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To his colleagues, co-workers and friends (did he have any real friends?), Hugo Frenchman was the consummate British civil servant. A bit dull, perhaps; a bit fussily fastidious, a bit of a stickler for protocol. But in the right position, even dullness can be a virtue. And as Her Majesty's "Head of Chancery" in India, Frenchman was the ideal man to make up the numbers at a diplomatic dinner party... More

To his colleagues, co-workers and friends (did he have any real friends?), Hugo Frenchman was the consummate British civil servant. A bit dull, perhaps; a bit fussily fastidious, a bit of a stickler for protocol. But in the right position, even dullness can be a virtue. And as Her Majesty's "Head of Chancery" in India, Frenchman was the ideal man to make up the numbers at a diplomatic dinner party, keep the junior officers in line, and represent solid British values in Delhi. Indeed, Frenchman,s life was such a model of propriety that its two areas of untidiness stood out like sore thumbs. One, certainly, was his death: Diplomats like Frenchman do not tend to be found in a bloody heap, furiously and fatally stabbed with an antique ritual dagger. Nor do they tend to amass priceless collections of Tibetan artifacts and bank accounts that are bulging at the seams. Had Frenchman 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 Frenchman was straightforward. And he realizes as well that he s going to need a very, very big rug.

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