An intriguing beginning quickly degenerates into a "then we talked to this man, and then this guy, and this other woman, and then her brother" with little to no actual detecting and a laughable ending. An editor should have gripped the author by the shoulder and firmly told him to write the novel about the durbar and stop trying to fool everyone with this mystery nonsense. Anyway, super repetitive and wastes a potentially interesting setting - a pass for me.

Arjun Raj Gaind entertains us with the second Maharaja mystery, Death at the Durbar. Maharaja Sikander
Singh is dragooned by the British authorities to solve the murder of a dancing girl on the grounds where the royal Durbar will be held to welcome King George V to the throne. The Maharaja is India's Sherlock Holmes; can all his talents solve the sordid crime that may embroil English and Indian high society?

This book is a mix of mystery and historical fiction is really fascinating.
I really appreciated the care for the historical details and the description of the characters.
It's well written, it's got an interesting plot even if sometimes a bit slow.
Recomended.
Many thanks to Poisoned Pen Press and Netgalley

I was captivated by the fact that this was a historical mystery set in the waning days of the British Colonial era in India and the detective is a maharajah.

Death at the Durbar is the second book in the series and I didn’t realize until after I read this one which worked just fine as a standalone or out of order.

Sikander Singh is the maharajah of the fictitious Indian kingdom of Rajpore. His is one of the less powerful and smaller, but nonetheless he is expected by the Brits to be at their latest Durbar in honor of George V who is the first British monarch to actually visit India. Sikander is not impressed with the hoopla and is bored until he is brought to the Viceroy and practically ordered to look into the death of a dancing girl right in the royal enclosure at the Durbar in Delhi.

I found the strong mix of historical background and setting blended with the mystery was a heady combination. I admit that all the details about each Indian maharajah and their history, general history up to and including the British era could be considered ponder-some to many readers, but because I love history and was lacking when it came to Indian history that I ate it all up with eagerness.

Sikander was an amazing character. He can get autocratic and cranky, but he is also personable and understanding. He is not afraid to say and do what he must though he has the rep of being a hot head and one who speaks his mind. But, he’s also one who takes the time to think. There are moments in the story where other characters challenge him and he gives their words due consideration- will he support the Nationalist movement or British Colonial rule. The time is there when he can no longer stay out of the argument.

His situation is fascinating to me all through this book. I don’t know if it was authentic, but it didn’t ring false to me. This man is a wealthy, educated, traveled King of a minor kingdom and yet, when near anyone British, he is treated like a second class citizen or beneath them. Among his own people he’s king, but among Brit’s he just one of the natives. It was a stunning realization.

The author has an Indian protagonist so this book/series is a frank look at British Colonialism from one who was not a fan. I didn’t feel it went overboard as Sikander is portrayed as being a moderate in word and action though he would prefer the British went away and left India to its own devices. The time period is 1911 so Imperialism and Colonialism are actually on their last wheeze.

The setting was Delhi and the grounds used for the Durbar. It was lavish and I enjoyed the vivid descriptions that took me right there. The diversity of peoples and classes, the opulence of the Maharajahs, the entertainments of the period from balls to wrestling matches to moving pictures was all captured and made the story three dimensional.

The mystery is a little complex. I actually guessed somewhere in the middle of it all as people were being eliminated as viable suspects. It was the motive that I couldn’t fathom. There is a lot of interviewing going on and it was mostly a process of whittling down the suspect list which turned out to be a long one.

I enjoyed Sikander and some of the side characters. I enjoyed getting immersed in historical India so now I want to go back for the first book and press forward as the series continues. This had a feel more of historical fiction, but the mystery element is the catalyst so I think this would appeal to both genre’s lovers and particularly those who enjoy the combo of the two.

I rec’d this book through Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

A murder mystery set in 1911 Delhi. It's the sequel to A Very Pukka Murder , but you could easily read this without having read that one. Our main character is Sikander Singh, the maharaja of a small state in northwest India. He's a fairly typical hero of the mystery genre: rich, privileged, intelligent, and oh so very bored with life. Thus he turns to solving mysteries. In this case he's been summoned to Delhi for the British Empire's Durbar: an enormous celebration crowned by the arrival of King George V, the only time one of the so-called 'Emperors of India' actually bothered to visit the subcontinent. Sikander – along with every other person of significance in British or native India – has been required to attend. The plot heats up when a young woman is found dead in the King's private quarters, and Sikander is given only two days to get justice for her; the king himself hasn't actually arrived yet, and the powers that be want the matter either closed or hushed up before he does.

The dead woman was a nautch girl (literally 'dancing girl', but the cultural role is much closer to the geisha of Japan than anything else. They traditionally were extremely respected artisans of dance, singing, and poetry, and didn't necessarily do sex work at all, but the arrival of the British tended to blur the lines between the different categories of working women and downgrade all of them), who spent her last day alive entertaining an entire crowd of maharajas – all of whom, of course, are now suspects. The rest of the book falls into a fairly repetitive pattern: Sikander visits a maharaja, interviews him, recaps the history of his (or her, in a few cases) particular state, and eliminates him as a suspect, until he's narrowed down the possibilities to only one. I found this part of the book fairly entertaining, though I probably have a much higher tolerance for long historical infodumps than average. Most of the suspects are real historical figures as well, which was an unexpected twist. I knew a few of them (not personally, of course!) and seeing them turn up in a pulp novel was amusing.

Unfortunately I didn't like the eventual conclusion, particularly that Sikander and the other characters had an inexplicable amount of understanding for the murderer, once revealed. A woman is dead! Don't act all sympathetic to her killer!

The writing itself is fine though not great. The POV, which is mostly tied to Sikander, occasionally drifts, and I caught a few contradictions and editing mistakes here and there. But it reads quickly and easily, and there's certainly worse ways to spend your time.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2311983431

In his two novels, A Very Pukka Murder and Death at the Durbar, (part of a projected trilogy) well known Indian graphic novelist Arjun Raj Gaind introduces readers to an area of the world and to a time period with which most will be unfamiliar. India in the early twentieth century was a study in stark contrasts. It was a huge land ruled by Britain, yet in the Subcontinent, sixty-five percent of the population had no idea they were ruled by foreigners from a small island half a world away.

India was also a land of great wealth, yet with huge disparity between rich and poor. So much of India’s riches were tied up in the inadequate and politically disconnected hands of the Indian princes (when not siphoned off by the British) of whom there were so many. The princely states ran the gamut in size from huge swaths of territory to little more than the proverbial postage stamp. Princely wealth varied equally dramatically. Compared, however, to the most impoverished Untouchable (the term used prior to the post-colonial Indian constitution when it became Dalit), the rajas, maharajas, nizams, and nawabs might as well have been avatars of the gods, which many were, in fact, considered to be.

It appeared that the sun never set on the British empire, yet It was already in decline. It was buffeted by the winds of social and political change in Britain. The People’s Budget of 1909 attempted to tax heavily the vast wealth of Britain’s upper classes (dukes cost more than dreadnoughts). In turn, it generated the Parliament Act of 1911, which reduced the political power of the House of Lords. The naval arms race with Germany, a race Britain believed she could not afford to lose, caused significant hemorrhaging of funds and forced the British to make their first alliance with a non-European power, the Japanese in 1902. In three short years, to which the author alludes, World War I breaks out, the costs of which undermine the Empire in significant financial, political, and social ways. The repercussions are widely felt in both Britain and India.

In many ways, Arjun Raj Gaind’s novels are personal snapshots of a world that very soon will be dead. Burial will come in the wake of World War II though the ghosts of empire haunt us still.

The novels are also a personal response to a lack of Indian historical mystery sleuths. Until recently, historical mysteries have been neglected, but no more. (Arjun Raj Gaind, “A Very Pukka Murder: Indian Historical Crime Fiction Has Come of Age, These Sleuths Prove, www.firstpost.com, Nov. 13, 2016; accessed 7 March 2018). He gives a good list of other historical mysteries with which an interested reader may follow up.

When A Very Pukka Murder opens, it is New Year’s Day,1909, in the small, princely state of Rajpore. The British Resident, Major William Russell does not answer his valet’s knock. The silence worries his valet. Russell is a strait-laced man of rigid habits and decorum, not one to lie abed. When the valet can neither rouse Russell nor enter the room, bedroom door has to be broken down. The Resident is found dead, clearly murdered.

Although this death should be a strictly British affair, Maharaja Sikander Singh hears of the singular murder in an apparently locked-from-the-inside room. He leaps into action to investigate, lest he go off his head with boredom, rather like Sherlock Holmes. The Maharaja has been acculturated to appreciate all things French by his late mother, who loved French detective fiction. Her son takes it one step further to studying French detective and forensic methods. There is nothing he loves more than a good murder to which he can put and hone his detecting skills.

He arrives at the Resident’s bungalow, having driven himself in his Rolls-Royce à la Lord Peter Wimsey. Almost immediately, Singh upstages Superintendent Jardine, a red-faced John Bull who wants nothing more than to arrest the first convenient Indian. (Jardine is more devoted to his racism than Lestrade is to the obvious.) Singh discovers the Resident was poisoned by strychnine in the sherry. When Magistrate Lowry suggests the Resident’s death should be cursorily investigated, if at all, the Maharaja takes that as all the encouragement he needs. He seeks to discover all of the Resident’s secrets, which are legion and stereotypically Victorian in their sleaziness. He believes they will lead to the killer. When the Maharaja saves the Resident’s housekeeper from poisoning, it serves as a further spur to overcome all the obstacles and prejudice the British can throw at him, including an investigator coming out from Simla. He discovers that none of the British in Rajpore is as pukka as reputation suggests, but only the presswallah Miller, a Kipling-esque character is unhypocritical, even unapologetic, about it.

Rajpore (not to be confused with Rajpur) falls under British indirect rule. The British made the actual political and policy decisions while leaving the Indian rulers the outward forms of rule. Maharaja Sikander Singh possesses little direct authority, only over his Indian subjects. He exists with the parameters set down by the British, lest he be set aside—a real threat, as will be seen in Death at the Durbar. More explicit explanation of indirect rule would have allowed readers to understand why the post of Resident was so powerful and why Britain’s habit of sending its second-and third-rate sons to India raised social and political tensions. Rajpore may be a backwater, but readers need to know why it and its Maharaja suffer from the dregs of Empire.

In Death at the Durbar, the British are both more and less in evidence. The Durbar of 1911 gathered all the Indian princes together, as if it were an emperor’s court, to receive and recognize George V and his wife Mary as emperor and empress of India. (They were the only British monarchs to go to India tho’ their son when Prince of Wales went out to India on his grand tour of the empire.) Maharaja Sikander Singh has no desire to be at this gaudy, expensive, useless piece of imperial theater. He reciprocates the dislike and disdain both the British and his fellow princes feel for him. As result, he is kept outside the official encampment—until his presence is demanded to deal with the apparent suicide of a nautch girl in the quarters set aside for the king-emperor. When the Maharaja points out it was murder, not suicide, the viceroy himself commands Singh to discover the murderer before the king-emperor arrives. Not only does he not have much time, he must succeed under the watchful eyes of Captain Campbell of the Coldstream Guards. In methodical, if dizzying, fashion, Sikander Singh interviews the mightiest, wealthiest, craziest, and most ruthless of the maharajas, nizams, and nawabs, plus one maharani, before he realizes that the murderer is much closer to home than he suspected.

Both of these traditional mysteries start out well, bolstered by their unusual setting and protagonist. Furthermore, they begin well in the conventions of Golden Age mystery. They also use a great deal of Indian and Anglo-Indian language—pukka, presswallah, Angrezi, sahibs--that the reader has to get from context. Gaind does not define themj. For me, it gave richness to the narrative, but it will turn some readers off. Maps and glossaries would also have aided the storytelling, especially for the geographically challenged like me.

The storytelling, however, goes awry because both mysteries lose momentum. So many people and things are in motion that it becomes an overwhelming muddle for the reader. Furthermore, the endings prove to be anti-climactic tho’ that is more true for Death at the Durbar. Fundamentally, there are too many characters shallowly and inconsistently portrayed, including the protagonist, and sheer, bloody-minded overwriting.

These defects possibly derive from Arjun Raj Gaind’s experience as a graphic novelist. The graphic novel is an odd hybrid. It is flat and two-dimensional, like text itself, yet it can be as lush in its imagery as movies or television. The illustrator of a graphic novel picks up much of the description of persons and setting, much the way the camera does in film. An attentive reader is able to pick up the contextual clues—posture, expression, body language—to character from the images. The hazards of overwriting become apparent when all of these nonverbal cues have to be written out, especially for an abundance of characters, who, because there are so many, get reduced to ciphers or caricatures. Captain Campbell appears not to have a brain in his head and may only be good for beating up British vermin. The Indian princes all appear to be mad, bad, and dangerous to know. Fewer characters of greater depth, subtlety, and individuality would have driven more suspenseful plots.

The overwriting also leads to errors of structure or language. When dealing with Major Russell’s death, when did the Maharaja arrive? How long is he there? Morning, noon, or afternoon? It becomes problematic when trying to determine when Russell died. Furthermore, there is some question whether the sherry was an oloroso or a manzanilla. Similes and metaphors overreach or fall flat or both—“spineless as an invertebrate” is quite the clunker. Is it venial or venal? The former applies to serious sin that does not quite reach mortal while the latter applies to corruption. Magistrate Lowry’s sins are not venial, but mortal while his public behavior is quite venal. Furthermore, “sassenach” is an insulting Celtic term—found in Irish, Scots, and Welsh—for an Englishman. To apply it to them, as if they were the same and interchangeable with the English, is a grave insult. Whilst in Anglo-Indian, Angrezi (meaning English) is a pejorative term for all the British, it does not follow that British is interchangeable with English. And last,‘Honi soit qui mal y pense”, the motto of the Order of the Garter, is medieval French, not Latin. Did a copyeditor not catch any of these errors, which so destroy the credibility of an author?

These kinds of errors will simply infuriate careful readers, which most serious readers of historical mystery are. They take readers out of the flow of the narrative. After a certain point, impatient readers will walk away. That is a pity, for these novels had the potential to make more readers appreciate the rich, deeply varied cultural and historical traditions of the Subcontinent. To say I was disappointed puts it mildly.

Death at the Durbar is the second in a trilogy (the third book hasn’t been published) of historical fiction novels by Arjun Raj Gaind, one of India’s best-known comic book writers and also creator and author of several graphic novels. It takes place in 1911 in India, and features Sikander Singh, the Maharaja of Rajpore (a fictitious kingdom), an amateur detective by interest and choice, and in this novel strong-armed into investigating a crime on behalf of the British Raj. I didn’t read the first in the series, although I now will, and I’m looking forward to the third, as well. There were no references to events or characters in the first book.

I highly recommend Death at the Durbar to those readers who read historical mysteries set in countries other than America and England because they are curious about other cultures, other times and justice systems other than the ones with which they are most familiar. On the other hand, a reader who reads primarily for the pleasure of solving whodunits may not find Durbar as engaging a read as I did.

The 1911 Durbar was the third Imperial Durbar organized by the British in Delhi. It was the only one attended by the then-reigning monarch, King George V. All three Durbars were mass assemblies of India-based British officialdom, Indian princes, higher-level military officials and the public. The first Durbar, held in 1877, celebrated the proclamation of Queen Victoria as Empress of India, marking the transfer of control of much of India from the British East India Company to the Crown. The second Durbar, held in 1903, celebrated the succession of Edward VII and Alexandra of Denmark as Emperor and Empress of India. A plain was transformed into an elaborate tent city. Two weeks of events, formal dances, polo matches, souvenir guide books, fireworks, exhibitions, temporary hospitals and post offices, and other components of a display of regal power and grandeur.

The third Durbar was organized by the then-Viceroy, Lord Charles Hardinge (target of multiple unsuccessful assassination attempts by Indian nationalists). The Durbar began on December 7th and ended on December 16, 1911. 40,000 tents, to house approximately 300,000 inhabitants, were erected. The Durbar was attended by almost all, if not all, of the Indian Maharajas and Nawabs, along with their respective entourages of servants, aides and friends. The world’s newspapers sent their best journalists and photographers to cover the event. Motion pictures of the event were created by many British and Indian photographers. It's worth searching Google images for photos of the event. They are stunning.

With that background, Death at the Durbar starts with a dead body, discovered 72 hours or so before King George is anticipated to arrive for his Durbar. Someone has murdered 19-year old Zahra, a Kashmiri nautch girl, e.g., a professional dancer, who had been delivered by the Maharaja of Kapurthala as a present to the King. One hundred years and a different culture later, and all of the connotations of “professional dancer” remain the same. The only thing more scandalous than a live dancer keeping company with the King is a dead dancer in the King’s camp. Hence, Hardinge and his colleagues are uninterested in calling the police and spreading news of Zahra’s death and location, but have a certain amount of interest in doing the right thing in terms of pursuing justice and locking up a murderer, so long as that justice can be achieved in short order – prior to the King’s arrival in Delhi. Accordingly, they arrange for amateur, but discreet, Sikander to be engaged off-the-record to solve the crime. Quickly. If he doesn't solve the crime in a timely manner, Zahra's death will be covered up and the investigation closed. After all, she's only a nautch girl to the powers that be.

Of course, forensic evidence is non-existent. Potential murderers are many. The motive also remains a mystery. Sikander’s method of investigation primarily involves traveling from place to place throughout the tent camp and nearby hotels, meeting with and interrogating potential witnesses, few of which have any interest in meeting with or being interrogated by him, because he is of lower social status – in several instances – substantially lower status. He is saddled with an annoying British barnacle, named Campbell. The best moments are when Sikander is explaining the social dynamics, politics, bigotry and personal history between the various Maharajahs, enjoying playing his piano late at night, as well as those when Campbell disappears for a few dozen pages.

An historical mystery novel comprised of a single person traveling from place to place, having conversations, frequently being insulted, and hearing entirely inconsistent stories, would seem to be an exercise in frustration and boredom. I assure you, it isn’t. Gaind does a great job of pacing and creating a sense of urgency around solving the crime. As the Author’s Note (an excellent and informative one) provides, other than Zahra and Sikander, all of the other characters and incidents are real, and Gaind indicates where and to what extent he has taken creative license. And the characters, including Sikander, are intriguing. Gaind provides a tremendous amount of detail about the history, the culture, the kingdoms and princelings, the politics, but does so without ever creating the appearance of a brain dump, or impeding the progress of the plot. The background information he includes is fully integrated into the mystery and not bolted on.
In the interest of full disclosure, there are a couple of contemporary American phrases that turn up (“snuck out” is one) from time to time that characters in 1911 India would never have used. Sikander is moody and inconsistent, as if the author is still learning his own main character. Plot holes exist. Sometimes the sheer volume of witnesses is confusing and the relationships between them difficult to recall. Sikander determines certain suspects couldn’t be guilty on what appear to be the flimsiest of bases. I raised an eyebrow at the identification of the culprit and explanation for the motive. Nonetheless, Gaind’s writing and his main character are highly engaging and overcome these deficits. The majority of characters come across as authentic, and Gaind’s description of the British Raj and the hierarchy of the princes and their kingdoms is detailed and fascinating. And after the big reveal? The novel closes with a letter from Sikander to his significant other that captured Sikander’s thoughtful, melancholy soul, finding his place in a world run on one level by the Brits, and on another by peers who have disdain for his darker-than-theirs skin, a world that is only a few years away from the Great War. Sometimes, as with Death at the Durbar, a great ending reminds you of everything you enjoyed about a good book, and allows you to forget some of its shortcomings.

As a special bonus, Gaind captured my heart by describing the make, model and paint color of every automobile used in the novel. (Readers who don’t care wouldn’t notice.)

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me a copy of the book to review.

This is a historical murder mystery set during the time of the Raj when the British were in control of India.

The King of England, George V, who is also Emperor of India, is visiting India. He is the first British king to do so. Huge celebrations have been scheduled to mark the visit and all the Indian maharajas have come to Delhi to pay homage to the king. The Durbar is a lavish tent city which has been constructed for them. Shortly before the king's arrival the body of a native dancer is found hanging near the king's quarters in the Durbar.

Sakinder Singh, the Maharaja of Raypole, is well known among the British ruling class and his peer maharajas for being a curious busybody. He is therefore assigned the task of solving the murder mystery, but has only a couple of days before the arrival of the king to do it. His trusty manservant is there to assist him, but he is saddled with a British army officer to supposedly keep an eye on him.

There is no shortage of suspects. It seems the dancer had many visitors during the days before her death -- someone actually maintained a list of them. As Sakinder goes about interviewing those on the list, even more visitors are discovered and questioned. Several of these visitors are unpleasant or just plain nasty people but Sakinder thinks none of them is the killer. Finally, a chance discovery provides the missing clue to Sakinder.

Sakinder is the star of the show -- he's a unique mixture of tradition and modern man. Similarly, there's an ambivalence about the British rule. The one nationalist character is a power-hungry weasel, while the British characters (except for a gang of young nobles) are cast in a generally favourable light. The story is set in 1911, when British power was at its height and the old order was yet to be swept aside by World War 1. It's a snapshot of the times.

Among the British there is an arrogance towards the Indians. The book portrays the class distinctions prevalent in both Indian and British society. Among the maharajas there is distinction between a thirteen gun maharaja and a seventeen gun one; that's based on the number of guns in the salute they are given at events. There's similar distinctions among the various regiments of the British army: the Coldstream Guards outrank the Black Watch.

This is the second book in what I hope becomes a series.

Recommended.

In 1911 the new British king is about to visit India. It is the first time that a British king and Indian emperor will visit his jewel in the crown. For the occasion a durbar is set up. For me as a European it sounds a bit like the World Expo I once visited: a huge area where every Indian kingdom has a piece of land to erect a pavilion and other tents on where they can present themselves combined with an area for the British.

Just a few days before the monarch will arrive a dead dancing girl is discovered in the Royal Pavilion. A visiting maharaja who likes to do a bit of sleuthing is asked to solve the case before the whole event is ruined by a big scandal. Maharaja Sikander Singh of Rajpore tries to track down all the girl's visitors and interviews them. They are followed by other suspects that are suggested by those people. This results in him speaking to many Indian princes and quite a few Brits.

I discovered while reading that most of the people getting interviewed were real people. Thus the writer describes a scala of interesting historical figures from India's past. For me as a non-Indian and non-Brit that caused me a lot of expeditions into Wikipedia. A Spanish flamenco dancer who married a Raja? Yes it really happened. Battenberg? Mount Batten?

Unlike many books set during the Raj discrimination is not that much of an issue. Maybe because most people the Maharaja encounters are fellow Indians.

The book is a Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot style of mystery with the culprit flushed out in the end and to me it sounds very British. But is is written by an Indian writer who is famous as the writer of graphic novels.

Sometimes the detective part of the story becomes a bit slow and the maharaja's are introduced a bit formulaic (X, a state in the... of India as big as (European country), entitled to a .. gun salute, the royal family originates from), exactly that history lesson makes the book so interesting to read. All the words of that era help to give you the real feel of the period.

I really liked what Sikander says to Captain Campbell who is rumoured the be the bastard of the uncle of the king and despised because of that. The man is humiliated at a certain moment and then Sikander points him to the fact that he is a descendant of a very noble family: his Scottish mother's family that is who were warrior princes when the British king's family were stil sheepherders in Bavaria (eeehm Hanover is in the middle of Germany and Bavaria in the south but....)

Although at first the solitary Indian ruler hates to see himself forced to be accompanied by the smiling optimistic side kick during their job he grows fond of the man.




A 5 out of 5 star!

(I had to look up Dunbar. According to Wikipedia, “ A Dunbar was an Indian imperial style mass assembly organised by the British at Coronation Park, Delhi India, to mark the succession of an Emperor or Empress of India.)

Sikander Singh, the Maharajah of Rajpore, is back in his second mystery set during the British Raj. The year is 1911 and a Dunbar to celebrate the coronation of George V is being held. The king will be in attendance in his position as Emperor of India.

Unfortunately, two days before his arrival, the body of a murdered nautch dancer is discovered hanging from a rafter in the royal quarters, Lord Hardinge, the Viceroy himself, asks Sikander to investigate the crime and find a solution within 36 hours. He will be aided, or maybe dogged, by a captain of the Coldstream Guards Arthur Campbell. Sikander agrees to help because his main joy in life is solving crimes. He also has a more personal reason. He knew the beautiful young dancer because when her mother was murdered twelve year ago Sikander was unsuccessful in identifying the murderer.

The only lead is a list of visitors to the dancer’s quarters the day of her murder. As Sikander interviews each one, he seems to draw a blank. There are plenty of likely candidates; sadistic maharajahs, jealous lovers, spoiled scions of British nobility, individuals trying to save her soul. Yet all have alibis and time is running out. Plus Sikander himself seems to be a target because more than one person has warned him off the investigation.

Even more interesting than the mystery are the descriptions of the pageantry and excesses of the Dunbar. I particularly enjoyed the history of the great Indian families. The author gives the lineage of each suspect and how his family came to hold the power in their state. It may be filler, but it is filler of the best kind, entertaining and informative. Indian society, as in the first book, is juxtapositioned with British society and again the point is made that even a boorish English sergeant considers himself superior to an Oxbridge-educated maharajah merely because he is white. There is class prejudice on all levels.

I look forward to the next book with Maharajah Singh and I hope there are many more.

This is a hard book to review as I really like the setting and the history interwoven in this story. The book really kept me reading to the end, and further, to the author's notes which slotted the background into order. I will seek out some history book on the India - it that way the book was excellent, enough to piquing the readers interest to read on.
Unfortunately the mystery did not evolve as one should and left me rather bored, the ending, when it came was rather an anticlimax as I really did not care much who or why, and the victim never really became real..

This was just great, I really enjoyed it!
Set at the Durbar in Delhi in 1911 (an extravaganza honoring King George and bringing together all of India's maharajas), the historical mystery presents a colorful array of maharajas, many of them real life characters.
The detective is very appealing, a worldly Sikh maharaja with a sly sense of humor (much needed given the outrageous personalities of the many suspects) and a loyal and resourceful servant.
The historical backgrounds of the various maharajas and the setting are fascinating and the mystery of the murdered nautch girl (a kind of geisha/exotic dancer Indian style) is challenging.
I read the book in one day and can't wait for the next in the series!