Edith Mary Pargeter (1913-1995), better known as Ellis Peters, wrote a series about Inspector George Felse in Shropshire, England, before she launched the wildly successful Brother Cadfael into the world. Beginning in the early 1950s, the books mostly featured Felse but Felse’s wife Bunty sometimes played the detective and sometimes their son Dominic had that honor.
In Mourning Raga (Macmillan, 1970) Dominic and his girl friend Miss Theodosia Barber are preparing to leave Oxford to spend the Christmas holidays with Dominic’s parents in Comerford when Tossa’s erratic mother, actress Chloe Bliss, telephones with a tiny request. The insignificant favor involves shepherding the 14-year-old daughter of Chloe’s costar Dorette Lester halfway around the world to India, where Dorette’s first husband and Anjli’s father lives. Dorette of course will pay all expenses for both of them. When consulted, Dominic’s parents urge them to go. When will the two financially strapped students ever have such an opportunity again?
In no time they find themselves chaperoning an astonishingly self-possessed teenager on a flight to Delhi. One of Dorette’s film cronies meets them at the airport and gets them situated in a hotel. The next day Dominic and Tossa take Anjli to her father’s house, where they learn Shri Satyavan Kumar had walked out of his house early one day more than a year earlier and has not been seen since, leaving his family’s business affairs in disarray. To complicate matters, someone who knows Anjli has wealthy parents kidnaps her and holds her for ransom, leaving Dominic and Tossa to search for both her and her father.
The highlight of the book is the lovely descriptions of major landmarks in India at the time: Rashtrapati Bhavan, Connaught Place, Purana Quila, the market in Old Delhi, Humayun’s tomb, the Lakshminarayan Temple. Dominic and Tossa have plenty of time to play tourist and they take full advantage of it.
Everything Peters wrote was soundly plotted and this mystery is no different. Along with some wonderful information about India, the double mystery is neatly constructed and the unexpected plot twists are well hidden. A good read.
The artwork for the covers of the various editions is especially well done for this title.