The Case of the Love Commandos is a good book with a really good and satisfying ending, but at least the first half was mind-numbingly slow. Personally I could do without the chronicling the needs of Vish Puri's belly and ego. So the first part was a slog, not something I was desperate to pickup and continue reading, but once things started rolling it was a lot more enjoyable.

Otherwise, from someone not of Indian or South Asian descent – e.g. not knowing the cultures – I do find reading some of the things in Tarquin Hall books fascinating. As an outsider I would see a city like Delhi being filled by nothing but Indians, but as this passage indicates it is so much more complex:

"There was no substitute for the tamasha [public spectacle] of being amongst the jostling crowds of passengers in the stations, either. In New Delhi they were drawn from every corner ofthe country. While crossing the bridge, he found himself amongst Sikhs, Rajasthanis, Maharashtrians, Tamils and Tibetan monks. He passed a family of Gujarati villagers, who'd evidently disembarked from the Varanasi train and were carrying plastic containers of holy Ganga water. Behind them appeared a group of Baul minstrels, easily identifiable in their patched cloaks, their instrument cases tucked under their arms. All the while over the PA system came announcements about the departures of trains bound for some of the furthest destinations in the country—Jaisalmer in the Thar Desert; Darjeeling in the foothills of the Himalayas; Thiruvananthapuram, a three-thousand-kilometer journey to India’s southern tip."

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In other words, a place that was seemingly NOT cosmopolitan... unless you knew what to look for. From a western standpoint, a cosmopolitan city is filled with people from literally everywhere: all of Asia, all of Europe, three-quarters of Africa, half of Latin America and so on including peoples of every religion. Not necessarily so with India, but due to its vastness, religions, and caste system it is something of a world within itself. ( )

Ce coup-ci notre ami Puri a bien du mal entre un concurrent à surveiller et sa mami-ji qui fait des siennes... ( )

I need to remember to listen to the next book in the series; the Indian dialect makes me smile when I read it and I'm sure it would be even better to listen to.
The books are light, humorous, and give some insight into Indian culture. ( )

The Case of the Love Commandos - Hall
audio performance by Sam Dastor
3 stars

Tarquin Hall is good at giving funny titles to his books. This one competes with The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken for the most outrageous title in his series about Vish Puri, most private detective. And the book isn’t without humor, just not as much as the title lead me to expect.

Following the formula of the previous books, Hall balances serious crimes and social issues with humor. Mummy-ji pursues a pickpocket while Puri uncovers murder and massive corruption. The Love Commandos of the title is an activist organization that uses extreme methods to enable young couples of differing casts to avoid traditionally arranged marriages. It seems that Puri’s operative, ‘Face Cream’, moonlights as a commando.

There’s a bit too much going on in this book; political corruption, industrial exploitation, religious persecution, economic disparity, organized crime, murder. It tipped the balance of harsh reality and humor more in the direction of reality. I still enjoyed it, but the resolutions of the many plot complications were a bit messy.





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A good time, through and through - I'm completely enamored of Vish Puri and all of his trusty operatives! ( )