The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken

Jul 7, 2025 2:17 AM

Author:Tarquin Hall

Vish Puri is as fond of butter chicken as the next Punjabi. And when there's plenty on offer at the Delhi Durbar hotel where he's attending an India Premier League cricket match dinner, he's the first to tuck in. Irfan Khan, father of Pakistani star cricketer Kamran Khan, can't resist either. But the creamy dish proves his undoing. After a few mouthfuls, he collapses on the floor, dead.

Clearly this isn't a case of Delhi Belly.

But who amongst the Bollywood stars, politicians, bureaucrats and industrialists poisoned Khan is a mystery. And with the capital's police chief proving as incompetent as ever, it falls to Most Private Investigators to find out the truth.

Puri is soon able to link Khan to a bald bookie called Full Moon and all the clues point to the involvement of a gambling syndicate that controls the illegal billion dollar betting industry.

The answers seem to lie in Surat, the diamond cutting and polishing capital of the world (where Puri's chief undercover operative Tubelight meets his match) and across the border in Pakistan, Puri's nemesis, the one country where he has sworn never to set foot.

Or do they? A certain determined, grey-haired lady with a unique insight into the murder believes that the portly detective is barking up 'a wrong tree.'

Is Mummy-ji right?Is there more to the murder than meets the eye? And why, to make life even more complicated for Vish Puri, has someone tried to steal the longest moustache in the world - from right under the nose of its owner? Literally.

Reviews

This book is written with a wry sense of humour and a light touch . . . The author perfectly captures the cadences of Anglo-Indian English and the glossary of Indian terms at the back of the book is invaluable. This is the third in the Vish Puri series of books and I eagerly await the fourth.

—— Crime Review

The Punjabi Poirot is dogged by calamities in this comic tale

—— Woman

Outstanding third mystery . . . Well drawn, colorful characters bolster a whodunit sure to appeal to those who enjoy a dash of humor with their crime.

—— Publishers Weekly

This lovely series is a great example of crime fiction functioning as a foreign holiday for the armchair traveler. Hall’s readers become happily immersed in the glorious rhythms and neologism of ‘Dilli’ language, while the cuisine is so well described you can almost smell it.

—— Morning Star

I love Hall’s blend of inventive plot and Ealing-Comedy eccentricity.

—— Saga magazine

This is my surprise hit of the year so far, and I can’t recommend it highly enough

—— ReaderDad blog

Urban has conjured up an engaging tale of what might have been

—— Ben Felsenburg , Metro

Plan D is a highly accomplished debut, ambitious, complex and written with great flair

—— LoiteringwithIntent blog

It has everything you could wish for in a good thriller

—— Die ZEIT

A heroine every bit as provocative as Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander.

—— The Dallas Morning News

Part Lisbeth Salander, part Jason Bourne, Munroe comes out swinging hard again. . . . A gritty, suspenseful novel.

—— Library Journal

Settings don’t come much more Gothic than Wreaking, the derelict, decaying...psychiatric hospital of James Scudamore’s striking third novel

—— Daily Mail

This is the work of a writer totally at ease with, and confident in, his powers. A wonderfully assured novel with scope and ambition and with enough of a mystery at its heart to keep the reader hooked till the end

—— We Love This Book

We are left with the characters in our heads for days, and the sense of unease that Scudamore cleverly conjures up

—— Press Association Syndication

A twisted, unsettling tale of family lies and lonely souls

—— Shortlist

An immersion in the physical and psychic ruins of a contemporary Britain which enchants and disturbs, lures and repels. The inner poetry and descriptive mastery of James Scudamore's Wreaking are riches which cannot be forgotten. If you only read one novel in coming times, make it this astonishing and deeply moving chronicle

—— Alan Warner

This is an impressive work from the critically acclaimed author of Heliopolis

—— Good Book Guide

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