The year is 1947, and yet the momentous events of that turbulent time register only as distant thunder to Leela, the raja’s 13-year-old granddaughter. Like an older sister of Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird, or Leo in The Go-Between, Leela’s ambivalent age—not quite child, not yet grown-up—makes her an interesting player. Shivani manages almost flawlessly to capture her oscillation between precocious princess and frightened kid in a narrative pacy enough to sustain the momentum of a true whodunit yet rich in descriptive detail about the decadent courtly life of rajas and their ranis: "My mother and nani settled comfortably back among the antimacassars to the soft rustle of peacock feather fans and the clinking bangles on the arms of the vas gharianis as they pressed their feet. Cool rose sherbet and the pleasant sound of the gold nutcracker demolishing betel-nuts lulled me."