Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: Folly du Jour by Barbara Cleverly

Folly du Jour by Barbara Cleverly is the 7^th title in the 1920s mystery series featuring Commander Joe Sandilands of Scotland Yard. Sandilands is flying to an Interpol conference in Paris when he’s diverted to assist an English citizen arrested for murder in The City of Lights. He is startled to learn that the accused is Sir George Jardine, his mentor in India diplomacy and spycraft, who was present at a Paris music hall when the victim was killed in a spectacularly bloody fashion.

The hard-nosed and difficult French inspector in charge believes he has found the assassin but Sandilands knows better and manages to remove Jardine from a French prison while he searches for the culprit, enlisting the help of a French detective he worked with on an earlier case.

Despite his lack of knowledge of the terrain, Sandilands manages to carry out a standard English law enforcement investigation, which includes a review of the victim’s unsavory history and the many people who wished him ill. Name-dropping abounds: Sandilands manages to encounter Charles Lindbergh, whose Atlantic crossing ended successfully on the same day as the murder, and Josephine Baker, who was performing at the music hall that night. In addition, Georges Simenon, the creator of Inspector Maigret, makes an appearance as a journalist.

Both the victim and the lady who serves as Jardine’s alibi have ties to Jardine’s long stay in India, which helps invoke the first four books in the series. These first titles are immersed in the India of the British Raj during the early 1920s and have a stronger sense of place than the later entries. The author stated in one of them that she referenced the papers of a relative, who was governor of the Northwest Province of India, now Pakistan, providing authenticity and local color that the following books lack.

Not as vibrant and exotic as the initial adventures of Sandilands but still a solid detective story with an out-of-left-field resolution to the plot. Booklist starred review.

·         Hardcover: 288 pages

·         Publisher: Soho Constable; English Language edition (August 1, 2008)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 156947513X

·         ISBN-13: 978-1569475133

Aubrey Hamilton ©2018 

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.