"It is India 1922, and Britain is in her final flush of Empire. In Panikhat, 50 miles from Calcutta, the wives of officers in the Bengal Greys have been dying violently, one every year and always in March. All the deaths are bizarre and seem to be accidental. The only link between them is the small red roses that mysteriously appear on the women's graves on the anniversary of their deaths." " The first victim perished in a fire, the second was bitten by a cobra, another was thrown off her horse into a ravine, while the fourth drowned in a local river. When the fifth, the pretty young wife of Captain Somersham, is found with her wrists cut, the Governor of Bengal refuses to accept the verdict of suicide and calls on the reluctant help of Joe Sandilands, Scotland Yard detective and war veteran who happens to be on secondment to the Bengal police." "During the course of the investigation it becomes clear to Joe that the deaths are indeed connected and that the series has not yet run its course. But who will be the recipient of the next Kashmiri rose?" "With only days to go before the end of March and the time for the sixth murder, can Joe with his modern policing methods and faith in the new Western science of psychological profiling uncover a murderer whose compulsions seem to be rooted deep within the dark soul of India itself?"--BOOK JACKET.