November 15, 2018 | kasarak
India!
Meet Vish Puri, India's most private investigator. Portly, persistent, and unmistakably Punjabi, he cuts a determined swath through modern India's swindlers, cheats, and murderers.In hot and dusty Delhi, where call centers and malls are changing the ancient fabric of Indian life, Puri's main work comes from screening prospective marriage partners, a job once the preserve of aunties and family priests.But when an honest public litigator is accused of murdering his maidservant, it takes all of Puri's resources to investigate. How will he trace the fate of the girl, known only as Mary, in a population of more than one billion? Who is taking potshots at him and his prize chili plants? And why is his widowed "Mummy-ji" attempting to play sleuth when everyone knows mummies are not detectives?With his team of undercover operatives -- Tubelight, Flush, and Facecream -- Puri ingeniously combines modern techniques with principles of detection established in India more than two thousand years ago -- long before "that Johnny-come-lately" Sherlock Holmes donned his deerstalker.The search for Mary takes him to the desert oasis of Jaipur and the remote mines of Jharkhand. From Puri's well-heeled Gymkhana Club to the slums where the servant classes live, his adventures reveal modern India in all its seething complexity.
France!
Walker pens the first in a wonderful series that follows the exploits of Benoit Courreges, affectionately nicknamed Bruno, the chief of police in a small French village in the South of France where the rituals of the caf still rule.
Turkey!
It is 1836. Europe is modernizing, and the Ottoman Empire must follow suit. But just before the Sultan announces sweeping changes, a wave of murders threatens the fragile balance of power in his court. Who is behind them? Only one intelligence agent can be trusted to find out: Yashim Lastname, a man both brilliant and near-invisible in this world. You see, Yashim is a eunuch.He leads us into the palace's luxurious seraglios and Istanbul's teeming streets, and leans on the wisdom of a dyspeptic Polish ambassador, a transsexual dancer, and a Creole-born queen mother. And he introduces us to the Janissaries. For 400 years, they were the empire's elite soldiers, but they grew too powerful, and ten years ago, the Sultan had them crushed. Are the Janissaries staging a brutal comeback? The Janissary Tree is the first in a series featuring the most enchanting detective since Precious Ramotswe of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. Splendidly paced and illuminating, it belongs beside Caleb Carr's The Alienist and the historical thrillers of Arturo Perez-Reverte.
Brazil!
A Brazilian bestseller, this sophisticated story of murder, sex, and corruption introduces a riveting new crime series. In a parking garage in the center of Rio de Janeiro, corporate executive Ricardo Carvalho is found dead in his car, a bullet in his head. It appears that he has been robbed and murdered. But the clues are few. The gun and his briefcase are nowhere to be found - just the kind of case that is always assigned to Inspector Espinosa. Not your typical detective, the world-weary Espinosa has the mind of a philosopher, the heart of a romantic, and enough experience to realize that things are rarelyas they first seem.As Espinosa attempts to unravel the mystery of what really happened to Carvalho and his secretary, Rose, who disappeared shortly afterward, he discovers that the businessman had recently taken out a million-dollar life insurance policy. And there's another complication: Espinosa's attraction to Carvalho's beautiful widow, who is also one of the prime suspects. When two more bodies turn up, Espinosa is forced to shift the investigation into high gear before anyone else becomes a casualty.Hurtling to a surprising and satisfying conclusion, The Silence of the Rain is an intelligent, unconventional detective novel with a distinctly Latin American flavor and a colorful, exciting locale. In Espinosa, America is about to meet an irresistible new sleuth.
Sicily!
Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano has become an international sensation whose adventures have been translated from Italian into eight languages, from Dutch to Japanese. The Shape of Wateris the first book in this sly, witty, engaging series with its sardonic take on Sicilian life. The goats of Vigata once grazed on the trash-strewn, sirocco-swept site still known as the Pasture. Now local enterprise of a different sort flourishes: drug dealers and prostitutes of every flavor. But their discreet trade is upset when two employees of the Splendor Refuse Collection Company discover the body of engineer Silvio Lupanello, one of the local movers and shakers-apparently deceased in flagrante-at the Pasture. The coroner's verdict is death from natural causes-refreshingly unusual for Sicily. But Inspector Salvo Montalbano, as honest as he is streetwise and as scathing to fools and villains as he is compassionate to their victims, is not ready to close the case-even though he's being pressured by Vigata's police chief, judge, and bishop. Picking his way nimbly through a labyrinth of high-comedy corruption, delicious meals, vendetta fire-power, and carefully planted false clues, Montalbano can be relied on, whatever the cost, to get to the heart of the matter. Translated by Stephen Sartarelli.
Scotland!
When Priscilla Halburton-Smythe brings her London playwright fiance home to Lochdubh, the whole town is delighted -- save perhaps for love-smitten bobby Hamish Macbeth. But the morning after a posh engagement party, one of the guests, Captain Bartlett, is murdered on a grouse hunt. Unfortunately, the prime suspects are the party guests. And a second murder soon follows the first. Now Hamish Macbeth must cut through the alibis before the killer strikes again . . . all the while trying to woo the lovely Priscilla from her jealous boyfriend.