Death under the Deodars

Book excerpt: ‘Colonel Bakshi burst in, looking very agitated. “Something’s happened to Mrs Basu,” he said. “She’s lying outside in a fl ower bed. I think she’s dead . . .”’ In this marvellous collection of thrilling new stories set in the Mussoorie of a bygone era, Ruskin Bond recounts the deliciously sinister cases of a murdered priest, an adulterous couple, a man who is born evil, and a body in the box-bed, not to forget the strange happenings involving arsenic in the post, strychnine in the cognac, a mysterious black dog, and the Daryaganj strangler. As the elderly Miss Ripley-Bean, her Tibetan terrier, Fluff, the hotel pianist, Mr Lobo, and the owner of the Royal, Nandu, mull over these curious incidents, the reader will be enthralled and delighted—until the very end.