Portly, persistent and unmistakably Punjabi, Vish Puri cuts a determined swathe through modern India’s cheats, swindlers 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. » Read more: Meet India’s ‘Most Private Investigator’ in his first mystery, ‘The Case of the Missing Servant’. ‘A seething slice of the subcontinent’ – THE TIMES

The latest review is from THE GUARDIAN:

‘In the parks of affluent south Delhi, college students exchange surreptitious kisses among 14th-century tombs. Servants who toil away for £60 a month walk their masters’ gingham-clad dachshunds. Businessmen and expatriates jog along the same trails from which labourers pilfer firewood for cooking and bathing. Distinct eras, value systems and social classes converge in this sprawling city.

Contemporary Delhi used to be ignored by authors, who tended to write about the city’s glorious past or about other Indian locales. But this aversion to the Indian capital seems to be waning. Novelists such as Aravind Adiga, and a slew of talented writers still unknown outside India, are painting artful portraits of present-day city life. Most recently, Sam Miller and Tarquin Hall, both experienced British reporters, have published books that attempt to decode this confounding megalopolis, an ever-expanding urban corridor in which the 21st century’s ambitions and nightmares seem to thrive side by side.

An amusing, timely whodunit, Hall’s novel The Case of the Missing Servant centers on Vish Puri, a clownish Punjabi Sherlock Holmes who bemoans the Americanisation of his country while living in a quasi-American Delhi suburb. Puri’s humdrum days of digging dirt on candidates for arranged marriage are interrupted by a murder case. A maidservant named Mary has gone missing, and lawyer Ajay Khasliwal, a patriot who yearns for his country to be a superpower, has been accused of impregnating the young woman, a migrant labourer from the tribal hinterlands, and then disposing of her body.

Khasliwal, however, claims he’s been framed. Over whiskey and chili cheese toasts at the Gymkhana Club, he explains that he’s been trying to bring “inept local and national authorities to account” and, as a result, a “conspiracy of interests” is out to get him. Puri traipses between Delhi and Rajasthan trying to prove the attorney’s innocence, unearthing the “endemic corruption” that is “severely hampering the country’s development”, as well as the shady ways of progress-wary purists.

Hall has woven his impressive knowledge of India into a tautly constructed novel that is a highly readable introduction to the country for newcomers. His portrait of Delhi’s middle classes is complex, and he understands that urban growth is often “built on the backs” of the rural poor. But his insistence on eliciting laughs by making fun of Indian English is tiresome, and his generalisations about Indian culture are at times off-key. The inclusion of even one non-Indian character would have infused the book with a note of redemptive honesty, but the author has shied away from confronting his ambiguous relationship with Delhi.’

Here’s one from New Zealand.  SOUTHLAND TIMES

‘A delightful cross between Agatha Christie and the Kumars. This is the story of how Vish Puri, India’s most private investigator, always gets his man or, in this case, a girl, known only as Mary, who has disappeared among India’s population of more than 1 billion and who holds the key to this modern Punjabi whodunnit.

Puri’s bread-and-butter work is screening prospective marriage partners in a culture where couples rarely marry for love, but all his modern techniques must now be combined with detection principles established in India more than 2000 years ago, to save his friend, an honest public litigator, from standing trial for murder.

Fast-paced, clever and witty, this thriller will have you sitting on the edge of your tasselled cushion, takeaway butter chicken forgotten, popodom crumbs scattered on the Persian rug beneath you.

Even if you don’t like your curries hot, you’ll love this spicy feast of top Anglo-Indian crime writing. So jaldi karo, beta, and be putting the kettle on for a nice cup of chai, this book is badiya! Namaste.’

WINNIPEG FREE PRESS:

‘For something completely different, you can’t beat U.K. journalist Tarquin Hall’s little ethnic gem, The Case of the Missing Servant (McClelland & Stewart, 320 pages, $30), featuring Delhi’s Most Private Investigator, Vish “Chubby” Puri. » Read more: Latest Reviews in Full