Heat of the Sun 2 - Hide in Plain Sight

Rating:
Summary: The Not So Happy Valley Set
Review: If you chanced to read the book White Mischief (or watch the movie made from it) then you know what to expect. It is Kenya during the years when it was crawling with British ex-pats and Tyburn (love the name) formerly of Scotland Yard has been exiled there due to a social faux pas. It seems he not so accidentally shot a well connected serial killer in England. (Can't have that, now can we?)

In Kenya though, Tyburn is surrounded by an exaggeration of the worse of British society-- adultry, overuse of makeup (by a male character), casual cruelty and biogtry abound. It becomes not so much a question of who is guilty as who is guilty of this one particular crime.

There is one scene that I just loved when Tyburn and his assistant call on two women who own a failing coffee plantation to ask their help in identifying an abused and terrorized native. Their exquisite good manners contrast sharply with the rather gauche behavior of their clearly out of practice hostesses. Definitely fun to watch.

As for the name Happy Valley, it was the name given to part of the Kenyan Highland settled by white colonialists who for one reason or another preferred to live outside of England. Their reputation for dissolute behavior would probably put the characters in this series set in their milieu to shame.

White Mischief by the way, which is not available in DVD, worse luck, involves the unsolved, true life murder of Lord Errol.