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MAHARAJAH by Richard Cargoe

MAHARAJAH

By

Publisher: World

Though laid in today's India, this pleasantly dreamy fairy tale of a princely family and its palace life is almost as untouched by troubles as were the never-never lives of the Hindu rulers before a man named Ghandhi arose to stir the downtrodden. Beautiful young Princess Indira returns home from gay and free years abroad to find her handsome brother, Prince Halim, as good a friend as ever, though her old-fashioned parents are harder to understand. A Weird and brutal killing in the palace menagerie discloses terrorists who plan to assassinate the ruling family of the province by letting the animals smell clothing worn by the maharajah's family, then turning the beasts loose in the palace grounds. The three young fanatics, a girl and two boys, are found and the attack circumvented though not before the pity of Indira and Halim is aroused. The arrival of a beautiful, blonde English archeologist to study ancestral caves finally breaks down the last of Halim's reserve and restraints, prepares him to be a liberal ruler when his father dins. Pleasant as a meringue puff, and about as significant.