Books about Sandilands from Amazon.com

Praise for Barbara Cleverly:

"Spectacular and dashing, spellbinding "-The New York Times Book Review

"Smashing . . . marvelously evoked."-Chicago Tribune

"A historical mystery that has just about everything "-Denver Post

"Cleverly maintains the high standards set by earlier Sandilands tales, blending a sophisticated whodunit with full-blooded characters and a revealing look at her chosen time and place."-Publishers Weekly (starred)

"Atmospheric . . . intricately plotted."-Kirkus Reviews

"Evocative narrative, sensitive characterizations, artful dialogue, and masterly plottings."-Library Journal

"Cleverly combines a colorful historical setting with a complex plot and well-developed characters."-Booklist

"Delightfully surprising."-Mystery News

This seventh book in the Joe Sandilands murder mystery series is set at the Folies-Bergère, Paris, in December 1926. Joe hurries to the assistance of an old friend who has been arrested for murder there. In a cell at the Quai des Orfèvres, he meets with Sir George Jardine, still in the evening clothes stained with the blood of the dead man. The only other witness, a blonde who was sharing the victim's box, has vanished. Joe receives assistance from an entirely unexpected quarter-Francine, a young usherette, clawing her way into the world of the Paris Music Hall. She becomes Joe's guide through this treacherous place, where Joe is sure the killer is lurking.

Barbara Cleverly was born in northern England, graduated from Durham University, and now lives in Cambridge. Her debut, The Last Kashmiri Rose, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2002.

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In her award-winning mysteries–from The Last Kashmiri Rose to The Damascened Blade–Barbara Cleverly paints a dazzling portrait of the British Raj, infusing it with intrigue, enchantment, and menace. And in her detective hero Joe Sandilands, war veteran and Scotland Yard policeman, Cleverly gives us a gallant guide to this paradise lost. Having seen humankind at its worst, now, in a lush royal kingdom, Sandilands will see it at its most dangerously complex....

In northern India, Ranipur is renowned for its trove of priceless gems, its exquisite palace, and its medieval mores in matters involving men and women. But Ranipur’s prince is dying, and Joe has been sent to be Her Majesty’s witness to a charged battle of succession. With two heirs dead and another running for his life, Joe suspects that a murderer is hiding among the palace’s visitors and residents, from English opportunists to scorned wives and a dangerous seductress. Now, as a gilded, remote bastion teeters on the brink of chaos and a man-eating tiger prowls the nearby countryside, Joe must turn hunter–of a human, an animal, and the hunger that drives them both.....
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Simla 1922. While the rest of India bakes in the hot season, up in the pine-scented coolness of the Himalayan hills the English have recreated a vision of home. Here are half-timbered houses, amateur theatricals, gymkhanas and a glittering vice-regal court for the socialites. The summer capital of the British Raj is fizzing with the energy of the jazz age. It is toward this country that detective Joe Sandilands is heading as the guest of the governor of Bengal. But when Joe's travelling companion, a Russian opera singer, is shot dead at his side on the road to Simla, he finds himself plunged into a murder investigation. As Joe begins to unravel the mystery which has its roots in the aftermath of the First World War, he discovers that behind the sparkling facade of Simla lies a trail of murder, vice and blackmail.


From the Paperback edition..
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London. 1926. One war is over, another is beginning, and murder is sealed with a kiss....

At midnight she was ravishing: a tall redhead wearing emeralds and a low-cut dress. An hour later, in her room at the Ritz, she was dead, the jewels torn from her bludgeoned body. Thus begins Barbara Cleverly’s ingenious novel, another masterpiece of suspense from the CWA Golden Dagger Award—winning author.

With the help of a former comrade-at-arms and a society girl turned constable, Scotland Yard Inspector Joe Sandilands enters into the private world of Dame Beatrice Jagow-Joliffe–a hive of state secrets and sexual extravagance.

But as The Dame’s affairs are exposed, the case takes a sudden, strange turn. Because what Sandilands is about to discover are deceptions that go far beyond salacious scandal to betrayals that strike at the heart of a nation . . . and the ruthless heart of a killer..
Price: $6.09 [Notify me when price goes down.]

1926. The war-ravaged vineyards of France. In this masterpiece of suspense from CWA Historical Dagger Award–winner Barbara Cleverly, a nameless soldier plunges Scotland Yard inspector Joe Sandilands into a shifting world of deception, rage, and murder.…

A well-earned vacation takes a sharp detour when Sandilands is called to France, where a shell-shocked patient—a tragic casualty of war—is in the throes of a violent nightmare. Trying to determine the mystery man’s identity proves a difficult, internationally delicate task: several families are claiming the unknown soldier as their own.

But it is at a famed château, where the wine flows and disturbing secrets abound, that Sandilands meets a woman who takes his investigation in a chillingly different direction. Strong-willed and alluring Aline Houdart’s husband has been missing and presumed dead for nearly ten years. Her true motives are as elusive as the truth about a long-ago night…when a horrific crime was committed and lives changed forever. Now Sandilands, an ex-soldier himself, a man who has seen his share of bloodshed and sorrow, is waging his own battle for justice. It is a fight for his fallen comrades that will unmask a killer. Or bury the truth forever….
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Joe Sandilands has been despatched to France to stay as the guest of a glamorous French war-widow on her Champagne estate. The widow is determined that Joe should support her claim that a mysterious shell-shocked soldier, suffering from amnesia and a loss of speech is her husband. The problem is that four other claimants have identified him differently, and his doctor suspects he is an English soldier. Joe decides to investigate the four claimants and picks his way through a tangle of lies, deceit, and manipulation, discovering that each of the four has an undeclared motive for claiming the unknown soldier. He uncovers a cleverly concealed murder committed during the war years and during this pursuit he finds out who the soldier really is. The discovery presents him with an even greater dilemma, he must not only to solve a killing in the past, but avert a tragedy in the future.Praise for Barbara Cleverly's previous novels: 'A delight' - "The Observer" for "Folly du Jour". 'Colourful historical detail with a modern rendition of the classic mystery novel' - "The Observer". 'Cleverly's (novel) evokes and in some ways surpasses, the work of Agatha Christie' - "Publishers Weekly". 'A well-plotted novel...The atmosphere of the dying days of the Raj is colourfully captured' - Susanna Yager, "Sunday Telegraph". 'The historical background is as fascinating as the murder. Stiff upperlip soldiers, American heiresses, handsome Afghan tribesmen - they are all here in spades. A great blood and guts blockbuster' - "Guardian". 'Solidly plotted throughout, with lots of energy and all period accoutrements up to scratch and true to the Raj' - "Literary Review"..
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Conjuring up the last golden days of the Raj and the turbulent early ones of Indian rule, this suspenseful and atmospheric first novel—runner-up in the Crime Writer Association’s Debut Dagger competition—draws the governor of Bengal, local police authorities, and visiting Scotland Yard detective Joe Sandilands into an increasingly baffling and bizarre case of serial murder. It is 1922, in Panikhat. In March of each of the past five years the wife of an officer in the Bengal Greys has met with a violent and terrifying death. One died in a fire, another by a cobra bite, the third from a fall, and the fourth victim drowned. Of course, they all might have been accidents, while the death of Captain Somersham’s pretty young wife, who was found with her wrists cut, could be ruled a suicide. One link between the five cases, however, points to foul, disturbing play. On the anniversary of the deaths small red roses mysteriously appear on the women’s graves. With only a few days to go before the end of March and with faith in the new Western science of psychological profiling, Joe Sandilands finds himself running a race against time and a serial killer who alone knows the recipient of the next Kashmiri rose. "The atmosphere of the dying days of the Raj is colorfully captured."—Sunday Telegraph "Introduces an intelligent author and an interesting investigator."—Morning Star .
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It's 1926, and Joe Sandilands is back from Ranipur, enjoying the frantic pleasures of Jazz Age London. Yet there is a darkness behind all the postwar gaiety. A woman has been discovered bludgeoned to death in her suite at the Ritz. A broken window and missing emerald necklace suggest that it is a burglary gone wrong. But the corpse is that of a much respected member of the British establishment, Dame Beatrice Joliffe, one of the founders of the Wrens; so Scotland Yard sends Joe to conduct a swift enquiry. Then, Joliffe's companion, an ex-chorus girl, falls from Waterloo Bridge at twilight, and two of the Dame's clique of eager young Wrens commit suicide.

Although these deaths make Joe suspect that Beatrice has been killed by someone close to her, he suddenly finds that the case is closed, and he is asked by his superiors to surrender his files. Against the background of a looming general strike and pressure from unseen governmental presence, Joe struggles on, picking his way through the political panic and rebelling against authority.

The fifth title in the Golden Dagger Award-winning series, The Bee's Kiss builds to a shattering solution..
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