Day 32
Barbara Cleverly writes detective stories. Fantastic Fiction describes her as an Historical Mystery writer. It is true most of her books are set, with conviction, in the 20s and 30s, but her characters are our contemporaries. There is no distance of time between them and us. Their world becomes our world. She has written about archaeologist Letitia Talbot and Inspector Redfyre, but her main protagonist is Commander Joe Sandilands. Joe is a World War 1 hero and has been recruited to Scotland Yard as part of a new modernising initiative. At the beginning of The Last Kashmiri Rose he is on his way home to England after a six month secondment to India. He has had enough of India, the heat, the smells, the poverty and the social formalities of Calcutta which couldn’t quite classify his status. The night before he is due to leave he is summoned by Jardine, the Acting Governor of Bengal. Up country there have been a number of deaths of British officers’ wives, at first seemi