Are you in the mood for historical fiction that features a very interesting cast of characters faced with solving a series of murders and what appears to be a gem smuggling operation in colonial Singapore? If so, then this is the book for you!
First in a new series featuring Harriet Gordon, a young widow who is staying with her brother, Reverend Julian Edwards, headmaster at St. Thomas School for English Boys. Harriet has a past in England that she was most eager to escape and came to Singapore to help out at the school. She's intelligent and rebellious, a former suffragette, and has some secretarial skills. Indeed, it is those abilities that lead her to finding the body of her new employer, Sir Oswald Newbold, a former famous explorer of Burma and who is credited with finding mines there that produce beautiful rubies and sapphires. She was meant to transcribe his memoirs for publication when he winds up dead in his ransacked home. Enter Inspector Robert Curran of the Straits Settlements Police Force Detective Branch. And thus starts the unraveling of the crime and surrounding mystery. NO SPOILERS.
Set in the tropical environment of 1910 Singapore, the sights, sounds and smell of the settlement come alive. The descriptions make you feel as if you are there suffering the humidity and heat along with the characters as they investigate the case. The writing is excellent and the pace of the story is perfectly matched to the climate and the time period. I enjoyed the development and the backstory of each of the people who inhabit the story and can't wait to learn more about them as I look forward to reading the next installment -- which, darn it, is probably quite some time away. I loved reading about this particular part of the world and am now finding myself doing a little research about Colonial Singapore and Burma and the Dutch East India Company. I loved the glossary and always find those translations helpful in really getting into a book set in a foreign locale.
Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Books for this e-book ARC to read and review. Hurry up, A. M. Stuart as I am eager to visit Harriet again!
This is the first in a new series featuring Harriet Gordon.
Genre -- historical fiction, mystery
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