Under a Monsoon Cloud

An oddity among the Ghote series of detective novels. You can see that Keating is interested is 'stretching' the character by putting him on the wrong side of the law (in a murder case no less). But while the scenario is complex and engaging as a story, the response from the character of Ghote is unconvincing. Put simply, the fictional crime fighter with a reputation for dogged honesty and integrity which Keating has built up over several previous novels is altogether too comfortable with being party to the concealment of a crime, and improbably persists with the concealment after the murderer confesses and kills himself. Everything falls into place in the end and the honest Ghote re-asserts himself. The journey, however, is really just show more a series of pictures through which the characters move and make noises. What is missing - and which could have made this a great novel - is much more of the inner voice, the sense of self-torture, rationalisation and delusion that preys upon the guilty and the innocent alike when called before an 'Commission of Inquiry'. A less moral, or a less clever, man might have sailed through this Inquiry with relatively little inner turmoil as the character Ghote has done in this novel. But the problem for 'Under the Monsoon Cloud' is that Ghote's character up to this point is built around a man of great integrity and cleverness (even if of the slow rather than the quick kind...) who is subject to constant self doubts and periods of reflection. Not recommended as anyone's first foray into the Bombay detective fiction world, but there for the Ghote fans. Although the Ghote fans might notice that the character Desai is married and has four children in the novel 'Insepector Ghote Plays a Joker', but said by Ghote to have been 'never married' in this one. show less

Inspector Ghote comes under suspicion and inquiry in the case of a dead police. Ghote has to evaluate the relative value of truth and justice and his own career.