Dark Ruby - Black River

by Robert Mitchell

JAIPUR, INDIA. A RUNAWAY FIELD-GUN CRASHES INTO AN ARCHWAY IN THE AMBER FORT DURING THE LAST YEARS OF QUEEN VICTORIA’S REIGN. The collision reveals a cache of jewels hidden centuries earlier by the Rajput Raja of Amber. Corporal Robertson and three of his comrades quickly spirit a quantity of the precious stones away from their hiding place. A century later the corporal’s great-grandson finds references to the rubies in the corporal’s diaries. He travels to India to search for the sixteen red rubies and an almost black ruby the size of a hen’s egg, and said to be cursed - The Black Heart of the Moghul. But he knew nothing of the Eurasian grandsons of one of those other soldiers, three part-Indians who have long known what was taken and hidden away again by the corporal, but not where. James must forge a fragile alliance with those three, an alliance which can have only one outcome. Another thriller from the prize-winning author of The Crying Stones .

421 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 5, 2017

About the author

Robert Mitchell spent his early years in Melbourne, Australia where he graduated from Melbourne University with degrees in Law and Arts. Moving to Suva, Fiji, in 1969, he spent the next twelve years practising law, with a mid-term break of two years when he and his wife, May, acquired a one-third interest in a marine salvage company. Robert acted as company manager, diver, and assistant salvage master in a number of marine salvages in the South Pacific. The experience he gained during those two years has been used to great advantage in several of his novels. In 1981 he returned to Australia and continued practising law. In 1988 his novel The Lucinda Legacy was a prize-winner in the Australia-wide Bicentennial Novel Competition. In 2000, he and his family moved to Brisbane, where he retired. In 2003, he and May ventured to China, where they taught English to high school and college students for two years. They travelled extensively throughout China during this time, their experiences reflected in his two latest novels. Robert now spends his time writing - for the pleasure it gives to others.