A Peculiar Case
Review of the Penguin Classics Kindle eBook edition (2011) of the original Collins Crime Club hardcover (1964)

It was called the Perfect Murder right from the start. First the Bombay papers plastered it all the way across their pages. And then it was taken up by papers all over India.
The Perfect Murder: Police at House.
The Perfect Murder: New Police Moves.
The Perfect Murder: Police Baffled.
- opening sentences of "A Perfect Murder".

Somehow I missed reading HRF Keating's Inspector Ghote novels (1964-2009) when they were first released, but came across them only recently. This first book left a very odd impression and is surprising as a debut for a series that went on to 26 books. The lead Inspector Ghote is portrayed here as a rather naive detective who is belittled by his superiors in the Bombay (then the name of present day Mumbai) Police and its related government ministry and also henpecked at home by his shrewish wife. Together with his sidekick/Watson Axel Svensson (a Swedish criminologist sent to India to study international policing) they stumble towards an eventual solution.

The book feels like a bait and switch right off the bat as the so-called "Perfect Murder" is revealed to be a non-fatal assault on a Mr. Perfect, the secretary of a rich man named Mr. Arun Varde. The initial outrage announcing a "murder" from the household has been broadcast further by the scurrilous press and is the basis for a running joke throughout. The farce continues when Ghote and Svensson arrive to investigate and are met with denials and obstruction by everyone in the household, except for the secretary who is still unconscious and unable to be interviewed. It is all dragged out to book length with one fruitless interview after another with a diversion to another case involving the supposed theft of a single rupee note from the office of the Minister in charge of the Police.

See DVD cover at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9b/The_Perfect_Murder_%28film%29.jpg
The cover for the DVD release of the 1988 film adaptation of "A Perfect Murder". Actor Naseeruddin Shah as Inspector Ghote doesn't even get on the poster, which instead features Stellan Skarsgård (criminologist Axel Svensson) and Madhur Jaffrey (Mrs. Lai, renamed from the Mrs. Varde in the novel). Image sourced from Wikipedia.

Ghote and Svensson still solve both cases in the end and the reason for the obstruction becomes clear. It is an odd beginning to what apparently was a popular series. I think I will try at least one more to find out if the later books became more standard procedurals. Otherwise this would be cringe reading to have a protagonist who is belittled throughout his own books.

Trivia and Links
The Perfect Murder was adapted as the same-titled England/India film in 1988 directed by Zahar Hai, produced by Merchant Ivory Productions. I haven't watched the whole film, but from the opening scenes it seems to have been adapted as a comedy farce along the lines of the Inspector Clouseau films. You can watch the whole film on YouTube here.

There was a May 2020 announcement that the Inspector Ghote/HRF Keating novels were to be adapted for an Indian TV series. No TV series has yet appeared though. You can read the announcement in Variety here. ( )

One liner - overrated clumsy work full of stereotypes.

Perfect Murder is the sixth or seventh Ghote book that I have read and easily the worst. If I had read this book first, I would not have probably attempted to read any other.

The title refers to the attempted murder of a Parsi named Mr Perfect. He is seriously injured at the beginning of the novel but doesn't die. The residents of the house where the incident happens are thoroughly uncooperative. It is only very occasionally that Ghote gets his questions answered. Finally towards the end, he makes a major leap of intuition and solves the case. There is a parallel track of a minor mystery which doesn't amount to much.

The later Ghote books are more polished and realistic. Even when the plot was weak, the writing was enjoyable. Perfect Murder is a rambling work with characters who are caricatures. The plot is not particularly interesting and it moves in fits and starts. Even though this is the first book in the Ghote series, a reader should probably start with one of the later works. ( )

I'd heard about the Inspector Ghote books for years but had never read one. I thought a book set in 1960s Bombay would be fun and evoke memories for me. Granted, Keating had never been to India when he wrote this, and in fact he wrote half a dozen more books before setting foot in the country. But it won a Gold Dagger award, so it must be good, right?

Well. It is OK as a mystery. But the casual racism and stereotyping were tough to take. I know it's a product of its time, but Paul Scott managed to write general fiction set in the waning years of colonial India without turning every Indian into a caricature. Inspector Ghote is a man of integrity, which sets him apart from everyone around him. He has a wife who is perpetually angry because he's never home and a boss who worries mostly about the effects of investigating (or not investigating) elite and powerful people. The "Perfect Murder" is actually an attack on a Mr. Perfect (we're never allowed to forget he's Parsi), who works for a powerful and hugely fat Bombay tycoon (we're never allowed to forget he's fat). Think Raymond Chandler meets Inspector Clouseau.

I don't think any of the Indians were described as physically normal, except maybe for a teenage boy and two women. Everyone else is either fat or emaciated. The mysteries (there are actually two) are interesting but the path to solving them is convoluted and then comes to an abrupt end. About 150 pages in I began to enjoy the crime aspects, but that wasn't enough.

I guess we're supposed to read this for the atmosphere; several readers commented on how well Keating describes the onset of monsoon. Except that he makes it sound as if the pre-monsoon heat shows up a couple of days before monsoon. Nope. I could go on, but you get the idea.

Read it as an artifact of an era, but please don't think that it is an authentic or accurate, let alone sympathetic, depiction of 1960s India. ( )

This I loved. It's comedy and social critic masquerading as a mystery novel. Written in the mid 60's, this is the first Inspector Ghote novel. Set in Bombay some 15 years after India became independent, we follow inspector Ghote, a young husband and father, trying to be a good policeman, a good inspector, following the rules, pursing justice and all that but coming up against the powers of tradition, religion, racism, money, corruption. He's like a Charlie Brown type of character that we kinda identify with and hang on to while the author paints us this portrait of a society quite different from ours but much like ours in its failing, it's human flaws. It's funny, it's satirical, it's critical and it has somewhat of a mystery "The Perfect Murder" which is the name of the victim : Mr. Perfect. I'll definitely go hunt the next book of this series. ( )

I had not read this series for a while so I started with the first. A Perfect Murder won some prizes but that was in a different era. I thought Inspector Ghote was too downtrodden, disrespected by the people he questions, by his superiors, by his nagging fishwife of a spouse and almost every one he came in contact with. This was tiring. He is an intelligent thoughtful man on the one hand, and extremely naive on the other since he considers having read one book on the investigation of crimes he knows what to do in all situations.This is like Precious of The Ladies Number One Detective Agency who also read one book which helped her become a sleuth. ( )