The Hamilton Case

MURDER, A MOONLESS NIGHT, THE JUNGLE CROWDING CLOSE.477. The place is Ceylon, the time the 1930s. Set amid tea plantations and jungle, decay, corruption and the backwash of empire, this gripping nuanced novel has a pitch-perfect ear for the comedy and a sharp eye for the tragedy of a world at the end of its tether. Sam Obeysekere - 'obey' by name and by nature - is a Ceylonese lawyer, a perfect product of empire. His family once had wealth and influence but starts to crack open as political change comes to the island, and Sam's glamorous father dies leaving gambling debts. But the Obeysekeres' troubles reach back into the past, when a baby was found dead in his cot. And at the heart of the novel is the Hamilton Case, a murder scandal that shakes the upper echelons of island society. Sam's involvement in it makes his name but sets his life on course for disappointment. Full of irresistible characters - Sam himself, a triumph of ambivalence, resentment and pathos; his beautiful, unstable sister; his flamboyant mother Maud - this is a sinuous, constantly surprising tale. It paints a haunting picture of the end of an era, suffused with 'the unbearable thought that everything might have been different. A flamboyant beauty who once partied with the Prince of Wales and who now, in her seventh decade, has gone native in a Ceylonese jungle. A proud, Oxford-educated lawyer who unwittingly seals his own professional fate when he dares to solve the sensational Hamilton murder case that has rocked the upper echelons of local society. A young woman who retreats from her family and the world after her infant brother is found suffocated in his crib. These are among the linked lives compellingly portrayed in a novel everywhere hailed for its dazzling grace and savage wit - a spellbinding tale of family and duty, of legacy and identity, a novel that brilliantly probes the ultimate mystery of what makes us who we are. Very tidy condition almost as new.