The Case of the Missing Servant

There are two seasons of the year that I am not particularly fond of. Now these are not seasons as officially named, yet all who live through them are well aware they exist and I call them the in-betweeners. We happen to be smack dab in the middle of the first in-betweener which falls just after the enjoyable bits of fall and just before the whites of enjoyable winter. The other in-betweener occurs after enjoyable winter has ended and before green enjoyable spring has begun. The latter is also called mud season. 

During both of these "seasons," the frequent gray skies and cold rain leaves me staring out the window daydreaming of foreign climes. Usually, warmer foreign climes. Alas, due to the constraints of real life, I am unable to take 12 weeks off annually to escape these in-betweeners and therefore, I have to settle for a surrogate. Travel by book is what I call it and Tarquin Hall’s “The Case of the Missing Servant” was the perfect recent vehicle.

Written by a Brit but set in India, “The Case of the Missing Servant” is an absolute riot of a mystery that follows the comical and capable Vish Puri, India’s Most Private Investigator in pursuit of, as expected, a missing and likely dead servant. Like any mystery writer worth his salt though, Hall further weaves in two subplot mysteries that are equally compelling.

Yet, despite an ensnaring plot, or rather multiple ensnaring plots, it is Hall's deft characters, dry humor, and most of all his vivid depiction of contemporary India that are this works greatest strengths as well as the predominant drivers of “The Case of the Missing Servant.”  

Best described as Sherlock Homes meets Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Tarquin Hall’s “The Case of the Missing Servant” is a chariot that will make you chuckle and cheer while carrying you away from a dreary in-betweener November day to a more convivial clime.