Tea and books: Indian mysteries

 

I'm very fond of this cover; it reminds me of bedspreads my university roommate and I bought from an import store when we were students; my roomie was the daughter of an artist and a librarian...very hip.

Many years ago, I discovered, in a now-closed and long-gone Manhattan bookstore on Columbus Circle, the H.R.F. Keating novels about Inspector Ghote of Mumbai (then still called Bombay by westerners). I loved the stories about the gentle policeman and his somewhat less gentle wife. A brain-trust Ghote was not, and the novels themselves were not particularly redolent of what we seem to view as Indian atmosphere, but the stories were good. Long after reading the whole series, I discovered that Keating had never set foot in India.

I'm a big fan of cozy mysteries, and the Ghote (pronounced go-tay, not goat) fit the bill. But I had found nothing since then until a couple of years ago, when I found the books about Vish Puri, a Delhi private detective, by Tarquin Hall. I read one--devoured it, really. Then the next, and the next and the next. Alas, some time has passed and I have seen no announcements of a new Puri tale. A shame. The portly detective and his intelligent wife and somewhat less attractive mother-in-law, are also dandy books for a break from life. And god knows, with Brexit and Trump, most of us Anglos and Anglo wannabes need that.

But I also found, a while ago, the books by Vaseem Khan about Inspector Chopra and his magical baby elephant, Ganesha. I am awaiting the release of the fifth book on August 8, 2019. August 8 is a propitious day; it is the birthday of both my late maternal grandparents. My grandmother was a great reader of both classic and contemporary mainstream literature; she introduced me to Daphne du Maurier when I was about 12.

My grandfather read at least one hard-boiled detective novel EVERY NIGHT while watching TV--and he knew everything that was happening on the TV, too. He was an accountant and chemist and he always double-tasked, except when the Friday Night Fights were on. Then he just watched, but mainly, I think, because I perched on the arm of his chair while he instructed me in the difference between boxing and pummeling. He rarely read during weekend baseball, although if he picked up a book, we knew the game was lousy.


Last night, I was rooting around the Kindle store for something light to read. I'd begun a nouveau Campion novel, and it is pretty good; Mike Ripley does almost as good a job as the originator, Margery Allingham. But something was not quite right. Maybe reading about Britain in the 1970s--when Albert Campion had become an old man and was not the charming creature Peter Davison played in the series set in the 1930s and filmed in the 1970s--is not doing it for me in this age of Brexit, the ludicrous attempt to return to an earlier, and much less prosperous, time.

I came across Trouble in Nuala by Harriet Steel. It is the first in five (so far) books about Inspector DeSilva of the Sri Lankan police, although, as the books are set in the mid-1930s, it was the Ceylon police force. Steel, like H.R.F. Keating, has apparently not set foot anywhere near the Indian subcontinent or its close neighbors, being from London, Wiltshire and Surrey in that order. 

But her touch is sure.  I didn't begin the book until this afternoon, when I got into bed to restore myself with fiction, as I had some overworked muscles and there is no sun outside. 

DeSilva is a lovely Ceylonese gentleman, married to an Englishwoman who had gone to Ceylon as a governess. As they were both unmarried and in their forties when they met, there was no early-20th century problem about racial intermarriage as there would be no children. So, as Steel says, they were free to do as they liked, ending up with the courteous but deeply loving kind of marriage one wants in a cozy mystery.


Apparently, Steel's book is restoring me. I got out of bed, thinking that perhaps my legs wouldn't hurt so much if I did something artsy, instead of politics-oriented. Plus, my husband had set up my new computer desk and installed my new keyboard, so perhaps writing would not be so physically uncomfortable. And I had begun to think about dinner, which has suddenly become not plain roast chicken breasts and petit pois, but curry-honey baked chicken and petit pois with sauteed mushrooms, lightly browned coconut flakes and yogurt. To be followed by roti with fresh pears. OK, that's a lie, just to continue the subcontinental theme. It will be crepes with pears and clotted cream.

If you are a cozy mystery fan, and like a touch of the exotic, I'd recommend any of these series--the old and somewhat stilted (by comparison) Ghote books, the Vish Puri adventures, the very charming and utterly humane Chopra/Baby Ganesha mysteries, or the slightly off-the-beaten-subcontinental-track DeSilva series.

Frankly, I hope the Puri, Chopra/Ganesha and DeSilva series live long and prosper, with many, many offspring, as befits a family in the area of the Indian subcontinent. I'm greedy for interesting, charming light and cozy mysteries, and it doesn't get much better than this group.