The Case of the Love Commandos: A Review

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Umm.....The book makes for a light reading. If you are an Indian reading this book, chances are you will be supremely impressed by Mr. Hall's knowledge (or research) on Indian towns and how things work here. I may add here that he is a British journalist living now in India with his wife. That said, I found the book enjoyable to a great extent but also found some bits and parts quite irritating. 


The most enjoyable things first. The caste of characters and their names. Consider these- Facecream, Flush and Tubelight. The plot is thick and quite absorbing. You do want to find out what is going on with the characters and do want to get to the bottom of things. The plot takes you from Khan Market in New Delhi to a pilgrimage to Vaishno Devi to the villages of UP. The author is very particular about the details of the gulleys and the lanes that he mentions in the story and I felt as if he might have visited each one of them standing there thinking about how to further the plot.



The sub-plot which takes place in Jammu, of which Puri's mother Mummy ji takes charge of, is what I found annoying. There too, no complaints from how the things unravel but the jargon, after a certain point, began to get on my nerves. The passive sentences that she uses and the Hindi of those translated into English language- reading that taxed my eyes and my brain at the same time.



In all the detective and his team are a lovable lot and an attention to detail is what makes it a winner for me.

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