Glen Peters, who was born in Allahabad and spent his early childhood living in a railway colony near Calcutta, has drawn on childhood memories and the stories of his youth to weave a tale that is part murder mystery, part romance, and part commentary on the social and political upheavals that affected post-colonial India during the 1950s and 1960s.When a group of Anglo-Indians go for their annual picnic at the shrine of Our Lady, their enjoyment of the communal feast is spoiled when Joan D’Silva’s ten-year-old son Errol discovers the partially decomposed body of a woman at the edge of the river. The body is identified as being that of Agnes, a young woman who has been married off to a much older man who is alleged to be a homosexual and part-time pimp. Unwilling to see her death dismissed as suicide or misadventure, Agnes’s friends beg the widowed Joan to use her influence as a respected schoolteacher to help investigate what they believe to be a murder. Bravely or foolhardily, Joan agrees.I love the intimate portrayal of the Anglo-Indian community and its absurd internal hierarchy (“the Shroves [...] considered themselves superior Anglo-Indians because they were by far the whitest”), the insights into the workings and corruption of independent India’s struggling new institutions, the recipes, and a title to die for. Joan D’Silva comes across as an engaging fusion of Precious Ramotswe and Anna Leonowens, and the tangential foray into her family history is the stuff of another book in its own right – please, Mr Peters.
