GoodReads meta-data is 256 pages, rated 3.48 by 54 litizens.
Genre: krimi.
Verdict: charming.
Humble, long-suffering Inspector Ganesh Ghote is sent to a cool mountain hill station in southern India, far from the mean albeit colourful streets of Bombay (as it was then). There he finds a ghost of the Raj, the private Ooty Club whose members, British and Indian (who are more British than the British in their tweeds and wingtips).
Into this self-contained and closed community murder has intruded. The drunken and conniving servant Pichu has been stabbed to death on the…billiard table in the night. Ghote’s investigation is dogged by Surinder Mehta, retired ambassador and friend to prime ministers past and present, who is an avid reader of Agatha Christie novels and sets about helping Ghote with a running commentary from the Great Dame’s novels. (For a time Ghote wonders what a dog has to do with anything.)
This is the seventeenth title in the Ghote series and it is light, diverting, and interesting as the best of them. How did Keating do it?