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Published Jun 2009
320 pages
Genre: Mysteries
Publication Information
Meet Vish Puri, India's most private investigator. Portly, persistent, and unmistakably Punjabi, he cuts a determined swath through modern India's swindlers, cheats, and murderers.
In hot and dusty Delhi, where call centers and malls are changing the ancient fabric of Indian life, Puri's main work comes from screening prospective marriage partners, a job once the preserve of aunties and family priests.
But when an honest public litigator is accused of murdering his maidservant, it takes all of Puri's resources to investigate. How will he trace the fate of the girl, known only as Mary, in a population of more than one billion? Who is taking potshots at him and his prize chili plants? And why is his widowed "Mummy-ji" attempting to play sleuth when everyone knows mummies are not detectives?
With his team of undercover operatives - Tubelight, Flush, and Facecream - Puri ingeniously combines modern techniques with principles of detection established in India more than two thousand years ago - long before "that Johnny-come-lately" Sherlock Holmes donned his deerstalker.
The search for Mary takes him to the desert oasis of Jaipur and the remote mines of Jharkhand. From Puri's well-heeled Gymkhana Club to the slums where the servant classes live, his adventures reveal modern India in all its seething complexity.
"While the 51-year-old married detective...has a certain quirky charm, the resolution of the mystery of Mary's murder is less than satisfying." - Publisher Weekly
"Starred Review. What Cara Black does for Paris, Hall achieves for India in this lively and quick-paced series debut." - Kirkus Reviews
"Starred Review. An entertaining start (complete with expletives-included glossary) to a promising series." - Library Journal
This information about The Case of the Missing Servant was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Tarquin Hall is a British journalist and writer based in London and Delhi. In addition to his Vish Puri mysteries he has also written three works of non-fiction, Mercenaries, Missionaries & Misfits, To the Elephant Graveyard and Salaam Brick Lane.
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