Ellis Peters
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3
Average rating: 4.5 of 5
Dominic and Tossa's first journey to India 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.
Strictly speaking, this isn't an Inspector Felse mystery, but a Dominic Felse mystery. Ideally, read all the preceding Inspector Felse mysteries, in order, as they follow Dominic's childhood onward - but only to enjoy the character development properly. At a minimum, at least read _The Piper on the Mountain_, which recounts Dominic's first meeting with Tossa Barber and her mother, before _Mourning Raga_.Tossa's movie-star mother Chloe has a genius for disrupting her daughter's plans, so Dominic fears the worst when Chloe calls the university just before Christmas vacation, with an offer that sounds too good to be true: accept an all-expense-paid trip to India, to escort 14-year-old Anjli Kumar, the daughter of Chloe's co-star Dorette Lester, to stay with her father while her mother is filming in England. (Anjli's mother is nominally the custodial parent, but even she's mostly an absentee.) Happily, Ms. Pargeter (a.k.a. Ellis Peters), doesn't make either leading lady behave according to stereotype; each is charming in private as well as in public, and they seem to get on well together; their influence to bring others into their orbit is as inevitable as a planet's gravity. :)
Dorette arranged for an old friend to look out for Anjli and her companions, since the friend is directing a film - a dramatized life of Buddha - on location. A potted mini-biography of Siddhartha's early life, before he became Buddha, is provided as the film is described; one noteworthy celebrity they meet is the composer working on the film. He's adapted a morning raga - something sung when guests depart in the morning - as a theme to be played for Siddhartha's bride and their young son; the adaptation is catchy.
Unfortunately, Dorette only wrote to her ex, rather than phoning him or waiting for a reply. Kumar has been out of touch for months, and his mother - Anjli's grandmother - is dying. The only relative left functioning is a cousin who acts as trustee for the estate - and Dominic and Tossa aren't too keen to leave Anjli, Kumar's heir, in his care.
But the matter is taken abruptly out of their hands when Anjli is kidnapped and held for ransom after her grandmother's death. Although published after _Black is the Colour of My True-Love's Heart_, the events of this book take place earlier: their first meeting with the Swami, mentioned in that book, occurs herein. As a friend of Kumar's, he takes a hand in working for Anjli's safe return. And Dominic is very uneasy, since the morning of her disappearance, he heard someone in the street outside the hotel singing a song from the soundtrack of a film that's still in production.
Editorial Review:
As a favour to his girlfriend Tossa's beautiful but erratic filmstar mother, Dominic Felse agrees to escort a teenage heiress to her father in India. But travelling with the spoilt, precocious Anjili is no sinecure -- and the task of delivering her back to her family proves less than easy. Dominic and Tossa find themselves embroiled in a mystery that swiftly and shockingly becomes a murder investigation. For behind the colourful, smiling mask of India that the tourist sees is another country -- remote, mysterious -- and often shatteringly brutal...
