This is a series of mystery novels set in the 1920s by Barbara Cleverly
The Last Kashmiri Rose introduces Joe Sandilands, a World War I vet who is now a detective with Scotland Yard. He is due to leave India in the morning, and get back to his beloved England. His plans are dashed when his superior informs him that an Englishwoman has been found dead in her bathtub, with slit wrists. Her friend Nancy Drummond is convinced that it was murder, not suicide, and Sandilands agrees. As he investigates, he realizes that this is the latest in a string of murdered Englishwomen, one every March since 1910.
Ragtime in Simla: The Governor of Bengal invites Sandilands to Simla, to spend a month in his guest villa. On his way, Sandilands meets a Russian opera singer, who is shot and killed beside him as they drive to Simla. Once there, Sandilands learns that another man was shot in the same place the previous year, and there may be more victims forthcoming.
The Damascened Blade: Joe goes to visit an old army chum at the fort he commands on the Afghan border. An American heiress bullies her way into a visit, and Sir George charges Sandilands with her safety. Several other dignitaries are also coming, all wanting to see the real frontier, and each with an agenda. One of them is a well-known doctor on her way to a position with the Amir of Afghanistan. When his representative is found dead on the stairs, Sandilands must get to the bottom of the matter before the entire border goes up in flames.
The Palace Tiger: Sandilands is sent with the disreputable Edgar Troop to the princedom of Ranipur, where Troop has old ties with the Maharaja. The old Maharaja is dying of cancer, and the matter of the succession has become urgent. The heir apparent recently died in a suspicious misadventure, and the maharaja's second son has married an American woman, making their children ineligible to inherit. As Sandilands arrives, the prince dies in an apparent air accident, and the maharaja's only surviving son, the child of a concubine, insists that he will be next.
This series contains examples of these tropes:
Series as a whole:
- Amateur Sleuth: Joe is often assisted by an able and technically educated woman, limited to this role by the fact that police work isn't really an available career for women in the 1920s.
- Karmic Death / Karma Houdini: The murderers inevitably end up dead or else make a getaway or otherwise escape prosecution or punishment.
- The Profiler: Joe Sandilands relies heavily on constructing a model of the criminal's psyche to work out who it is.
- The Teaser: The first chapter of every book takes place separated in time and/or space from the rest of the story, and introduces an important character and/or plot point for the main story.
The Last Kashmiri Rose:
- Amateur Sleuth: Nancy Drummond reads up on forensic techniques, takes photos of the crime scene when her friend is killed, and ably assists Sandilands throughout the case.
- Armoured Closet Gay: Colonel Prentice is a cavalry officer, a hard man, and the picture of an English gentleman. No one suspects even faintly that he might swing the other way.
- Good Adultery, Bad Adultery: Joe is definitely the protagonist, and sympathetic. He has extremely mixed feelings about his affair with Nancy. These are exacerbated when he realizes that it was a setup; he'd been chosen for his resemblance to Mr. Drummond, allowing Nancy to have children who looked like her husband despite a war wound that left him infertile.
- Murder by Cremation: This is how Dorothy Prentice died, and also howColonel Prentice planned to kill his last victim, drugging her and setting the house on fire.
- Murder-Suicide: This is how Colonel Prentice plans to end his killings.
- Never Suicide: The first death Sandilands hears of is made to look like a suicide.
- Offing the Offspring: Colonel Prentice's last victim is his daughter.
- Serial Killer: Sandilands rapidly realizes that he's dealing with one of these.
- Strange Cop in a Strange Land: Joe has only been in India for six months, and is due to go home soon. He finds many aspects of local culture quite strange.
Ragtime in Simla:
- Bluffing the Murderer: Sandilands brings in someone from the villain's past, whom they believed to be dead, to burst into a seance dressed as an accusing ghost.
- Real After All: Sandilands visits a medium as part of his investigation, assuming that she's a scam artist. She claims she meant it as one initially, but found that she really can speak to the dead. He's unconvinced, until during the seance she speaks to him in the voice of a dead comrade from WWI.
The Damascened Blade:
- Interquel: The Damascened Blade takes place between chapters 27 and 28 of Ragtime in Simla. There is a time skip between chapters during which Sandilands goes from Simla to a steamship bound for France, and mentions in passing that he was on vacation for another month, covered in The Damascened Blade, and then sent to deal with 'an incident in the northwest, along with Edgar Troop', covered in The Palace Tiger.
The Palace Tiger:
- Interquel: This book also takes place between chapters 27 and 28 of Ragtime in Simla,
- Great White Hunter: Colin O'Connor is a former professional tiger hunter turned conservationist; he says he now prefers to hunt with a camera rather than a gun. Edgar Troop plays it straight, though: he makes a considerable part of his living running big game hunts and considers hunting to be reason enough by itself.
