does finding all roads lead to Alice and that train wreck.

Barbara Cleverly has written a fantastic historical police procedural at a time when India learned it was the equal of their occupier sand wants freedom from British rule. The exotic locale enhances the mystery and romance by adding an aura of danger to the westerners. The protagonist is an enigma who readers will not like; while the antagonist receives empathy though the choices that person made were criminal. RAGTIME FOR SIMLA provides readers with a sense of time and place during the final hours before the sunset of the British Empire.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted September 30, 2004

Summary

World War I hero and Scotland Yard detective Joe Sandilands is traveling to Simla, summer capital of the British Raj, when he is thrust abruptly—and bloodily—into his second case of serial murder: His traveling companion, a Russian opera singer, is shot dead at his side in the Governor of Bengal's touring car at a crossroads known as Devil's Elbow. Like Cleverly's award-winning and enthusiastically reviewed The Last Kashmiri Rose, which debuted Sandilands, Ragtime in Simla effectively combines exotic settings with high suspense in a deftly plotted tale of 1920s India. At Simla, in the pine-scented Himalayan hills, the English colonials have re-created a bit of home with half-timbered houses, glittering dinner tables, amateur theatricals, and gymkhanas. But when Joe's murder investigation turns up an identical unsolved killing a year earlier, he begins to uncover behind the close-knit community's sparkling facade a sinister trail of blackmail, vice, and deadly secrets.