Detecting India: For Whom?
Vaibhav Parel
BAD DAY AT THE VULTURE CLUB by Vaseem Khan Mulholland Books, 2019, 250 pp., 858.00
December 2021, volume 45, No 12

If the rave reviews this book has garnered globally on Amazon are any indication this is an instant buy. Two qualities appear to be commonly appreciated by most readers: the readability of the book, and the insights that readers—especially those who have never been to India and know little about its people and culture—glean about India (and Mumbai) from the book. The Baby Ganesh series with Inspector Chopra as the detective, and his elephant, Ganesha, appears to have captured the attention and adulation of a global audience.

In the first novel of the series, The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra (2015), we are introduced to Inspector Chopra on the day he is retiring from the Mumbai Police after twenty years of service. Known for his moral rectitude, non-abusive, kind and considerate behaviour, he has been overlooked in a police force which is mired in a labyrinthine bureaucracy with a fondness for servile toadying; and which is staffed mostly with people who are inept, indolent and corrupt. He is decidedly unhappy about retirement.

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