It's a brilliant setup for a detective series; after the Great War, in India, with a detective who is not only English but a Metropolitan Policeman and measurably socially below most of the English officers and civil servants he mixes with. This allows a plausible and slightly modern viewpoint, and also makes the frequent lumps of exposition plausible. Such a character might well have rehearsed to himself, before going to dinner, the peculiar rules of a cavalry mess; and might have had "what everybody knows" laid out for him by people who knew he wasn't anybody.
It's a handy solution, even if it isn't as elegant as sinking the exposition invisibly into the action. There's at least one more novel in the series; presumably he'll need even more exposition if he investigates anyone not English.
ISBN: 0-440-24156-1
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