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The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall
I admit to having been a devotee of Inspector Ghote, the indefatigable Indian detective and creation of British writer H. R. F. Keating, with whom TARQUIN HALL's Vish Puri, "India's Most Private Investigator" must inevitably be compared. I read the Inspector Ghote novels (a clutch, not all, for they must number a score or more) in the days before one had to worry much about such things as political correctness.
THE CASE OF THE MISSING SERVANT is Vish Puri's first case (at least for us; previous cases are alluded to). Puri works all sorts of sordid marital investigations, but this time he is called upon to save an illustrious lawyer from the charge of murdering his maidservant Mary. Simultaneously, someone is taking potshots at him in his own home, which his formidable Mummy-ji takes it upon herself, much to his chagrin, to investigate. Additional subplots provide pleasurable complications.
As might be expected, the dialogue is full of the stereotypical tweaks in Indian English (the use of the gerund where standard English would use the present tense, that sort of thing: "Mumbled? Mummy doesn't do mumbling. I asked you to keep an eye on her, isn't it?") and smatterings of Hindi (or perhaps it's Punjabi), and there are references to all things Indian, from meals eaten by hand without utensils to popular television shows, call centres and autorickshaws.
THE CASE OF THE MISSING SERVANT is fun, and is -- as such books are, and there is a long list of crime novels set in far away places and times -- meant to be fun. Hall writes of the rotund Vish Puri with both humour and obvious affection; Hall is also a keen observer of India's clash with modernity. But a nagging concern prevented me from striding as lightly and briskly through this fast-paced book as Vish Puri himself does: I am not sure where lies the line between line between poking gentle fun at ethnic idiosyncrasies and caricature, between laughing with and laughing at, but Hall comes, in my view, uncomfortably close to it.
Peter Gordon
01/12/2009
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Peter Gordon is editor of The Asian Review of Books. |
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