I acquired a nice hardcover of The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall and am now a big fan of the series.
Meet Vish Puri, India's Most Private Investigator. A little portly, with his signature Sandown cap and waxed mustache, he's a most distinguished figure in Delhi, is it?
Along with his motley crew with nicknames like Tubelight, Handbrake and FaceCream he solves the baffling mystery and offers matrimonial investigations. Even his Mummy and wife (nicknamed Rumpi) help in the solving. He himself has the nickname Chubby, so it's fair all round.
Quirky private eye, exotic locale and murder (with just a little blood, even when someone gets stabbed in the neck) will automatically get compared to The Number One Ladies' Detective Agency series by Alexander MacCall. Sure, it's a bonus that another great series comes along in that area, but I would say this is more involved, and packed with more twists.
Ajay Kasliwal has come to Vish Puri with a strange case of his missing maid, Mary. She may have gone back to her village, or come to a bad end. With no full name, no idea where the village is, and no one who knew her, it's going to be a tough case. He is asked also to investigate a proposed groom to another man's thirty year old daughter. A man who seems so squeaky clean, there must be something wrong with him. I don't want to give away too much of the story, as confidentiality is my watchword, but Mary was seen being carried from her room, bloody and unconscious. Then Ajay himself is accused of the crime when photographs of a beaten woman surface. There are more twists to come as wily Vish investigates all the angles as HandBrake drives him over Delhi and Jaipur in the Ambassador.
Tarquin Hall is a writer of many other books and lives in Delhi and London. I thought the language captured the place and characters perfectly, and he manages to get in so much it was a treat to read.
The Indian caste system, the booming call centre industry, arranged marriages, police politics, the new Delhi and the old, lack of action and/or corruption in every sector of the city works, and characters from all levels of society. The patched together network of characters that make Delhi run seemed so true to life. Puri has a way of sending his crew into investigations where they are under the radar, simply pretending to be a beggar or maid, which no one sees or pays attention to. He has ways of picking up the most erased trail with ingenuity. He knows them all, is it?
Highly recommended, and I look forward to reading more. The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing is number two, and number three is The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken. I think I know how that ends.
If you like interesting locales, good characters, and mysteries with a twist, you can't do better. A fine detective equal to Mma Ramotswe.
2009 / Hardcover / 312 pages
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