The Case of the Missing Servant

“Watch out Alexander McCall Smith!” claims the blurb. Watch out indeed, because Hall is not doing the genre any favors. Though I picked this up due to a favorable GR review, and found myself further intrigued by comparisons to the Inspector Singh series, I’d say Hall needs further practice before he’s ready for the big time.

I originally passed it to my mom, hoping to tease her into another series and perhaps, you know, broaden her horizons just a touch. She complained it was hard to get into to and that there were “a lot of words to look up.” She tends to be more of a stickler with wanting to understand things, so I figured that I’d give it a shot as a genre reader.

Right away, I empathized with her experience. In the first show more paragraph, Vish Puri is “devouring a dozen green chili pakoras* from a greasy takeout box.” That asterisk refers the reader to a glossary with over one-hundred-fifty words. Still, I tried my sci-fi skills. Not terrible. Hall usually has one vocabulary word or two per paragraph. But still, the one I tried made no sense: ‘press-wallah,’ defined as a ‘journalist.’ The sentence it is used in? “The family also relied on a part-time dishwasher, a sweeper, a gardener and the local press-wallah who had a stand under the neem tree down the street where he applied a heavy iron filled with hot charcoal to a dizzying assortment of garments, including silk saris, cotton salwars and denim jeans.”

So is Hall having us on?

Well, aside from that. Given the glossary is over 150 words, you can easily assume this isn’t your average mystery. And in fact, it is not. It is a slice of life tale that is told in a very meandering, wandering fashion. Thus, in the middle of a stakeout in the first chapter, Mr. Puri is recalling his latest letter to The Times of India, decrying the youth of today. I get it; Hall is trying for a chatty, accessible tone, except it isn’t accessible at all. Any forward momentum in the story is derailed with backstory. We can’t just refer to someone by nickname; no, Mr. Puri needs to think about all the other nicknames his crew has, his own nickname, and the reasons they all came about, and what his doctor’s thoughts were on his chubbiness at his latest visit. Again, this might be charming if you wanted a travelogue through semi-modern India. In a mystery? Not so much. Add in his penchant for dressing well (or at least, very Seville Row) and chubbiness, coupled with an outdated cultural view, and I wonder if we are supposed to be laughing at Mr. Puri.

I’ll note a couple of things. One, as I was recently reminded when reading a blog post from James Corey, if you wink too much at your protagonist, you risk not taking them seriously. Two, you want to write a mystery, you need some dramatic tension. Expecting your readers to frequently stop and look up words in a glossary is not how you maintain that tension.

All it took was that chapter and I concurred with the Mom. I also concurred with Richard’s last paragraph of his review where he notes “but for a mystery reader, it would be a horrible experience, and for a snootybootsy four-hankies-and-a-pistol reader it would be a horrible experience, and for the general what’s-new-this-week reader it would be a disorganized mess. If you’re in the mood for a curry, though, could do nicely. Just don’t go in with expectations too high.”

I never did go for curry. show less

Digital audiobook performed by Sam Dastor
3.5***

From the book jacket: Meet Vish Puri, India’s most private investigator. Portly, persistent, and unmistakably Punjabi, he cuts a determined swath through modern India’s swindlers, cheats, and murderers. In hot and usty Delhi, 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.

My reactions:
This debut novel was just delightful! Puri is a marvelous character, and I want to follow the series just to get to know him better. But the supporting cast is also wonderful. From “Mummy-ji” (his show more mother, who insists on playing sleuth when “everyone” knows mummies are not detectives), to his undercover operatives: Tubelight, Flush, and Facecream.

While the main storyline focuses on the missing Mary, there are other issues Puri and his team must deal with – WHO is taking potshots at Puri and his chili plants? As the team travels from the swanky Gymkhana Club to the slums of Dehli, and from a desert oasis to a distant mine, the reader gets a view of modern-day India that is colorfully vivid.

I’ll definitely read more from this author.

Sam Dastor does a very good job of narrating the audiobook. I love the accents he used for Puri, Mummy-ji and the other characters. show less

The first book in this series introduces us to Vish Puri, lead detective at Most Private Investigators. Vish Puri has worked on a lot of cases through the years, but up until now his main body of work has primarily been in screening prospective partners in advance of arranged marriages. That soon changes following the arrest of a high-profile lawyer who is accused of murdering his maid, Mary. The police say they have witnesses of him dumping the body and Puri's job is to prove the man’s innocence and find the real killer. Puri is supported by a fascinating team of operatives, each with their own background.

I found myself engaged in this books storyline immediately, pulled into the vividly atmospheric descriptions of Delhi. The writing show more is filled with subtle humor and it was so interesting to get to know Vish and his family- his doting wife Rumpi and his mother, Mummy-Ji, who has some interesting career plans of her own. They, along with Puri’s undercover operatives, Facecream, Tubelight and Flush are a really well-written cast of characters that add a lot of humor to the story.

This is a quick read and an enjoyable book I read to fulfill a challenge. I was pleasantly surprised and would like to try another in the future. show less

Tarquin Hall’s debut mystery oozes charm like jalebis (A sweet, fried Indian pastry) ooze sugar. The Case of the Missing Servant introduces private investigator Vish “Chubby” Puri, founder of Most Private Investigators, Ltd. Puri is a lovably idiosyncratic character, getting on in his years but still determined to maintain his reputation as the best detective in India. Unfortunately, the majority of the cases he is offered these days involve tracking the illicit lifestyles of prospective brides- and grooms-to-be for suspicious matchmaking parents. This all changes when a new client gives him something much tougher to chew on: Ajay Kasliwal, an idealistic lawyer, is being framed for the rape and murder of a maidservant, known only show more as Mary, who disappeared from his household months earlier. With few clues and no help in sight (apart from Puri’s mother, a delightful character who has a good nose for a good mystery), Puri must find out what became of Mary before Kasliwal’s reputation is dragged through the mud, all while juggling the other more trivial cases that keep his business afloat.

Hall does an admirable job of keeping all of these balls in the air and keeping the reader guessing. The great fun in this book, however, is its language and setting. Hall is intimately familiar with the Indianized English spoken in Delhi, and the book is peppered with wonderful turns of phrase. The Case of the Missing Servant turns out to be not only a wonderfully old-fashioned mystery, but a truly educational introduction to modern Indian culture – not too heavy to drag the pace of the mystery down, but just enough to pique your interest show less

I’m a big who-dun-it fan. Poirot is my favorite detective of all, followed by Precious Ramotswe and Sherlock Holmes. Poirot is Poirot because of all his eccentricities, so when I read of a desi equivalent, it piqued my curiosity.

In this book, Tarquin Hall writes about Vish Puri, a 51 year old, portly, Punjabi private investigator plying his trade in Delhi. Puri, who’s bread and butter is mostly investigating potential marriage alliances, is hired to clear the name of a lawyer accused of murdering a servant girl in his employ. Mary, the girl in question has disappeared and honest litigator Ajay Kasliwal accused of doing away with her, is embroiled in what looks to be a conspiracy put together by his corrupt enemies. Will Puri be able show more to stop them putting Kasliwal away for good ?

As a detective novel, this book works although it doesn’t have a very tight pace, and in that, it sort of resembles the “No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency” series, rather than a hardcore detective novel. Hall peppers the story with Puri’s observations on Delhi and Indian society and government which make interesting reading. Plus Puri is typically Punjabi and Hall manages to introduce his very Punjabi characteristics into the mix.

Puri has set up “Most Private Investigators Ltd.” and is aided by nick-named employees in his work – there’s FaceCream, Flush, TubeLight, DoorStop and HandBrake all so named for a reason. Then there’s Puri’s wife Rumpi, his mother “Mummyji”, his secretary Elizabeth Rani, the servant boy Sweetu and Puri’s friend “Rinku”. Even Kasliwal has a nickname; Chippy. Puri and his family live in Gurgaon in a “white, four-bedroom Spanish-style villa with orange-tiled awnings, which they’d furnished from top to bottom in Punjabi baroque”. Punjabi baroque indeed – I can quite picture that, LOL !

In describing Puri’s abode, Hall also gives us a brief history of Delhi, it’s surrounding towns, and it’s class structure:

“Little had Puri known that in building a new home in Gurgaon, he had become a trendsetter. His move from Punjabi Bagh coincided with the explosion of India’s service industries in the wake of the liberalization of the economy. In the late 1990s, Gurgaon became Delhi’s southern extension, and was made available for major “development.”
. . .
Concrete superstructures shot up like great splinters of bone forced from the body of the earth. . . . All this was built on the backs of India’s “underprivileged classes,” who were working for slave wages. They had arrived in Gurgaon in their tens of thousands from across the country. But neither the local authorities nor the private contractors provided them with housing, so most had built shacks on the building sites alongside the machinery and the brick factories. Before long, shantytowns of corrugated iron and open sewers spread across an underdeveloped no-man’s-land.”

Puri himself is a mix of the old-fashioned and the new. He wears safari-suits and Sandown caps (he has 14 of them), and sports a moustache. At home, he relaxes in his silk dressing gown, and monogrammed slippers “VP”. He drives around in an ambassador, giving that old beast it’s due “Ambassadors might look old-fashioned and slow, but the latest models had Japanese engines.” Although his blood pressure is up, he loves his Punjabi staples – pakoras. He also thinks that young people have no moral fiber and says as much in a letter to the “Times of India” :

“A fellow is no longer happy serving society. Dharma, duty, has been ejected out the window. Now the average male wants five-star living: Omega watch, Italian hotel food, Duabi holiday, luxury apartment, a fancy girl on the side,” Puri had written. “All of a sudden, young Indians are adopting the habits of goras, white people.”

Tarquin Hall, himself a “gora”, manages to gauge and write about Indian society quite accurately. Even given that Hall has lived in India, his nuanced knowledge of India and it’s customs is impressive. Hall's characters are nicely fleshed out, down to personal details, like the mother-son relationship between the doting (and nosy) Mummyji and Vish. The people in this book have an authentic feel, and Hall even manages to get them to speak in Delhi's "vernacular" English "Everything is all right, though, na ?" His novel is colorful and descriptive, bringing to life Delhi and it’s residents with humorous, but true details:

“And yet the arranged marriage remained sacrosanct. Even among the wealthiest Delhi families, few parents gave their blessings to a “love marriage,” . . . Increasingly Indians living in major towns and cities relied on newspaper ads. The Singlas advertisement in the Indian Express had read as follows:

SOUTH DELHI HIGH STATUS AGRAWAL BUSINESS FAMILY SEEKS ALLIANCE FOR THEIR HOMELY, SLIM, SWEET-NATURED, VEGETARIAN AND CULTURED DAUGHTER. 5’1”. 50 kg. WHEATISH COMPLEXION. MBA FROM USA. NON-MANGLIK. DOB : JULY ’76 (LOOKS MUCH YOUNGER)”

“The Case of the missing servant” was a very enjoyable read. show less

This is the "fluffy" book I put aside to read the "more serious" (or better written, or whatever I was thinking) book by Tey.

Lesson learned.

Our hero, Vish Puri, is a very human one. He runs a detective agency in Delhi, where things are somewhat different than they might be in the U.S. or the U.K. He takes his company motto, "Confidentiality is our watchword" seriously. He's portly, patient, persistent, and extremely clever.

Although most of Puri's (fondly known as "Chubby") cases come from pre-marriage investigations, he's consulted on other things as well, including possible murders. In this first book of the series, he'w working on a marriage case when he's asked to help a lawyer who's accused of murdering a servant.

On the surface, show more Hall's book seems a funny take on detectives, much like the Botswana series by McCall-Smith, but don't make the mistake of thinking that they're in the same class. They couldn't be more different.

Although the book is funny enough to make the reader laugh out loud in places, Hall has written with a thinly veiled undercurrent of anger at the corruption, mismanagement, and blindness of the Indian government. This reader enjoyed learning about both the pleasant ambiance of Delhi and the hidden rot in the city.

Most highly recommended to those who like some meat and some humor with their mysteries. show less

Punjabi private detective Vish Puri, Chubby to friends and family, is the self-styled Most Private Investigator and boss of several assistants. Here he is searching for a missing servant, believed murdered by her employer, Puri's client. Hall's story captures the India of legend, hot, dusty, utterly corrupt, but the inclusion of humour makes it an entertaining story - how could it not be with Chubby, wife Rumpi, and Mummy-ji's help - set in modern Delhi. Hall, a part-time resident of India, has captured the nuances of the language and culture, scattering the text with Punjabi words and explanations, effectively aided by a glossary. This was a fun read and I'll be looking out for the next in the series.