Ragtime in Simla

Joe Sandilands #2

by Barbara Cleverly

Simla 1922. While the rest of India bakes in the hot season, up in the pine-scented coolness of the Himalayan hills the English have recreated a vision of home. Here are half-timbered houses, amateur theatricals, gymkhanas and a glittering vice-regal court for the socialites. The summer capital of the British Raj is fizzing with the energy of the jazz age. It is toward this country that detective Joe Sandilands is heading as the guest of the governor of Bengal. But when Joe's travelling companion, a Russian opera singer, is shot dead at his side on the road to Simla, he finds himself plunged into a murder investigation. As Joe begins to unravel the mystery which has its roots in the aftermath of the First World War, he discovers that behind the sparkling facade of Simla lies a trail of murder, vice and blackmail.

Genres: Mystery, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, India, Fiction, Historical, Crime

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Barbara Cleverly was born in the north of England and is a graduate of Durham University. A former teacher, she has spent her working life in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk; she now lives in Cambridge. She has one son and five step-children.

Her Joe Sandilands series of books set against the background of the British Raj was inspired by the contents of a battered old tin trunk that she found in her attic. Out of it spilled two centuries of memories of a family – especially a great uncle who spent a lot of time in India – whose exploits and achievements marched in time with the flowering of the British Empire.

Reviews

[BrokenTune · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5*

This is not much of a review, but I'm having some time on my hands and thought I'd update some posts.

I picked up Ragtime in Simla a few years ago when work took me northern India. I travelled with a colleague who was going to stay for the same period and we decided to plan a trip to Shimla over the weekend. Of course, being way too busy with exploring and work, I never had a chance to read the book - not even on the plane - which is why it ended on my TBR pile for a couple of years.

Having now read the book, let me start off with the following advice:

DO NOT READ THE BLURB ON THE BACK COVER!

Seriously, I don't know if the blurbs differ much but mine (which luckily I didn't read until I finished the book) gave away many of the plot twists.

Other than this I was pleasantly surprised by the book. It comes very close to an Agatha Christie mystery - except with the xenophobia and snobbishness turned down a peg.

The first part of the book seems somewhat out of place as the story is set in southern France, not India, but all will become clear as the story continues and takes you to the foothills of the Himalayas in 1922.

Simla (or Shimla) served as the Raj's capital during the hot seasons as the hills provided some much-needed respite from the heat.



In Simla we meet Joe Sandilands, who is on holiday from Scotland Yard and travels on the invite of an old acquaintance of his. Pretty soon, Joe understands that this invite might come with the request to apply his professional skills to some mysterious goings on.

I will not describe any more of the story as I don't want to spoil the ride for anyone. Ragtime in Simla is pretty straight-laced murder mystery with a cast of quirky characters, humour, excessive Britishness, and so many red herrings and twists that it is unlikely you'll guess the solution to the puzzle right from the start.
In other words - it is jolly good fun.
Fans of Dame Agatha's will no doubt feel right at home with this book.

What really impressed me, though, was how well Cleverly captured the place. So watch out for the descriptions of the narrow passages, the rows of buildings, the main square, and the Jakhu temple and statue of Lord Hanuman overlooking the town.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoroughly entertaining murder mystery read! Everyone seems to be hiding a secret in this second installment of Detective Joe Sandilands, Scotland Yard. Joe is trying to leave his assignment in India again and this time is lured to the mountains of India to escape the heat for a "holiday". He becomes involved in working on a murder with the local police when a famous singer he has given a lift to, is shot & killed in front of his eyes as they were traveling to Simla. And that is just the start of this twisty story. I felt transported to this British summer retreat in India during the Raj period. How the British co-opted and used this country was ably presented despite being wrapped up in the mystery. This was a step up from the debut novel, yet I was still hoping for a little more character development of our M.C.

I don't know how I have read so much over the years with British characters and or setting and not seen the word tiffen before!

[Katie Hanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Enjoyable historical murder mystery*, beautifully written descriptions, could have used more racial diversity among the main cast given that it is set in India

*Upon further reflection, I THINK the author may have intended to imply the two culprits were actually a gay couple, but it was done in such an obliquely early-2000s manner I can't say for sure, nor can I say whether it was intended as a positive or negative thing? I was Confusion

[Madhulika Liddle · Rating 3 out of 5]

1922. Commander Joe Sandilands, of Scotland Yard but currently in India, accepts an offer to be a guest at the Simla residence of the Acting Governor of Bengal. On his way from Kalka to Simla in the car the Governor’s sent from him, Sandilands gives a lift to a famous singer: the Russian baritone, Feodor Korsovsky, who is on his way to perform at Simla’s Gaiety Theatre. Even before they can get to Simla, however, Korsovsky is dead, killed in the car by an unseen sniper.

Sandilands, determined to find Korsovsky’s killer, joins hands with Simla’s top cop, Carter. As they make their way through Simla’s society – mostly European, but Indian as well – Carter and Sandilands find that all is not as it seems. Besides the beguilingly innocent florists’ shop front for Flora’s brothel (which anyway everybody knows about), there are deeper, darker secrets. Why, for example, does Alice Conyers-Sharpe, the very wealthy director of a huge trading concern, appear to deeply grieve for Korsovsky, while denying that she even knew the man? Who killed, a year earlier, Alice Conyers’s brother (who had been presumed dead in the war but survived), at the very same spot where Korsovsky was killed, while Conyers was on his way to Simla for the first time? Why did Korsovsky’s papers include a three year-old newspaper with the list of casualties of a French train accident in which Alice Conyers had been one of only three survivors?

I’ll admit that I began reading this book with very low expectations. I’d already read the first Joe Sandilands mystery ( The Last Kashmir Rose ), and had not been terribly impressed. There had been factual errors galore when it came to the descriptions of India, its people, its language, and more, and while the mystery itself wasn’t bad, the errors certainly reduced my enjoyment of it considerably.

Well, there are errors here too. Ghandi instead of Gandhi (yes, I realize a lot of Westerners do make that mistake, but surely if you’re writing a book set in India…?). Chandigarh (which did not come into being till after independence) is referred to as a stop along a trafficking route. The words shikar (‘hunt’) and shikari (‘hunter’) are used in place of each other. And a few more, not sufficient to do anything more than cause fleeting annoyance.

There were a couple of elements in the plot, too, that jarred. There’s a séance scene, for instance, which actually has some supernatural phenomena—and never any explanation for it being staged or in any way contrived. And the very fact that so many of the people in this story were impostors baffled me. With a very hefty dose of humour added, with the murders and sex removed, Ms Cleverly could well have made this a Wodehouse homage.

But. I will say this: I found the mystery intriguing. It had lots of good twists and turns which made me want to keep reading, right till the very end. The pace was good, the main characters—especially Alice Conyers-Sharpe—well etched. Which is why, despite the other flaws, I still liked Ragtime in Simla. No, I did not love it, but it’s certainly better than The Last Kashmir Rose.

[Jeanette · Rating 2 out of 5]

Slow and Joe has next to no personality.

And I really did like the first in the series. All of the spark? Where did it go.

Simla was described fine. That was an entire star.

This series will not be for me. I'm glad that I realized it early. Plots are too, too altogether. With twists and quirks that have almost no explanations in sources or process.

[Lawyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second installment of the Sandilands chronicles is as entertaining as the first. There may even be a few more twists and turns in this second tale. Sandilands can't seem to make it out of India. The wily Sir George Jardine pulls the Scotland Yard Commander into another murder investigation--the brother of an heiress to a East India company has been shot by a sniper. As Sandilands enters the picture he meets a renowned Russian tenor who is set to perform at the Gaiety Theatre in Simla. And the tenor becomes the sniper's next victim. Sandilands has his work cut out for him with too many suspects. And all the while the Afghan frontier could burst into revolt. A very satisfying read. Joe Sandilands returns in "The Damascened Blade", the winner of the 2004 Dagger Award for best Historical Crime Novel.

[Jacqie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The best thing about this mystery was the setting. I didn't know much about Simla, the summer seat of British power in colonial-era India. It sounds like a fascinating place to visit.

The characters didn't enthrall me. Joe Sandilands seemed easily sidetracked by pretty women, and the dialogue was prone to many exclamation points. It didn't engage me enough to read any more books in the series.

[Wyntrnoire · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disappointing. The protagonist Joe Sandilands never came across as the same man/policeman as in the first book. In fact--he was constantly being manipulated by the author and this instantly brought any action to a halt. Add to that, an unresolved murder and near murder?? I did love the setting and will probably give book three a try.

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the plot developments are outlandish, and I feel a bit guilty reading fiction by a white British writer and set among the British in 1920s India-- but this mystery is an easy read that ranks low on the blood/violence/suspense scale, so it worked for me. 3.5 stars rounding up.

[Pamela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Murder mystery set in Simla in the 1920s. I really enjoyed the first book in this series, and this one got off to a great start with a tragic disaster in the opening chapter and a dramatic killing soon after that. Joe Sandilands, Commander at Scotland Yard, is a likeable if occasionally rather gullible protagonist and the Simla setting is brilliantly described. The murder plot is nicely set up with some intriguing twists and turns, although the failure of the police to challenge the accounts of certain suspects at key moments was slightly unconvincing.

There is a point when the book becomes more of an adventure novel with a lengthy pursuit across India and a showdown that seems to come from a Western movie - this dragged a bit for me and I was glad when the action returned to Simla. Overall though this was a neat mystery and I enjoyed its twists and turns. 3.5*

[Avid Series Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ragtime in Simla by Barbara Cleverly is the second book of the Detective Joe Sandilands mystery series set in 1920s India. Once again Joe is working for George Jardine. I found it curious that George’s niece Nancy was never mentioned even in passing, since Joe and Nancy worked closely together to solve a series of murders in the first book, The Last Kashmiri Rose. I also found it odd that Joe’s scar made an erroneous first impression twice in this second book; the first book just briefly mentioned it gave him a perpetually enquiring look.

Simla is high in the mountains, a cool refuge for the British during the hot summer months in India. The town’s buildings resemble traditional half-timbered houses in England. Joe plans on a vacation in the cool mountains before his return home to England, but when his traveling companion is shot, he must play detective again. He teams with local police superintendent Charlie Carter, who Joe finds easy to work with, energetic and resourceful.

One year ago another person was shot in the same location, approaching town. Joe feels there must be a connection – someone had a reason to prevent both people from entering Simla. He and Charlie investigate the backgrounds of the residents.

Alice Conyers-Sharpe survived a train wreck in France on her way to India to claim her inheritance –ownership of the Imperial and Colonial Trading Company (ICTC) – shared with her cousin Reggie, whom she promptly married. She runs the business with her Pathan right-hand man Rheza Khan. Reggie drinks, rides and hangs out with a disreputable group of former British officers.

Madame Flora runs the flower shop that fronts the town’s high-class brothel. Edgar Troop is a former Russian Army officer, now lives a disreputable life, although he’s a crack shot. Cecil Robertson owns a jewelry and curiosities shop. Marie-Jeanne Pitiot was the nurse assigned to care for Alice following the train wreck; they remained good friends and Alice helped her open her own high-fashion dress shop, La Belle Epoch. Minerva Freemantle holds séances for a select group of believers, including Alice.

The back stories of all the characters are interesting, and the story is rich with period detail. There are plenty of convincing red herrings, a suspenseful chase/confrontation scene, and quite a few plot twists before the mysteries are solved. A thoroughly enjoyable read; I look forward to reading the next in the series, although I am disappointed Joe isn’t staying in India for the whole series, since the details of life in 1920s India are so fascinating (both The Last Kashmiri Rose and Ragtime in Simla are set in India).

[Ravi Jain · Rating 1 out of 5]

A well-written, imperialist, orientalist, self-indulgent fantasy for those still mourning the loss of the ruthless, cunning, British Raj which ended about 75 years ago.

OK, I knew this was going to be a guilty pleasure, a throwback to the British novels of the first half of the last century, all Raj nostalgia and memsahibs. But I also expected it to be updated for this century. And for the first three-quarters of the book, I allowed myself to sink into the memory of pleasurable afternoons as a boy reading exactly this kind of book. Added to that was the charm of Simla, and reading about the Mall, the Ridge, Jakhoo and the splendid Christ Church. Of course the British characters quote Kipling admiringly, and even Omar Khayyam -- that, I allowed, was consistent with the times.

But in the end, Barbara Cleverly shows that in fact this is no modernist update, except that there is now a proto-feminist heroine who is allowed to get away with all kinds of deception and mayhem. (I'll omit the spoilers). So Ms Cleverly has cleverly defended her sex, and in a way that allows the 'enlightened' mainstream critics to fawn over her correctness. But there is no real insight, no investment beyond self-interest, and her heart is pernicious to the core. In that way she has fulfilled her function far better than she probably imagined, which is to be a perfect spokesman for the Raj.

[Biljana Ilioska · Rating 5 out of 5]

Книга која бев голем скептик дека е убава, прво многу чуден наслов и непривлечна корица и очекував дека е историска фикција. Но, ова е толку интересен непредвидлив трилер каде не се знае за убиецот до последната страница.
Дејство е во Индија во градот Симла. Романот започнува со патување во воз каде се сретнуваат Алисија (богата наследничка која патува за Индија) и Изабела. Со нив патуваат и нивните слугинки. Се случува страшна несреќа и Изабела ја искористува шансата да го земе идентитетот на богатата наследничка и продолжува да живее и управува со богатиот имот во Симла. Но, тука некој ја знае нејзината тајна и ја уценуваат. Од друга страна братот на Алисија сака да ја посети, но на пат за Симла е убиен. По една година загинува поранешниот љубовник на Изабела кој на ист начин е застрелан. Ако не сте ја читале не ја пропуштајте. Постаро издание од Матица.

[Ally · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great fun. A good old fashioned whodunit. I loved the descriptions of the settings and the characters. The plot had plenty of twists and turns although the ending was a little drawn out. I could easily imagine an Agatha Christie style Sunday evening drama as I read this one. A light and easy read. Very enjoyable.

[Eva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyable whodunnit! Surprising!!

[Ana B. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Samo povremeno simpatičan krimić, najbolji dio su opisi Simle.

[Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second Joe Sandilands book, set, like the first, in 1920’s colonial India, with echoes back to World War 1. It was an improvement on the first, though not without its flaws. First though, how could you resist a book with the title “Ragtime in Simla”? What a very evocative title!
Anyway, as the book begins, Joe is once again getting ready to sail back to Blighty, but first he is offered a month’s holiday in Simla, in the foothills of the Himalayas, where the Raj goes to avoid the summer heat in Delhi and Calcutta. He doesn’t know, till he gets there, that he is on a busman’s holiday; the governor has asked him there to solve a year-old murder. And then, to make matters worse, a second, similar, murder is committed in Joe’s presence as he is on the road in to Simla. Now there are two murders to solve!
The book now explores Simla society and architecture, and does so very well, in my opinion. All that British architecture superimposed on 7,000 foot high mountains; must have been a sight! And the mixtures of society – the 1920’s colonial masters, the leftovers from the East India Company, and not least the locals, beginning to flex their muscles. We meet the local police chief who seems to be able to walk a fine line between keeping business moving and locking up serious crime (so brothels are OK as long as they feed him secrets). He even keeps his own Baker Street Irregulars! At the center of the story is a woman, Alice Conyers, who runs an international trading company, and who was some years before the sole survivor of a dreadful train crash in France. She ably twists all the English men of Simla round her fingers; is she as honest and likeable as she seems?
Joe steps into this melting pot, eating dinner with the governor, falling for the wiles of Alice Conyers, working with Charlie carter, the local policeman, and eventually riding off into the wilds of the North West Frontier with a dubious character, and prime suspect, called Edgar Troop.
The murders are not actually solved until the very end (or at least we do not have the murderer exposed till then), but we have a kind of Wild West posse chase inserted into the book, while exposing a potential Pathan revolt using smuggled British Army rifles. (Wasn’t there a Pathan in the first book too?)
I liked all the period detail including the continual quotes from Rudyard Kipling (and Kenneth Grahame). I think the author did the research well. This even extended to the cover, where a period photo shows someone we must understand to be Joe Sandilands.

[Penny · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second in the Joe Sandilands series - Joe is on leave in Simla before returning to England. On his journey up from the plains his pleasant companion, a Russian opera singer is shot dead by a sniper. This sweeps from Simla to Marseille to Delhi and Afghanstan - very convoluted and unexpected - wont spoil the ending !!

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is really an excellent series. The descriptions of the places are wonderful and I love the intricate plots that are not obvious at all. This one has Joe thinking he's taking a month off in the summer highland area of Simla but instead he is called on to solve two murders that took place a year apart.

[Tia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe I should have given this 3 stars because it was slow moving and easy to figure out most of the "mystery", but the setting and the time frame were so interesting. I think this would make a good movie and Tom Ford could do the costumes!

[Bookish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joe Sandilands has cemented his place on my list of favorite detectives.

[Jean Hontz · Rating 4 out of 5]

The British Raj just after WW1. An assassination. Or two? And why would anyone assassinate an opera singer. Or were they aiming for the detective sitting next to him?

[Annelie Rozeboom · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second book I've read in this series of murder mysteries in India in the 1920's. Light and entertaining.

[Jonathan Palfrey · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the second in a series of novels in which Joe Sandilands, a London policeman, finds himself investigating crimes in India in the 1920s.

Like the first, the book seems well researched although not based on personal experience. The story is quite exciting and the plot rather complex; perhaps too complex.

Again, it’s a story of British India, and this time almost all of the characters are Europeans (British, French, Russian). Nominally, there are a few Indian characters, but they have very little to say.

Two men have been very clearly murdered in Simla (shot with a rifle), and Joe Sandilands is looking for the killer in a difficult social situation with a variety of suspects and motives.

After reading two of these Joe Sandilands novels, I quite enjoyed both, but there are certain aspects that I’m not happy with.

1. The plots seem rather contrived. Yes, these things could happen, but they seem improbable.

2. Although the author has done her research, she seems to me rather ambitious in describing a country she may never have visited in a period before she was born.

3. Perhaps I’m just getting old, but I find Joe’s serial flirtations with women a bit tedious. I start wishing he’d marry one of them and settle down.

4. It bothers me that the characters are so disposable. The first and second books have only two characters in common, the rest are gone with the wind. Well, OK, if you read short stories, characters will come and go even more quickly, but in a linked series of novels I’ve come to expect a bit more continuity.

[Kathryn Guare · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to the audiobook of Ragime in Simla and thought the narrator was fantastic - a good old-fashioned "Masterpiece Theatre" sort of voice. He did strain a bit on some of the accents, but overall I enjoyed his storytelling ability. The book itself is, well, fine. I find it hard to resist any novel set in India because I love it so much, but certainly I've read better. I had one of the major plot twists figured out in the very early chapters and almost stopped listening. I was glad I kept with it because there were some interesting developments that made the story enjoyable even though I knew what was coming, and there were a few suprises as well. I did think the author didn't put her series hero in an altogether favorable light in this one, though. Joe Sandilands was more impressive in the first book. In this one, he seemed too easily besotted and too regularly caught on the back foot. It also lost some steam in the final chapters - meandering exposition of esoteric topics of Indian history and politics just when we are in hot pursuit of the villains sapped a lot of energy from the action. Oddly enough, I find that even though I don't find it a terribly impressive series, it speaks to the power of my fascination with the setting and the British Raj era that I will probably pick up the next book and give it a whirl. But really, I ought to be re-reading Paul Scott's Raj Quartet!

[Virginia Tican · Rating 5 out of 5]

Four years ago, before Joe Sandilands planned sojourn into the cool hills of Simla, there was a Blue Train wreck bound for Marseilles from Paris, there were only three survivors ~ Alice Conyers, the 21~year~old ingénue and heiress to an India based international import~export company, an infant, and a one~eyed Captain also bound for India to rejoin his regiment. For a survivor who had cheated death, karma and good fortune was hers for the taking... and that, was what the woman who came out of that train wreck did... she called herself 'Alice Conyers' and after a spot of convalescence, she went to India to claim her inheritance... married her second cousin as willed by her father and proceeded to turn the company around and helped many people in the process. Like all or most of the Anglo~Indian community, she took her yearly summer vacations in Simla and run her business from there. Since Sandilands was to Simla, he gave a lift on the governor's car to a visiting Russian baritone invited by Simla's Amateur Dramatic Society all expenses paid for a 4~night singing engagement. When both men stopped to contemplate Kipling's Kim's journey... sing the Kashmiri Love Song perfect for the acoustics and Joe's companion's baritone while enjoying their first view of Simla, two shots were fired in succession cutting off Korsovsky's beautiful voice and turning it into a scream. Sandilands was now embroiled into a murder at the time of his so~called R&R or was he again manipulated into as yet another Mystery and a cold case (the shooting and death of Lord Conyers, Alice's MIA and presumed dead brother, on the same spot a year ago) by that puppet~master, Sir George Jardine? Though of course, despite his almost omniscience (owing to his various trained informants) he could not have foreseen the singer's death... still, this was a personal one for Joe as the last person to see Korsovsky alive and had liked and even admired the dead man.

[Bob Deysach]

This is the 2nd Joe Sandilands book that I have read. It was the second in the series as well. Like the first, I really enjoyed it. Although the mystery was involving, with a team of multiple folks weighing in on solving the murders, I was especially drawn to the setting (1920's India), the customs of the uplands India, and their linguistic references. I sat with an iphone googling unfamiliar characterizations of the people and the ornaments that were part of their lives at the time. As occurred in the other book that I read in the series, the plot had a number of twists and turns, but the author brought you along easily with these. The mystery style is not one where some very minor character suddenly pops out with activities and motives for which the reader is not prepared. Rather it provides enough information that you can follow the trails pursued in the investigation so your not left with a surprise that is created by "I wish they would have told me that earlier" which others knew but did not share with the reader.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Ragtime in Simla' by Barbara Cleverly is the second of her four novels featuring Commander Joe Sandilands of the Metropolitan Police on secondment to India in the 1920s. It’s the third I’ve read and fits neatly between 'The Last Kashmiri Rose' and 'The Damascened Blade'. Of the three it’s the one I enjoyed the most.

The book doesn’t start in India; instead, we kick off with a train accident in France several years earlier in 1919. The train is travelling to the French south coast where Englishwoman Alice Conyers plans to catch a boat to India. She’s an orphan whose only brother is missing presumed dead after the First World War and as the last remaining member of the family – except for a second cousin already in India – it’s her responsibility to take over the running of the family business, ICTC or the Imperial and Colonial Trading Corporation. When the train crashes into a ravine, few survivors are registered, but one of them is Alice.

The story fast-forwards to 1922 and Northern India where Joe Sandilands is taking a train journey to Kalka, the hopping off point for the Toy Train to Simla, the summer capital of the Raj. Fortunately, Joe doesn’t need to take the slow and uncomfortable Toy Train because a car is waiting to drive him up the mountains, a car belonging to one of the most important men in Simla – Sir George Jardine.

Perhaps Joe should have been wary of Sir George’s motives in inviting him to stay and what should be a holiday soon turns into business as usual when the man Joe invites to share Sir George’s car, gets shot dead on a bend in the road to Simla. The dead man is Feodor Korsovsky, a famous Russian tenor who was travelling to Simla to perform at the city’s famous Gaiety Theatre. His killing bears remarkable similarities to the assassination of another man, the brother of Alice Conyers – now Alice Conyers-Sharpe. Joe quickly realises that the two killings are linked and we readers are not slow to work out certain things about Alice either. Somehow she seems to be the common link between the two dead men, but all the obvious suspects for the shooting have water-tight alibis.

Working with local policemen, Charlie Carter, Joe Sandilands soon learns that lots of people in Simla are not quite who they seem to be and beneath the apparent respectability of the city, there are plenty of less honourable things going on. There’s a very successful brothel run from the back of a florist’s shop, and a psychic is doing a good trade with bereaved relatives – something that was common between the wars. Simla is full of disreputable men and guns for hire, blackmailers and extortionists and enough gossip to keep the tongues wagging for years. Carter is happy to have a proper crime to deal with, telling Joe that it “makes a nice change from rounding up blasted monkeys”.

Simla – or Shimla as it’s now known – is one of my very favourite Indian cities and it’s a fantastic place to set a novel. It was a city renowned for naughty behaviour, especially between wives who’d been sent to the mountains for the summer and visiting military men. Simla was the centre of British government in India but it was also a racy place where intrigue and subterfuge found fertile ground. 'Ragtime in Simla' was the first of Cleverly’s Joe Sandilands novels to be set in a city I know quite well and I had no problem at all to picture the settings and the architecture of the place since much remains the same nearly a hundred years later. Whether it would resonate quite so well for readers who don’t know the city is unclear, but I’ve enjoyed the other two Cleverly novels which were set in places I didn’t know. The craziness of Shimla, the absurdity of its ‘little England’ architecture and its attempt to recreate the English Home Counties, make it a place that’s long been recognised as an anachronism. As the great architect, Edwin Lutyens once said – and as the policeman, Charlie Carter quotes him in the book – “If one were told that the monkeys had built it, one could only say “What clever monkeys! They must be shot in case they do it again””

I found 'Ragtime in Simla' quite unconventional in its structure. I had guessed Alice’s secret about a quarter of the way through but it was much later before some of the other characters slotted into place. I couldn’t work out how the author could possibly keep that pretence going throughout the book. As it turned out, she didn’t – revealing what had been happening about halfway through the book. Once we know why the two men have been killed, it’s easy to think there can’t be half a book still to go but Cleverly lives up to her name and plots a clever series of twists and turns including an ending which is both frustrating and totally fitting. Undoubtedly for many people with slightly unsavoury backgrounds, Simla – and India in general – offered a place for people to recreate themselves and for those who know the lies to profit from that knowledge.

The way Joe follows the trail of clues in this book is the best of the three I’ve read so far. In the other two books he almost stumbles across the answers whilst in Ragtime in Simla there’s a logic to his sleuthing that’s intriguing to follow and it’s hard not to respect Sandilands and his investigations. I liked the inclusion of Charlie Carter as his side-kick, especially his use of young local boys as an informal network of informers.

It’s not entirely perfect. Cleverly’s the inclusion of a dark mysterious Pathan man – something she’s done in each of her stories – is becoming a bit of a cliche and sometimes there are just too many coincidences with regards to people knowing one another who really couldn’t have been expected to do so. However, despite these couple of annoyances, there’s little not to like about Cleverly’s second Joe Sandilands novel and I recommend it highly.

[Jane Irish Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Joe Sandilands travels up to Simla for a vacation in the spring of 1922, he really doesn't expect to be catapulted headlong into an extremely convoluted mystery, which begins when the Russian opera singer he offers a ride to is shot dead at his side. In Simla he meets a fascinating array of characters, beginning with the local police chief, Charlie Carter, and including a young English heiress who recently took charge of an international company; a French madam; a dressmaker; a jeweler; and a medium; as well as assorted other English and Indians. As Joe tries to determine the cause of the Russian's murder, he learns of a similar death a year before, and begins looking for connections. Those connections lead to a web of blackmail, smuggling, and deception, before he discovers the truth. Extremely evocative both of time and place. Highly recommended.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second in a series featuring Joe Sandilands, a Scotland Yard detective in 1922 who's currently seconded to India. He's on a sort of vacation trip as his last excursion before leaving the country when a prominent Russian Opera singer is shot by a sniper as they drive into Simla. Suddenly he's back in the center of a murder investigation -- and it might not just be the one murder.

The plot is well put together, the characters are generally likeable -- even some of the 'bad guys'. There are red herrings and false leads but, in the end, the resolution is quite satisfying. Very glad I found this series; now just waiting to get to the front of the queue for book 3 at my library.