This is latest of King’s Mary Russell mysteries to come out in paperback,
and it’s a worthy addition to the series. More a thriller than a
mystery, it takes Russell and Holmes to India to look for a missing
British agent named Kimball O’Hara. Kipling fans will recognize O’Hara
as the young hero of Kipling’s novel Kim, though by the time
of this story he’s a full-grown man.

The title of the book is a reference to the “Great Game”–a cold war of
espionage, bribery, and dirty tricks between Russia and England that
spanned much of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th. The
nature of this war is simply put: England had India, with its wealth and
warm water ports, and Russia wanted it.

In two ways, the book’s title is a bit of wishful thinking on King’s
part. First, the Great Game was really pretty much over by the time
Russell and Holmes are supposed to have arrived in India, a few years
after WWI; but I suppose we can’t blame her for that. More seriously,
most of the action of the Great Game took place not in India but in the
shadowy regions to the North–in Tibet, in Afghanistan, and in that broad
stretch of Centra Asia known variously as High Tartary, Chinese
Turkestan, and Sinkiang or Xinjiang (take your pick).

Poetic license to the side, I must say that King did her homework. She does an
excellent job of capturing the feel and atmosphere of the latter days of
the Raj, especially as regards the odd sport of pig-sticking (she draws
on a treatise written by Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts, of
all unlikely people); she also draws extensively from
Peter Hopkirk’s excellent history The Great Game,
which I highly recommend. Follow the link for our list of Hopkirk’s
books–interestingly, it’s the #1 Google hit for Peter Hopkirk. Just goes
to show, Hopkirk’s not nearly as well known as he should be.

Bottom-line: I liked it.