The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken

The wonderful third outing for Delhi detective Vish Puri ('the Indian Hercule Poirot' Financial Times)

This book is written with a wry sense of humour and a light touch . . . The author perfectly captures the cadences of Anglo-Indian English and the glossary of Indian terms at the back of the book is invaluable. This is the third in the Vish Puri series of books and I eagerly await the fourth.

The Punjabi Poirot is dogged by calamities in this comic tale

Outstanding third mystery . . . Well drawn, colorful characters bolster a whodunit sure to appeal to those who enjoy a dash of humor with their crime.

This lovely series is a great example of crime fiction  functioning as a foreign holiday for the armchair traveler. Hall’s readers become happily immersed in the glorious rhythms and neologism of ‘Dilli’ language, while the cuisine is so well described you can almost smell it.

I love Hall’s blend of inventive plot and Ealing-Comedy eccentricity.

Tarquin Hall is a writer and journalist who has lived and worked in much of South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the US. Tarquin first went to India in the mid 1990s where he met his wife, journalist Anu Anand. They now live in Delhi with their two children. He is the author of several non-fiction works and two other Vish Puri stories, The Case of the Missing Servant and The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing.

Vish Puri is as fond of butter chicken as the next Punjabi. And when there's plenty on offer at the Delhi Durbar hotel where he's attending an India Premier League cricket match dinner, he's the first to tuck in. Irfan Khan, father of Pakistani star cricketer Kamran Khan, can't resist either. But the creamy dish proves his undoing. After a few mouthfuls, he collapses on the floor, dead. 
 
Clearly this isn't a case of Delhi Belly. 
 
But who amongst the Bollywood stars, politicians, bureaucrats and industrialists poisoned Khan is a mystery. And with the capital's police chief proving as incompetent as ever, it falls to Most Private Investigators to find out the truth. 
 
Puri is soon able to link Khan to a bald bookie called Full Moon and all the clues point to the involvement of a gambling syndicate that controls the illegal billion dollar betting industry. 
The answers seem to lie in Surat, the diamond cutting and polishing capital of the world (where Puri's chief undercover operative Tubelight meets his match) and across the border in Pakistan, Puri's nemesis, the one country where he has sworn never to set foot. 
 
Or do they? A certain determined, grey-haired lady with a unique insight into the murder believes that the portly detective is barking up 'a wrong tree.' 
 
Is Mummy-ji right?Is there more to the murder than meets the eye? And why, to make life even more complicated for Vish Puri, has someone tried to steal the longest moustache in the world - from right under the nose of its owner? Literally.

The Case of the Man who Died Laughing

The wonderful second outing for Delhi detective Vish Puri ('the Indian Hercule Poirot' Financial Times) and his team of skilled operatives.

So brilliantly does Tarquin hall capture the sights, smells, sounds and foibles of modern India, not to mention the nuances of English-Indian speech, that it is hard to believe he is not himself Indian. He also serves up fabulous descriptions of the Indian cuisine much favoured by Puri, a sort of Indian Poirot whose lunch will always come before his crime-solving.

The novel is an entertaining yarn about the apparent murder of a well-known religious sceptic by an apparition of the Goddess Kali and a ripe comedy of Indian manners, brimming with well-observed detail.

Vish Puri - "Most Private Investigator", according to his card - is large, constantly hungry, a perpetual victim of Delhi's traffic congestion, and a wonderfully engaging PI . . . the characters - including Puri's complicated family - are splendid, and it's a joy to read

A funny, entertaining novel [with a] wonderfully engaging Private Investigator . . the characters - including Vish Puri's complicated family - are splendid, and it's a joy to read.

Tarquin Hall is a writer and journalist who has lived and worked in much of South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the US. He is the author of Mercenaries, Missionaries and Misfits: Adventures of an Under-age Journalist; To the Elephant Graveyard; and Salaam Brick Lane: A Year in the New East End. He is married to the journalist Anu Anand and lives in Delhi.

Early one morning, on the lawns of a grand boulevard in central Delhi, a group of professionals are attending their therapeutic Laughing Club when a 20-foot apparition of the Goddess Kali apppears, and strikes one of their number dead. 
 
The goddess disappears without trace, and soon news of the crime has all India agog. For the victim is celebrated sceptic and rationalist Dr Suresh Jha, enemy of all gurus and mystics, and he has been silenced in a manner calculated to unnerve even his most loyal supporters. 
 
As the media go into a frenzy, it becomes clear that the case goes to the heart of the battle between superstition and rationality in modern India. But the fact remains that a murder has been committed. And as it becomes clear that powerful forces are at play, one man is perfectly placed to investigate: the portly detective Vish Puri. 
 
In fact, the idea that he could resist getting involved in such a tantalizing murder is preposterous. There is as much chance of him going without his lunch.

The Case of the Missing Servant

Acclaimed writer Tarquin Hall makes his fiction debut with an Indian detective story

The most original detective in years. Picture Hercule Poirot with an Indian accent, eating chili pakoras and riding in  an auto rickshaw.  Tarquin Hall has captured India in a way few Western writers have managed since Kipling. India's humor, commotion and vibrancy bursts from every page, exposing its vast, labyrinthine underbelly. Scintillating!

A brilliantly written humorous tale that vividly captures the sounds, smells and foibles of modern India

Lively and quick-paced ... What Cara Black does for Paris, Hall achieves for India

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

Entertaining . . . Hall combines an insider's insight with the eclectic eye of a good foreign correspondent . . . The very opposite of the "exoticism" of which this kind of fiction is often accused. Instead of escaping into "another world", western readers are encouraged to see an unflattering reflection of their own values and desires

This intriguing book is in essence a modern Indian take on the adventures of Agatha Christie's famous detective Hercule Poirot . . . The detective certainly bears resemblance to his understated Belgian colleague . . . The vibrancy and the vastness of the Indian sub-continent, combined with the appeal of a solid thriller, certainly raise curiosity

An amusing, timely whodunit ... Hall has woven his impressive knowledge of India into a tautly constructed novel that is a highly readable introduction to the country for newcomers

India, captured in all its pungent, vivid glory, fascinates almost as much as the crime itself

[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

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

Offers penetrating insights into the new India

Tarquin Hall is a distinguished journalist and has no problem marshalling details to create a sense of what everyday life is like in Delhi: the smell of chat and kachoris seems to waft from the page, as indeed does the stench of political corruption

Pour yourself a cup of tea and pull up a comfy chair. Great fun - a seething slice of the sub-continent

Tarquin Hall is a writer and journalist who has lived and worked in much of South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the US. He is the author of Mercenaries, Missionaries and Misfits: Adventures of an Under-age Journalist; To the Elephant Graveyard; and Salaam Brick Lane: A Year in the New East End. He is married to the journalist Anu Anand and lives in Delhi and London.

_________________________________________ 
'Great fun' The Times 
 
'The smell of chat and kachoris seems to waft from the page' Daily Telegraph 
 
Meet Vish Puri, India's most private investigator. 
 
Portly, persistent and unmistakably Punjabi, he cuts a determined swathe through modern India's swindlers, cheats and murderers. 
 
In hot and dusty Delhi, where call centres 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. How will he trace the fate of the girl, known only as Mary, in a population of more than one billion? Who is taking pot shots at him and his prize chilli plants? And why is his widowed 'Mummy-ji' attempting to play sleuth when everyone knows Mummies are not detectives? 
 
With his team of undercover operatives - Tubelight, Flush and Facecream - Puri ingeniously combines modern techniques with principles of detection established in India more than two thousand years ago -- long before 'that Johnny-come-lately' Sherlock Holmes donned his Deerstalker. 
 
The search for Mary takes him to the desert oasis of Jaipur and the remote mines of Jharkhand. From his well-heeled Gymkhana Club to the slums where the servant classes live, Puri's adventures reveal modern India in all its seething complexity.

Tarquin Hall

The wonderful fourth outing for Delhi detective Vish Puri ('the Indian Hercule Poirot' Financial Times). 
 
When India’s Love Commandos rescue a young woman from a high-caste family who has been forbidden from marrying an untouchable, she looks set to live happily ever after with the man she truly loves. But just hours before the wedding, her boyfriend, Ram, is abducted. Has his would-be father-in-law made good on his promise and done away with him? 
 
It falls to Vish Puri to find out. Unfortunately, he’s not having a good month. He can’t locate a haul of stolen jewellery. He’s been pickpocketed. And the only person who can get his wallet back is his interfering Mummy-ji. 
 
Things only get worse when he discovers that his arch-rival, Hari Kumar, is also trying to locate the abducted boy – as is a genetics research institute exploiting illiterate villagers. 
 
To find Ram first, Puri and his team must travel into the badlands of rural India where the local politics are shaped by millennia-old caste prejudices. 
 
'If Mma Ramotswe is an African Marple, Vish Puri is an Indian Poirot' 
Financial Times 
 
'A joy to read' 
The Times

Tarquin Hall

Books by Tarquin Hall

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter