Reading the first in the series after the second; it doesn’t sound ideal but I often find that authors get better as series go on so I don’t think it’s that bad an approach. Here I had an inkling that something was up with one of the characters based on the fact that they hadn’t featured in the second book but that didn’t spoil my enjoyment. The author didn’t make me care very much about the victim here, it was more figuring out the logic of the puzzle of who killed him and why, which is interesting and there’s no reason every fictional murder victim should be a nice guy but it just felt a bit uninvolving at times here. Darren’s reading this at the moment and pointed out that Sam seems to be far too liberal a character for the time and place (1920ish colonial India) but I think that if he wasn’t then he’d be insufferable to a twenty-first century readership so I’m glad he’s a bit anachronistic.