A little while back, I was wandering aimlessly among the Fiction stacks of my local library and wondering what to read. (Wandering and wondering…) In the back of my mind I was hoping to find a new British mystery series, set in the Golden Age but written recently, preferably by a woman. (Sexist, I know, but justified. All my favorite mystery authors are women. Sorry, Dickson Carr and Ellery Queen.) It didn’t have to be as profound (or depressing) as P.D. James, but at least a bit meaty/character-driven with a definite avoidance of the overly twee.
And guess what? I found it! Lurking around the CHE-CLO aisle, I saw the magical tag “Mystery” on a set of books on (of course) the bottom shelf. Barbara Cleverly…never heard of her, but the titles sound intriguing. Set in the early 1920s, soon after World War I, perfect. And the detective is a dashing young Scotland Yard maverick? Sold!
Cleverly’s detective is Joe Sandilands, Commander at Scotland Yard. (The title is not a typical police rank, and was assigned to Joe as part of his work in a special branch involving sticky homicides and other crimes, many of which take place in politics or among the elite.) He is in his early 30s, surprisingly young for his rank, and the product of both an English father and Scottish mother, both Cambridge and four years in the trenches at Ypres. Thus he blends in well with the knobs and aristos, but can also fit in well with the Common People. He is tall, dark and handsome, but a war-time facial scar also gives him a forbidding and dangerous look. In other words – hot hot HOT, and the ladies respond accordingly.
In the first four books of the series, Cleverly sends Joe to India, still the crown jewel of the British Empire in 1922, to teach modern police methods to both the Colonial and native Indian police. While there he (of course) comes up against murders and murderers, all of them highly inconvenient for the Raj and the colonial government. In the first book, The Last Kashmiri Rose, someone is offing the wives of senior British military officers, officers who may have been present at a pre-war tragedy. The second book, Ragtime in Simla, has Joe investigating a sniper shooting in Simla, a posh summer resort in the Himalayan hills.
The third book, The Damascened Blade, sends Joe to a remote British fort near the Afghan border as bodyguard to a headstrong American heiress who is desperate to see the “real” India. And in the fourth, The Palace Tiger, Joe must visit the independent kingdom of “Ranipur,” a British ally in North India, to investigate the suspicious death of the maharajah’s heir and protect the next in line for the throne.
All of these stories sound exciting but fairly one-dimensional when described thus, but they really aren’t. The characters, both British and Indian, are interesting and complex. No one is completely bad or completely good, everyone has his/her own agenda, and loyalties – amorous, political and familial – are complicated and often opaque. Cleverly brings out many of the issues in the latter days of the Raj – you can see the forces building toward the eventual decolonization of India 25 years later.
Cleverly also marks herself as a 21st century author by not shying away from topics that Golden Age writers would never address, or at least never address directly. Homosexual relationships, infertility, alcoholism, graphic depictions of violence and war wounds…you’d never see these described so matter-of-factly in an Aunt Agatha novel. And Joe himself is not averse to discreet liaisons with pretty ladies, both married and single.
The next several books in the series (there are nine Joe Sandilands books altogether, according to Amazon and Wikipedia) depict Joe’s return to London and his dealings with sticky homicides there and in various parts of France. (Conveniently, he speaks fluent French – I told you, HOT!) In one of these adventures, Folly du Jour, Joe meets up again with two of the more colorful characters he encountered in India, but this time, in Lindbergh-era Paris.
An intriguing aspect to the Sandilands mysteries is that they are not strictly in chronological order. All of the India-based books take place in 1922; however, while the
Cleverly says Joe looks like this. I disagree.
end of Ragtime in Simla sees Joe on a French steamer ship on his way home, the next two novels concern his adventures in India before he gets on that steamer. So in a way, they take place “within” Ragtime in Simla, much the same way that C.S. Lewis’ The Horse and His Boy takes place “within” The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.
Similarly, after the London/France set of adventures, set in 1926-27, Cleverly takes Joe back to 1922 London after his return from India in The Blood Royal. I’ve just started reading this one, and it’s taking me a bit of time to re-set my brain back a number of years from 1927 Paris and Folly du Jour. But it definitely keeps things interesting!
I’m enjoying this series immensely. Joe makes for a very engaging detective protagonist, and he lands in some very entertaining adventures. I’m not as emotionally attached to these books as I am to Sayers or especially to Margery Allingham (so much more to come about Allingham and Albert Campion in the future), but they are still quite a delight.