The Palace Tiger

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....

Barbara Cleverly is the author of five novels of historical suspense, including The Damascened Blade, winner of the CWA Historical Dagger Award, The Last Kashmiri Rose, Ragtime in Simla, The Palace Tiger, and The Bee’s Kiss. She lives in Cambridge, England where she is now at work on the second Laetitia Talbot mystery, which Delta will publish in 2008.