Death in Kashmir: A Mystery (Death in..., 1)

Orphaned Sarah Parrish has travelled to India at the behest of her aunt to live for while, this is on the cusp of the transfer of India from British Rule in 1948.

Sarah goes up to Kashmir skiing with a party of other English and while there meets Janet who turns out to be a secret agent with a message. Janet is being stalked and wants to get out of Kashmir, someone will be sent to get her out but she doesn't know if she will be able to get out before she is killed, so she passes on a message to Sarah.

After Janet mysteriously dies Sarah does not tell anyone what she knows, but several months later she receives a letter from Janet's lawyers with a lease to a boat in Kashmir provided and a note from Janet asking her to stay there. Sarah knows whatever message she wants to pass on is on that boat and so she returns with friends to Kashmir but doesn't tell anyone what purpose it is for.

Meantime Sarah has been interested in the gorgeous but mysterious Charles Mallory. He is not interested in any women having a gorgeous fiancee at home, it seems anyway. However he does end up kissing her, and then turning up in Kashmir as well. It turns out that Charles has a secret he doesn't want known, and Sarah must trust someone to help her find the message Janet left, and also to protect her from the other possible enemies including Helen Warrender and Mir.

Lots of possibilities of problems and some creepy moments of people standing in shadowed doorways or intruding on black nights. Nice and suspenseful

Loved the characters, and in this I really enjoyed the period speak and drama. The heroine, Sarah, was feisty and in keeping with her time, and there was a nice turn in romance.

This is one of my most loved books. It's true that I have read deeper books with more substance, even in the mystery genre. But M.M. Kaye wrote a top notch mystery for her time. She truly transports the reader to Kashmir, I could feel the house boat rocking as I was turning the pages. The ending came as a complete surprise and was absolutely stunning. Yes, it is a light novel, but hey, isn't it entertainment we want from mysteries?

A wonderful journey into Kashmir of 100 years ago and a murder mystery thrown in. The mystery story itself is OK, not anything like an Agatha Christie novel that MM Kaye is often compared to but the writing is superb, descriptive and catching the reader to want to visit the very place where the story unfolds. I have been reminded of The Far Pavilions while reading this novel and ordered the other MM Kaye mystery books - this is writing at its best and rarely seen these days.

[[ASIN:0312263104 Death in Kashmir: A Mystery]] M.M.Kaye; a lovely story set immediately post WWII. Spies and intrigue beset a young woman on a skiing holiday in Kashmir. Exceptional descriptions of the scenery and culture of the region offset a bit of a hohum James-Bondish spy story. Kaye obviously loves the region (she was born and grew up in British controlled India) and it shows in her writing. Very enjoyable...

Beautifully written and evocative of their exotic settings, M. M. Kaye's mysteries are simply the best.

I might have enjoyed this more as an Audio book. Hearing it read with a British accent may have given it more interest or maybe I just wasn't in the mood for a light mystery. I "listened" to "Death in Kenya", another Kaye novel, and found it much more entertaining.

In writing "Death in Kashmir", M.M. Kaye drew upon her own store of memories of vacations in the lovely vale of Kashmir before the end of the British Raj, when the vale was considered to be one of the loveliest places on earth, and the Princely State of Kashmir, under British protection, was a vacation playground for British bureaucrats, Muslim emirs, and Hindu potentates alike. The mountains offered renowned skiing, the lakes surrounding Srinagar, the capital city, were ideal for house-boating, the markets overflowed with exotic local crafts, the British clubs offered dinner dances which were open to all.

Overlaid on this vision of paradise is a rather creaky rendition of the traditional British country house mystery where someone is murdered in a locked room and each of the guests is a likely suspect. Sarah Parrish is up in the mountains of Kashmir with a ski club when a blizzard cuts off access from outside their lodge, and someone dies “accidentally”. Sarah shares suspicions of foul play with another marooned skier, who promptly expires “accidentally” also. Sarah flees to the peace of a houseboat near Srinigar, but all of the skiing contingent soon follows her there, together with one new player, the handsome but mysteriously aloof Captain Mallory. When Sarah receives a letter from one of the dead women, she is caught in a web of international intrigue. Which of the occupants of the ski hut will be revealed as the murderous enemy agent?

Read this book as a valentine to a bygone era, before Kashmir became a bloodied bone of contention between India, Pakistan, and China. As such, the creaky plot fits in petty well.

One of her best mysteries and very romantic and exotic.

This book is a great mystery and is written with much detail. I enjoyed reading it. It scared me badly.

This is a wonderfully written intelligent book, set in India around the end of the Brtish Empire. After reading this, I'm looking forward to reading more MMKaye.