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Product Details
Simon & Schuster, April 2010
Trade Paperback, 336 pages
ISBN-10: 1439172374
ISBN-13: 9781439172377
Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1
Description
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 dusty Delhi, where call centers 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. With his team of undercover operatives—Tubelight, Flush, and Facecream—Puri combines modern techniques with principles of detection established in India more than two thousand years ago, and reveals modern India in all its seething complexity.
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Chapter 1"Vish Puri is the most original detective in years. Tarquin Hall has captured India in a way few Western writers have managed since Kipling. The country's humor, commotion, and vibrancy bursts from every page, exposing its vast, labyrinthine underbelly. Scintillating!"
-- Tahir Shah, author of The Caliph's House
"Tubby, ingenious and hilarious, Delhi's most trusted PI, Vish Puri, is not easily forgotten. Properly disdainful of unoriginal crime-busters like Sherlock Holmes and James Bond, his unique methods of detection deserve to be widely known and feted."
-- David Davidar, author of The Solitude of Emperors
"India, captured in all its pungent, vivid glory, fascinates almost as much as the crime itself."
-- Entertainment Weekly
"A lively and quick-paced series debut."
-- Kirkus (starred review)
"Hall turns to fiction with the debut of what promises to be an outstanding series....An excellent, delightfully humorous mystery with an unforgettable cast of characters, The Case of the Missing Servant immediately joins the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency as representing the best in international cozies."
-- Booklist (starred review)
"[Hall] captures his second country with grace and humor and creates a protagonist able to put more cases in his "conclusively solved" cabinet. An entertaining start (complete with expletives-included glossary) to a promising series."
-- Library Journal (starred review)
Quad-Cities Online, January 9, 2010
...title is dripping with irony and this book lives up to it. The Best Exotic Neurotic Detective: "The Case of the Missing Servant" by Tarquin Hall (Simon and Schuster, 320 pages, $24). Like Hercule Poirot, Hall's detective, Vish Puri, the head ...
Hollywood Today, December 28, 2009
...Who killed him? Hardcover, 288 pages, Publisher: Minotaur , September 15, 2009, Language: English, ISBN: 9780312387754 $24.99 The Case of the Missing Servant: A Vish Puri Mystery by Tarquin Hall The head of Delhi’s Most Private ...
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, December 19, 2009
...title is dripping with irony and this book lives up to it. The Best Exotic Neurotic Detective: "The Case of the Missing Servant" by Tarquin Hall (Simon and Schuster, 320 pages, $24). Like Hercule Poirot, Hall's detective, Vish Puri, the head ...
Tonight South Africa, July 28, 2009
...The Case of the Missing Servant Author: Tarquin Hall Publisher: Hutchinson Review: Janine Magree Vish Puri takes exception to being likened to Sherlock Holmes, who he contends is a mere figment of ...
Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 20, 2009
...lack of sexual tension between two main characters who are supposed to be attracted to each other. THE CASE OF THE MISSING SERVANT Tarquin Hall (Simon and Schuster, 295 pages, $24 ...
Outlook India, May 30, 2009
...is refreshingly deft and he has mastered the unique syntax of middle-class Delhi English Daniel Lak on The Case Of The Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall Magazine | Jun 01, 2009 REVIEW Sadia Dehlvi has, by her own admission, quoted Annemarie ...
Outlook India, May 30, 2009
...is refreshingly deft and he has mastered the unique syntax of middle-class Delhi English Daniel Lak on The Case Of The Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall Magazine | Jun 01, 2009 REVIEW Sadia Dehlvi has, by her own admission, quoted Annemarie ...
Outlook India, May 23, 2009
...is refreshingly deft and he has mastered the unique syntax of middle-class Delhi English Daniel Lak on The Case Of The Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall Magazine | Jun 01, 2009 POETRY Although Arvind Krishna Mehrotra did not win Oxford ...
Tarquin Hall's Books
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The Case of the Man Who Died LaughingThe celebrated Vish Puri series continues as the fastidious detective undergoes old-fashioned sleuthing in the changing world of modern India.Read More
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The Case of the Deadly Butter ChickenVish Puri, India's Most Private Investigator, infiltrates the illegal cricket gambling world to solve the murder of the father of a Pakistani player.Read More
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