Title: Murder on the Sacred River
Author: Tasha Alexander
Genre: Mystery, historical fiction
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
1908: Lady Emily and her husband Colin Hargreaves, along with an eccentric group of English tourists, are vacationing in India at Ahilya Fort, the old home to the Maharaja’s family, when a man is found shot along the Narmada River. Emily and Colin jump into action, but their suspect list is large, including a wonderful spinster and her not-so-wonderful companion; a local doctor; a widow who lives nearby; an English explorer; and an Englishman who now runs a tea plantation near Darjeeling.
1740: Fifteen-year-old Ahilyabai has been married to the son of Malharrao Holkar, the Lord of the Malwa territory, for seven years. Now the time has finally come to produce an heir. But though Ahilya’s in-laws have shown her nothing but kindness, her notoriously-drunken husband remains a mystery to her, having rarely spoken to Ahilya since their wedding as children. Faced with this tortured and distant man, Ahilya’s sense of loyalty is tested as she attempts to balance fulfilling her duty with forging her own destiny. Her decisions will have ripple effects across time—including Lady Emily’s investigation almost two hundred years later.
Lady Emily’s case takes a dramatic turn when a shocking new person arrives at the fort—and when the killer strikes again shortly afterwards, she and Colin must race to uncover the villain’s identity before it’s too late.
This wasn’t a bad read, it just felt very slow. I’ve read one other Lady Emily novel, and I didn’t have trouble following at all, the story just teetered on the edge of boring for me, both the Lady Emily storyline and the Ahilyabai one, too. I had trouble keeping the Englishwomen straight in my head—actually, all the English characters sort of blurred together for me. This wasn’t a bad read, just not an exciting one.
Tasha Alexander lives in Wyoming. Murder on the Sacred River is her newest novel.
(Galley courtesy of St. Martin’s Press | Minotaur Books in exchange for an honest review.)
