Portly, perceptive and spectacularly moustachioed, India’s finest private detective, Vish Puri, tackles his most difficult case to date in the long-awaited return of Tarquin Hall’s delightful humorous whodunit series set in New Delhi.

“Vish Puri is the Indian Poirot” Financial Times
“A wonderfully engaging PI” The Times
“Vish Puri [is] a Punjabi Sherlock Holmes” The Guardian

For Vish Puri, India’s Most Private Detective, the news that he has won the long-coveted International Detective of the Year award, to be presented in a glitzy ceremony in London, makes this the best day of his life.

But to his deep dismay, a senior bureaucrat from the Ministry of Finance gives him a secret mission he can’t refuse: to track down India’s most-wanted fugitive. Dr Bhatt’s medicines caused the deaths of hundreds, and the billionaire fraudster – code named the Bombay Duck – fled for the UK before he could be arrested.

Puri’s only spending a week in London. He’s never set foot in the UK before. And most important of all, he’s already promised his wife he won’t do any work while they’re away.

There’s only one solution: lie, lie, lie. Puri dives headfirst into the case, in between visiting all the tourist sites, aided and abetted by his formidable, meddling Mummy-ji, who Puri definitely didn’t invite to join them. But can Puri hook the Bombay Duck and bring him to justice before the fugitive’s many enemies get to him first?

Packed with the sights, sounds and flavours of both New Delhi and London, author Tarquin Hall – who divides his time between India and the UK – delivers an irresistible read for fans of Alexander McCall Smith, Harini Nagendra and Jesse Sutanto.