The Case of the Missing Servant: Vish Puri, Most Private Investigator - Softcover

Hall, Tarquin

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8,979 ratings by Goodreads

9780771037559: The Case of the Missing Servant: Vish Puri, Most Private Investigator

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0771037554 ISBN 13: 9780771037559

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart, 2010

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Watch out Alexander McCall Smith! Here comes the first novel by the highly acclaimed writer Tarquin Hall in an entrancing new mystery series set in India.The portly Vish Puri is India’s most accomplished detective, at least in his own estimation, and is also the hero of an irresistible new mystery series set in hot, dusty Delhi. Puri’s detective skills are old-fashioned in a Sherlock Holmesian way and a little out of sync with the tempo of the modern city, but Puri is clever and his methods work. The Case of the Missing Servant shows Puri (";Chubby"; to his friends) and his wonderfully nicknamed employees (among them, Handbrake, Flush, and Handcream) hired for two investigations. The first is into the background of a man surprisingly willing to wed a woman her father considers unmarriageable, and the second is into the disappearance six months earlier of a servant to a prominent Punjabi lawyer, a young woman known only as Mary.The Mo

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From the Back Cover:

Meet Vish Puri, India's most private investigator. Portly, persistent, and unmistakably Punjabi, he has the exacting nature of Hercule Poirot and the provincial appeal of Precious Ramotswe.

In hot dusty Delhi, where call centers and shopping malls are changing the ancient fabric of Indian life, Puri's main work comes from screening prospective marriage partners. But when an honest public litigator is accused of murdering his servant, it takes all of Puri's resources to investigate. In a population of more than a billion, how will he trace the fate of the girl, known only as Mary? With his eccentric team, and techniques that combine the most modern -- and ancient -- of investigative skills, the search for Mary takes Puri to the desert oasis of Jaipur and to the remote mines of Jharkhand. As he moves from his well-heeled Club to the slums where the servant classes live, his adventures reveal modern India in all its seething complexities.

About the Author:

Tarquin Hall is a British writer and journalist who has reported extensively on S.E. Asia and the Middle East for the British press. He is also the author of the highly acclaimed non-fiction books Salaam Brick Lane and To the Elephant Graveyard. The Vish Puri series is his first venture into fiction. He lives in London, England.
From the Hardcover edition.

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