Genre: Mystery, Detective
Published: 2001
Personal rating: 5/5
Yearly count: 66
In a land of saffron sunsets and blazing summer heat, an Englishwoman has been found dead, her wrists slit, her body floating in a bathtub of blood and water. But is it suicide or murder? The case falls to Scotland Yard inspector Joe Sandilands, who survived the horror of the Western Front and has endured six sultry months in English-ruled Calcutta. Sandilands is ordered to investigate, and soon discovers that there have been other mysterious deaths, hearkening sinister ties to the present case. Now, as the sovereignty of Britain is in decline and an insurgent India is on the rise, Sandilands must navigate the treacherous corridors of political decorum to bring a cunning killer to justice…knowing the next victim is already marked to die.
Set in the early 1920s in British India The Last Kashmiri Rose is the first book of the Detective Joe Sandilands series. And I’ll tell you, if the rest of them are as good as this one I’ll be a very happy girl. The plot is well thought out, the setting is crucial to the plot and, unusual for this type of book, the why of the murders is more important than the who, although for about half the book the killer’s identity isn’t known. This book scores very well on all fronts, plot, setting and characters are great and make this a page-turner despite the slow simmering of happenings.
But what I loved most about this book was the setting. India is described so vividly that I felt as if I were there. While Anglo-India is most prominent, something of the native people and culture is also shown in this book. The time period is also an interesting one. There is unrest simmering under the surface due to tension between the British and the natives, and an uprising resulting in a lot of casualties is not that long ago. Not to mention that World War I is only just over and nobody was left untouched by that. The early 1920s is also an interesting time for forensics and criminal psychology, which were just up and coming in being used in investigations, and of which Joe Sandilands is a fervent fan. But perhaps most striking of all did I find the gap between Joe, who hasn’t spent that much time in India, and the English living in India that he meets. Time is ‘behind’ in India, often Joe thinks ‘it could have been the 90s’ by which he means the 1890s. This contrast puts you even more in the 1920s frame of mind than mere descriptions of the time period could have done.
All in all I really liked this book and I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the series. Highly recommended!
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