| Major Elliot is
glad that his mission is at an end. All he has to do now is
hand over the list to the Viceroy of India, and he can go
home. Unfortunately before he can do either he is killed in
a railway carriage and the list is stolen. The only person
for the job is Sir Leonard Wallace, the dashing Chief of the
Intelligence Department.
This is a reprint of this forgotten classic, first published
in 1928. Set in India, the title mystery is a bit of a misnomer
as there is not a lot of mystery in who killed the major,
more how it was done and how they can be apprehended. Instead
I would call this an adventure, very much in the Boys Own
tradition featuring the stylish Leonard and his trusty sidekick
Major Brien. They always get their man (or men) and never
let anything get in their way or get them down. Leonard only
has one arm but this does not hold him up much, and there
is a feeling that whatever happens he will bob up smiling.
This might seem naïve in a modern novel but here makes
for relaxing reading, a relic of times past when people expected
a gentler and more uplifting story. To its detriment this
is a rather longer tale than most of its contemporaries and
despite the fact there is always something going on I felt
that it could have stood some editing and been all the better
for it. Another thing to point out is that this is nearly
ninety years ago and peoples’ attitudes towards people
from other countries or the lower orders was very different
to now. For comic relief there is Batty, an amusing manservant
and various encounters with funny natives, rascally natives
or just natives with all that implies. In this world servants
are always comical and natives always foreign, but even if
this grates somewhat reading a novel like this gives the reader
a more accurate glimpse of the period than most historical
novels. This is an entertaining tale for many reasons and
the first in a series of nine, all of which I intend to read.
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