Mourning Raga [Hardcover]

Ellis Peters (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1970

Dominic Felse agrees to help her daughter Tossa's friend Anjli visit her father in India. What begins as a simple task soon turns into a fiasco as the spoilt, precocious Anjli attracts trouble in the form of a murder investigation.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ellis Peters gained worldwide praise and recognition for her crime fiction and for her meticulous recreations of monastic life in the twelfth century in the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: William Morrow; First American edition (March 1970)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688021204
• ISBN-13: 978-0688021207
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,299,275 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dominic and Tossa's first journey to India, March 17, 2002

By 

Michele L. Worley (Kingdom of the Mouse, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mourning Raga (A Dominic Felse Whodunnit) (Paperback)

Strictly speaking, this isn't an Inspector Felse mystery, but a Dominic Felse mystery. Ideally, read all the preceding Inspector Felse mysteries, in order, as they follow Dominic's childhood onward - but only to enjoy the character development properly. At a minimum, at least read _The Piper on the Mountain_, which recounts Dominic's first meeting with Tossa Barber and her mother, before _Mourning Raga_.

Tossa's movie-star mother Chloe has a genius for disrupting her daughter's plans, so Dominic fears the worst when Chloe calls the university just before Christmas vacation, with an offer that sounds too good to be true: accept an all-expense-paid trip to India, to escort 14-year-old Anjli Kumar, the daughter of Chloe's co-star Dorette Lester, to stay with her father while her mother is filming in England. (Anjli's mother is nominally the custodial parent, but even she's mostly an absentee.) Happily, Ms. Pargeter (a.k.a. Ellis Peters), doesn't make either leading lady behave according to stereotype; each is charming in private as well as in public, and they seem to get on well together; their influence to bring others into their orbit is as inevitable as a planet's gravity. :)

Dorette arranged for an old friend to look out for Anjli and her companions, since the friend is directing a film - a dramatized life of Buddha - on location. A potted mini-biography of Siddhartha's early life, before he became Buddha, is provided as the film is described; one noteworthy celebrity they meet is the composer working on the film. He's adapted a morning raga - something sung when guests depart in the morning - as a theme to be played for Siddhartha's bride and their young son; the adaptation is catchy.

Unfortunately, Dorette only wrote to her ex, rather than phoning him or waiting for a reply. Kumar has been out of touch for months, and his mother - Anjli's grandmother - is dying. The only relative left functioning is a cousin who acts as trustee for the estate - and Dominic and Tossa aren't too keen to leave Anjli, Kumar's heir, in his care.

But the matter is taken abruptly out of their hands when Anjli is kidnapped and held for ransom after her grandmother's death. Although published after _Black is the Colour of My True-Love's Heart_, the events of this book take place earlier: their first meeting with the Swami, mentioned in that book, occurs herein. As a friend of Kumar's, he takes a hand in working for Anjli's safe return. And Dominic is very uneasy, since the morning of her disappearance, he heard someone in the street outside the hotel singing a song from the soundtrack of a film that's still in production.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Modern-day India is memorably described., September 7, 2005

By 

S. Schwartz "romonko" (alberta canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mourning Raga (A Dominic Felse Whodunnit) (Paperback)

Ms. Peters does a wonderful job of describing modern-day India in this book. It's easy to tell that she often visited there and loved it. India is teaming with life and with colours. In this book we have Dominic and his girlfriend Tossa acting as chaperones to deliver a young girl to her Indian father. Once there they find themselves in a whole bunch of trouble. Their job of delivering their young charge becomes very complicated when she goes missing. Tossa and Dominic are then racing against time in a strange country in order to try to get her back. Ms. Peters' characters in this book are wonderfully drawn, and the story is a wonderful journey to a wonderful country.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a good edition to the George Felse series, October 26, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Mourning Raga (Hardcover)

Dominic Felse, the son of the famous policeman George Felse, met his girlfriend Tossa Barber in the earlier book in this series, Piper on the Mountain. Now, as a favor to Tossa's mother, Dominic and Tossa have agreed to escort a young girl named Angli out to meet her father in India. However, when they arrive they find that Angli's father has been missing for over a year, and soon Angli is kidnapped. The result is a good, fast-paced mystery, with some very interesting local color on India.