Dark Road to Darjeeling - Deanna Raybourn

                                                                     

Wanting a nice light-hearted and cosy mystery to read and at the same time experience and imagine the amazing scenery and geographic locations ?

Review : Dark road to Darjeeling - Deanna Raybourn - October 2010

When I first picked up this novel , I couldn't help but continue thinking about Tea as from the title -Dark Road to Darjeeling reminded me of the movie with Owen Wilson where they visit India on a train to discover the different cups and flavours of tea. The second part of it was that the main character her name was Lady Julia Grey and it reminded me of one of y most favourite flavours of tea - The Lady Grey. So of course while I was reading this book it was only fitting that I read it whilst drinking a cuppa of hot tea. So before I opened the novel, I did not exactly what to expect.
From the opening paragraph , the story captures you as you are travelled in your mind to the Himalayas and are presented with imagery of buffalo hide rafts and a raging river and you can imagine the clothing that the characters wore as the book was set in the 1800's , more specifically the year 1889.
We find out that the main character Lady Julia Grey now Brisbane has just remarried a detective husband on whom she worked with a couple of times prior and have spent the last 8 months of their honeymoon -( which considering today's standards, that's an awful long time to spend on a honeymoon). However of course , both husband and wife are getting restless and want to put their minds to work with their detecting skills. In jumps Lady Julia's sister Portia and her brother Plum , I had to double check and make sure I was reading it correctly as Plum sounds to girly to be a boys name yet in Dark road to Darjeeling it was indeed , with a mission for Julia and her new husband Nicholas Brisbane to participate in. Portia's ex-lover Jane had gone off and remarried their distant cousin Freddie Cavendish and now Freddie's dead and Jane is carrying his baby. All would be well and fine but their are rumours that Freddie was murdered and that Jane's unborn child is the only one standing in the way of any inheritance for Freddie's relatives.
We read as Julia and Nicholas are embroiled on a wave of secrets and affairs that are illicit and scandalous and contain information that if fallen into the wrong hands can result in a deadly consequence.
Soon the danger rises and Julia and Nicholas are fighting and holding on for their lives, can Julia and Nicholas solve the murder investigation or will they not live to celebrate their one year wedding anniversary and the police have another double-murder case to solve?.
I look forward to reading more of Deanna Raybourn as her novels are cosy and fast-paced to read and the imagery descriptions were amazing and it felt like you were in the heart of the Himalayas.