Dark Ruby - Black River

by Robert Mitchell

Corporal Robertson served in the British Army in India during the last years of Queen Victoria’s reign. A runaway field-gun which had crashed into a pillar at the Amber Fort in Jaipur revealed a cache of jewels hidden hundreds of years previously by Man Singh, the Rajput Raja of Amber. The corporal and three of his comrades quickly removed a quantity of rubies from the pillar and hid them at Sarnath near Varanasi. They may still be there, over a century later. Corporal Robertson’s great-grandson, James, a retired school teacher, finds details of the rubies and their hiding place in his great-grandfather’s diaries. He and his sister travel to India hoping to find the rubies. They are the only living descendants of Corporal Robertson. There are no descendants of two of the corporal’s comrades. But the fourth had deserted the army not long after the rubies were hidden, in order to be with his Indian mistress and their half-caste son. The three Indian grandsons of that son now claim the rubies as their own. They know that the rubies exist, but not where they are hidden. They must force a fragile alliance with James and his sister. But that alliance does not last, and blood must flow before it is known who will keep the sixteen rubies, including the dark ruby, a ruby the size of the egg of a hen, a ruby said to have been cursed.

419 pages, Paperback

Published December 13, 2017

About the author

Robert Mitchell spent his early years in Melbourne, Australia where he graduated from Melbourne University with degrees in Law and Arts. Moving to Suva, Fiji, in 1969, he spent the next twelve years practising law, with a mid-term break of two years when he and his wife, May, acquired a one-third interest in a marine salvage company. Robert acted as company manager, diver, and assistant salvage master in a number of marine salvages in the South Pacific. The experience he gained during those two years has been used to great advantage in several of his novels. In 1981 he returned to Australia and continued practising law. In 1988 his novel The Lucinda Legacy was a prize-winner in the Australia-wide Bicentennial Novel Competition. In 2000, he and his family moved to Brisbane, where he retired. In 2003, he and May ventured to China, where they taught English to high school and college students for two years. They travelled extensively throughout China during this time, their experiences reflected in his two latest novels. Robert now spends his time writing - for the pleasure it gives to others.