Books-in-Brief – Books-in-Brief – Books-in-Brief

On the 21st of January 1896, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, popularly known to readers worldwide as Mark Twain, landed in Bombay accompanied by his wife and daughter for a week-long stay in this ‘Urbs Prima in Indis’ and this becomes the stage on which Anuradha Kumar scripts her fantastic mystery. In the best traditions of this genre, the story begins with the report of a locked room murder, and what follows is a mélange of people and events that confound and fascinate in equal measure. Henry Barton, the American Consul in Bombay oversees the visit, and he must play the role of host and later detective, when Mark Twain mysteriously disappears from his room at the Watson Hotel. As if a murder and a suspected kidnapping are not exciting enough, we have a magician on stilts, a disappearing servant, missing jewels, a sewing kit, a red and gold diary, a mysterious violinist, a thriving opium trade, a ranting puritan and political unrest; to add grist to this mill of misadventures.