H. R. F. Keating (1926–2011)

I wanted very much to like this book. First, it is a mystery, which is one of my favorite genres. Second, it is set in India, with all Indian characters, and anyone who knows me even a little knows how much I love India. In spite of all this, I couldn't finish the book. It was just too painful to go through a plot where the caste structure, social customs, and religion don't allow for the questioning of authority, or for defense of one's dignity when it's insulted by someone of a higher show more position/caste. It's also a really boring read, knowing that the characters will never "step out of bounds". You just want to grab all the characters and clunk their heads together while yelling, "Oh my god please become interesting!"

This was my first Inspector Ghote book, and my problems with it are probably universal to the other books with this character. If you have liked other Inspector Ghote books, you'll probably like this one. show less

Where the Francis novel felt somehow contemporary to its time, this is a study in deliberate archaicism. The setting is 1930s British India. The plot is a golden-era affair: one murder, a limited list of suspects, a brainy detective, and a litany of clues and red herrings. The prose style is often the sort of lulling repetitiveness that I vaguely think is meant to recall Kipling (vaguely, because I’ve not read much Kipling, at least not recently).

So there’s three archaicisms. Why someone show more would want to write such a novel, I don’t quite know. Affectionate pastiche? Nostalgia? Boredom? Whatever the reasons, we can question the effects.
British India. Hmmmm. Bad enough. The court of a Maharaja, a vastly wealthy hereditary ruler of his own little kingdom, tolerated by the British so long as he remains fairly docile. Hmmmm. Worse. It does allow one to write about lavish banquets and sporting massacres of birds, but it does also seem to force one to write about hundreds of servants with protruding ribs and such, and if one doesn’t show much sympathy for them, one’s reader might start to wonder how harmless the nostalgia is.

Golden-era plotting. Well, not much to complain about here, I suppose, though we probably didn’t need quite so many references to Christie to get the point. Perhaps, actually, the point is a little more subtle, since the references are principally to The Seven Dials Mystery, which is generally held to be a disappointing Christie novel precisely because it departs from the template. No departures here. The suspect list is circumscribed, each is given a motive, each is seen to act somewhat suspiciously, and eventually the detective works it out. I wasn’t enthralled, but it was done well enough.

That prose style. Huh. It’s clearly very deliberate, since it’s so different to that of the other Keating book I’ve read in this series (that one was plagued by the ghost of Wodehouse). It does evoke a certain air and era. But it’s also rather tiresome, I find. Perhaps I was just in a bad mood.

I noted in that last Keating review that he was a well-loved figure in British crime writing, and I don’t want to be mean, so I will just say that this passed a plane journey but is probably past its time. show less

Ganesh Ghote's tribulations!

I'm becoming increasingly fond of Southern Asian detective novels. This Inspector Ganesh Ghote novel, first published in 1966, is set in Bombay (now Mumbai) and despite the dated outlook still has arresting appeal.
An American philanthropist has been murdered and Ghote of the Bombay C.I.D., must find the culprit whilst struggling with his desire to charge his bete noir, criminal Amrit Singh.
Throughout Ghote is challenged by the idea of care and charity, with show more understanding the street wise boys who are part of the Frank Masters Foundation for the Care of Juvenile Vagrants, and with the pressure from above to reach a conclusion even if it means framing a lesser employee or Amrit.
His home life, his relationship with his wife Protima, comes under scrutiny and we start to see a fuller exposition about who Ghote is. The consideration of the refrigerator becomes a subtle, yet telling anecdote about the man Ghote is.
I found the way Ghote worked the case through despite the many problems that are placed in his path fascinating.

A Severn House ARC via NetGalley show less

Mark answers his phone to find his ex-mother-in-law on the line: his ex-wife is dying and wants to see him before it's too late. Can Mark make the journey from his home in Highgate (in North London) to Wimbledon (in South-West London) to see her? Seemingly a reasonable request, but Mark's phone has not rung in several years, and he has not been more than a few streets away from his home for even longer. Civilisation has collapsed: public transport no longer runs and virtually no one has show more access to any private transport more sophisticated than a bicycle. So going to Wimbledon means walking, and walking through the unknown dangers that central London will involve: gangs, private militias, the trigger happy remnants of the army, feral dog packs and more. And Mark, an inoffensive and quiet man who ekes put a living teaching children to read and write, is not well suited to the challenges ahead.

It's an interesting feature of the book that the social collapse has not been precipitated by any external factors: it seems to be an internal collapse of society with minor riots leading to major rioting and then open warfare in the streets of London. The implication is that things may be better elsewhere but this is not certain. And perhaps this says a lot about the time when the book was written, the late 1970's, which was certainly a period when Britain seemed to be going nowhere fast.

Written in 1978, this book shows its age a little when it comes to race. While treated very sympathetically, the Indian Dr Satpathi, who Mark meets on his journey, seems very much a stock character from the TV of the period. And the demonisation of non-whites as 'tropicals', perhaps reflecting worries over racial tension in the 1960's and 70's, reads a little oddly in 2013. But otherwise a decent read. show less