Nev March: The Silversmith’s Puzzle
Captain Jim & Lady Diana #4
I loved, loved, loved the first book in this series, Murder in Old Bombay. In that first book, the main characters, Captain Jim Agnihotri and Lady Diana Framji, meet and marry despite some pretty steep obstacles. Jim is half white, half Indian, and he is not a Parsi, as Lady Diana is. The Parsis, the aristocrats of Indian culture in the 1890’s, have very strict rules about marrying outside the faith. This creates problems for the couple.
Jim, a dashing and decorated Captain in the British army, has worked as a journalist and a private investigator for the Framji family. He met the Framjis when he searched for the killer of Diana’s sister-in-law. In this novel, it’s her widower, Diana’s brother Adi, who is in trouble. The two novels in between this one and the first found Diana and Jim in Boston and Chicago and on a steamship crossing the ocean. Those novels, which were fine traditional mysteries, nevertheless lacked the zip and life of the first novel. As the Agnihotris return to India, however, life returns to this wonderful series.