3 Things about Death in Kashmir:(1) beautiful opening chapter! wonderfully suspenseful and eerie. a moonlit place in a foreign land full of empty spaces. briskly evocative of an off-kilter period, a time and place that is fading away and being changed into something new.
(2) that time and place is 1947 Kashmir, as the British raj is preparing to get up & go. for a lightweight mystery, it is impressive that Kaye does justice to such a murkily complex period of time. the reason i picked this one up is because i have an unexplainable affinity to that particular time in India (also because i love reading about MURDER).
(3) the rest of the novel is, as mentioned, quite light - typical mysterious motivations, typical long middle (chock-full of very enjoyable details of the time & place), typical ramping up of the action in the last third, typical romance with a typically mysterious young gent who is full of potential derring-do on our intrepid heroine's behalf... or potential menace! but sometimes "typical" is just what the doctor ordered. this is a thin but very pleasant and cozy little mystery.
