Silversmith’s Puzzle: A Mystery by Nev March is Packed with Historical Details
In The Silversmith’s Puzzle, award-winning author Nev March takes Captain Jim Agnihotri and Lady Diana Framji back to India as they investigate a murder amidst colonial Bombay’s complex hierarchy. In 1894 colonial India, Lady Diana’s family has lost their fortune in a global financial slump, but even worse, her brother Adi is accused of murder. Desperate to save him from the gallows, Captain Jim and Lady Diana rush back to Bombay.
However, the traditional Parsi community finds Jim and Diana’s marriage taboo and shuns them. The dying words of Adi’s business partner, a silversmith, are perplexing. As Captain Jim peels back the curtains on this man’s life he finds a trail of unpaid bills, broken promises, lies and secrets. Why was the silversmith so frantic for gold, and where is it? What awful truth does it represent?
Set in lush, late-Victorian India, Captain Jim and Diana struggle with the complexities of caste, tradition, and loyalty. Their success and their own lives may depend on Diana, who sacrificed her inheritance for love. Someone within their circle has the key to this puzzle. Can she find a way to reconnect with the tight community that threw them aside?
Terrific praise
“Packed with historic detail and local color. A leisurely, decorous period mystery, gracefully told.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Oh, what splendid novels Nev March writes! Rich, rowdy, and romantic, old-fashioned yet fresh, peacock-bright with color but brainy, too: these are books for the adventurer and the historian alike…Thrilling mystery, fascinating
history.” — New York Times best-selling author A. J. Finn
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-250- 34803-6
On Sale: May 13, 2025
$29.00 US
Nev March Bio
Born in Mumbai, India, Nev March is a writer of mystery and historical fiction. Writing short stories, poems and novels since the age of eleven, Nev has previously published stories in children’s magazines and won Writers Digest
and Maryland Writers Association contests. With four completed manuscripts, she took a hiatus from writing fiction in order to raise her family while working full time. As a member of the small Zoroastrian community, she created a community oral history project to record the stories of Zoroastrian immigrants to North America. After a twenty year career as a data scientist, Nev returned to writing full time in 2015 to write the first draft of MURDER IN OLD BOMBAY.
Her manuscript won the 2019 Mystery Writers of America/Minotaur Books First Novel Award, which launched her writing career. An immigrant, Nev has an affinity for diverse characters finding their way in challenging environments. Her books combine the excitement of mystery and adventure novels with emotional journeys of
personal adversity.
Nev has written and edited for the FEZANA Journal, and is a member of the Hunterdon County Library’s Write Group. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and two sons.