The Case Of The Missing Servant

Tarquin Hall

Random House Publishers India Pvt. Limited, 2009 - Fiction - 312 pages

Meet Vish Puri, India's most private investigator. Portly, persistent and unmistakably Punjabi, he cuts a determined swathe through modern India's swindlers, cheats and murderers.In hot and dusty Delhi, where call centres 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 pot shots at him and his prize chilli 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 his well-heeled Gymkhana Club to the slums where the servant classes live, Puri's adventures reveal modern India in all its seething complexity.

What people are saying

Review: The Case of the Missing Servant (Vish Puri #1)

User Review  - Marge - Goodreads

This was a great find. Hall's detective is a modern Indian version of Hercule Poirot, right down to his portly figure and pride in his mustache. But this is set in an India, where corrupt government ...

Review: The Case of the Missing Servant (Vish Puri #1)

User Review  - Jane Anne - Goodreads

JUST HILARIOUS. So many insights into modern Delhi, way the 'upper classes' discount what their 'inferiors' r doing, thinking. Class conflicts even w'in members of same country club. True feelings of ...

About the author

Tarquin Hall is a writer and journalist who has lived and worked in much of South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the US. He is the author of Mercenaries, Missionaries and Misfits: Adventures of an Under-age Journalist; To the Elephant Graveyard; and Salaam Brick Lane: A Year in the New East End. He is married to the journalist Anu Anand and lives in Delhi and London.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Case Of The Missing Servant
• Author: Tarquin Hall
• Publisher: Random House Publishers India Pvt. Limited, 2009
• ISBN: 0091925649, 9780091925642
• Length: 312 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Crime; Fiction / General; Fiction / Mystery & Detective / General