The Strangler Vine is the first novel by Miranda Carter, biographer of Anthony Blunt and author of The Three Emperors, an account of Queen Victoria's grandsons and how their relationships contributed to World War I.
For a first novel The Strangler Vine is an astonishing achievement. Carter says she knew nothing about India in the 19th Century before starting the project. By the end, clearly, she knew more or less everything. The level of detail is just right. We never get any sense of contrivance, avoidance or - just as fatal in a novel - showing off.
The story inevitably has hints of Kipling and John Buchan. The blurbs cite Sherlock Holmes but it is much better than that (Conan Doyle is a martyr to contrivance and bodge). The year is 1837 and young William Avery, a neophyte and impoverished officer in the private army of the East India Company, is paired up with lapsed agent Jem Blake to go in search of Xavier Mountstuart, the Byrom of India. Avery is a huge fan of Mountstuart, whose work inspired him to seek his fortune in India. Blake was Mountstuart's protege back in the days before he trading spying for literature.
The quest is multi-layered. Nothing is as it first seems as Blake and Avery probe to the black heart of corruption in the Company. The revelations keep on coming, alongside rip-roaring adventure and a sensitive portrait of India clinging to its last vestiges of independence.
I can't wait to lay hands on the second Blake and Avery, The Infidel Strain.
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