India 1890’s

Nev March: The Silversmith’s Puzzle

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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. read more

Nev March: Murder in Old Bombay

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This novel will be published November 10, 2020.

This charming novel is the righteous winner of the Minotaur/MWA First Crime novel prize.  Set in 1892 Bombay during the British Raj, this novel focuses on Captain Jim Agnihotri, who has left the military after a long stint in the hospital.  The book has an excellent opening line: “I turned thirty in hospital…with little to read but newspapers.”

In said newspapers, Captain Jim reads the story of two Parsee women who plunged to their deaths from a University clock tower.  One was a young bride, one, her younger sister in law.  When Jim reads a plea in letter form in the newspaper from the young widower, he is sure that the details of the crime don’t add up.  The husband pleads that this was not a suicide but the recently concluded trial leaves this stain and uncertainty on the family. read more