A Very Private Enterprise

Hugo Frencham was the consummate British civil servant. A bit dull, perhaps, a bit fussily fastidious. And as Her Majesty’s “Head of Chancery” in India, Frencham was the ideal man to represent solid British values in Delhi. Yet his death was anything but tidy: diplomats do not tend to be found in bloody heaps, furiously stabbed with antique ritual daggers. Nor do they tend to amass priceless collections of Tibetan artifacts or bulging bank accounts. Had Frencham been smuggling? Spying? Clearly he had been up to something untoward, and George Sinclair is sent off to Delhi to find out what it was and—ideally—sweep it all under an ornate Indian rug. Back in London, this seemed like a relatively straightforward task. But once in India, Sinclair soon realizes that nothing about the dull, eternally correct Hugo Frencham was straightforward. And he realizes as well that he’s going to need a very big rug. A Very Private Enterprise was Elizabeth Ironside's first mystery; it received a CWA Creasey award for Best First Crime Novel of the year.