Dead on Time

For over twenty-five years, mystery fans have been intrigued by H.R.F. Keating's India--from the teeming streets of Bombay to the remote countryside unchanged by the passage of time. Here is the latest episode in what TIME magazine calls "a delightful and convincing comic series." Inspector Ganesh Ghote is once more handed a baffling mystery to investigate--and in this case, it's also a political hot potato. Ramrao Pendke, heir to a massive country fortune, is in Bombay recovering from a kidney transplant operation. Out taking exercise, Pendke visits the Ticktock watchworks and is bludgeoned to death. The head of the Bombay police backs the prompt arrest made by a pet officier of his, Assistant Inspector Lobo--who has forced a confession out of Rustom Fardoomji, owner of the watch store. Ghote has doubts about the confession. He also agrees with the relatives of the accused: Fardoomji would have no reason to do away with a wealthy customer. In order to placate these influential relatives, Ghote is sent to the dead man's home village--a slow-paced backwater the inspector finds maddening. But Ghote is utterly convinced that persistence, logic, and good police work will produce the real killer; in the course of his energetically pursued investigation he interviews an astrologer, the village barber, a boy Brahmin, and the dead man's grieving grandfather. In the face of a 24-hour ultimatum, Ghote at last finds the essential clue that solves the most difficult case of his career.