Antonia and Hugh travel to India with eccentric Charlotte Depleche, friend of Hugh’s Aunt Nellie, for a vacation of a lifetime.  Mrs. Depleche will pay their travel expenses, and the trio will be the pampered guests of the soi disant king of Goa, Roman Songhera.  It is he who currently owns luxurious Coconut Grove, the house she wishes to purchase.  They haven’t been there long before a desperate-looking man confides some frightening things to Antonia and presses his diary into her hands.  When he is found dead soon after, the sleuthing couple are on the case.

I rather like the way this book is a deliberate tribute to Agatha Christie, complete with book title chapter headings and many other nods to her work in the plot.  Here is another classic era country house mystery modernized for today’s more cynical reader, complete with the inevitable cast of grotesques.  When you populate a novel with characters this grotesque, you risk alienating the reader, something classic era novelists seldom attempted.  Perhaps "modern" is not very apt, for if I had not known that this story was supposed to be contemporary, I would not have assumed it.  In fact, at no time did I feel that I was reading about modern India and would have not guessed later than the 1950s.  This melds a classic style plot with elements that are likely to appeal to anybody keen on modern comedies, such as Little Britain, and in tune with contemporary humor, despite the oddly period ambience.