Strange Images of Death: A Joe Sandilands Murder Mystery

Praise for the Joe Sandilands series:

“In her spellbinding debut mystery, The Last Kashmiri Rose, Barbara Cleverly evokes both the enchantments and the dangers of India during the convulsive later days of the Raj.”—The New York Times

“Cleverly maintains the high standards set by earlier Sandilands tales, blending a sophisticated whodunit with full-blooded characters and a revealing look at her chosen time and place.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

Provence, 1926. Scotland Yard detective Joe Sandilands is on leave, driving his way south to the Riviera while dropping off his niece at an ancient chateau.

A troubling crime committed just before their arrival leaves a clear message that more violence is to come. To allay panic, Joe agrees to stay on and root out the guilty person. But, despite Joe’s vigilance, a child goes missing and an artist’s beautiful young model is murdered in circumstances eerily recreating a six hundred-year-old crime of passion.

Helped and hindered by a rising star of the French Police Judiciaire, Joe must delve into a horror story from the castle’s past before he can tear the mask from the diseased soul responsible for these contemporary crimes.

Barbara Cleverly lives in the middle of Cambridge surrounded by ancient buildings and bookshops. She was born and educated in the north of England at a Yorkshire grammar school and then at Durham University. Her debut, The Last Kashmiri Rose, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2002.

"Set in 1926, Cleverly's excellent eighth mystery to feature British Cmdr. Joe Sandilands (after 2008's Folly du Jour) takes Sandilands to France, where Dorcas Joliffe, a precocious teenager who regards the Scotland Yarder as an honorary uncle, enlists his aid in finding her long-lost mother. Another inquiry, as the pair travel through Provence, soon takes precedence. When someone smashes a stone effigy to pieces in a medieval chapel, the steward in charge of the chapel ask Sandilands to help find the person responsible. This act of vandalism proves to be merely the prelude to the murder of Estelle Smeeth, an attractive young Englishwoman stabbed to death in the same chapel. Cleverly keeps the plot complex, but less convoluted than in Folly du Jour, returning to the form that made the first six in the series models of their kind. Golden age fans who appreciate deceptive storytelling enhanced by the kind of in-depth characterization lacking in Agatha Christie will be more than satisfied." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Strange Images of Death"] cleverly maintains the high standards set by earlier Sandilands tales, blending a sophisticated whodunit with full-blooded characters and a revealing look at her chosen time and place.--"Publishers Weekly," starred review.

Provence, 1926. Scotland Yard detective Joe Sandilands is on leave, driving his way south to the Riviera while dropping off his niece at an ancient chateau.

A troubling crime committed just before their arrival leaves a clear message that more violence is to come. To allay panic, Joe agrees to stay on and root out the guilty person. But, despite Joe’s vigilance, a child goes missing and an artist’s beautiful young model is murdered in circumstances eerily recreating a six hundred-year-old crime of passion.

Helped and hindered by a rising star of the French Police Judiciaire, Joe must delve into a horror story from the castle’s past before he can tear the mask from the diseased soul responsible for these contemporary crimes.