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Inspector Ghote #14
The Sheriff Of Bombay
When Inspector Ghote is asked to escort an ageing British film hero round Bombay's notorious red-light district, at first he is just embarrassed. But then he is confronted with a tricky problem - murder. And the suspect is none other than the highly respectable Sheriff of Bombay, ex-Rajah and former captain of the Indian cricket team. How can a mere policeman cope with all that?
224 pages, Paperback
Published May 15, 1988
About the author
H.R.F. Keating
156 books54 followersHenry Reymond Fitzwalter Keating was an English writer of crime fiction most notable for his series of novels featuring Inspector Ghote of the Bombay CID.
H. R. F. KEATING was well versed in the worlds of crime, fiction and nonfiction. He was the crime books reviewer for The Times for fifteen years, as well as serving as the chairman of the Crime Writers Association and the Society of Authors. He won the CWA Gold Dagger Award twice, and in 1996 was awarded the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger for outstanding service to crime fiction.
Series:
. Inspector Ghote
. Harriet Martens
Series contributed to:
. Malice Domestic
. Perfectly Criminal
H. R. F. KEATING was well versed in the worlds of crime, fiction and nonfiction. He was the crime books reviewer for The Times for fifteen years, as well as serving as the chairman of the Crime Writers Association and the Society of Authors. He won the CWA Gold Dagger Award twice, and in 1996 was awarded the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger for outstanding service to crime fiction.
Series:
. Inspector Ghote
. Harriet Martens
Series contributed to:
. Malice Domestic
. Perfectly Criminal
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 26, 2012
Book marketers like genres. They love to talk about niches. If your book doesn’t land in a niche, it falls between the cracks—forgotten; unread. That’s why detective fiction is so popular with booksellers. They know what shelf to put it on. A deeper question is: why is it so popular with readers? One answer is that a lot of it is pretty damn good.
A few years back an Englishman named John Williams who loved American detective fiction traveled to the US to seek out and interview his favorite American detective fiction authors. He toured the country and met and talked with James Lee Burke, Tony Hillerman, James Elroy, Andrew Vachss, James Crumley, Sara Paretsky, Joe Gores, Gar Anthony Harwood, Carl Hiasson, Elmore Leonard, George V. Higgins and the late Eugene Izzi. If you’ve never read a detective novel, this is a pretty good track to run on. (Though Williams tastes run to what might be described as “hard-boiled”). His trip was memorialized in a worthwhile, but now out of print, memoir titled Into the Badlands.
There are so many detective novels out there that a reader needs the kind of help that Into the Badlands provides. Mystery Guide.com http://www.mysteryguide.com/index.html is a great on-line source for information on the grand category of “mystery” and breaks it down into seventeen different genres! These include “private eye,” “hard-boiled,” and “history,” to name just three. Yes, a history genre. That is correct. There are shelves full of mysteries set in medieval times, for example, where nuns, or monks or retired soldiers solve murders in an historical milieu. I don’t prefer them, myself, but a couple I’ve read are very engaging and skillfully done. What I look for in a detective novel is a sense of place and a well-defined main character. On the Williams list James Lee Burke and Tony Hillerman do the best job of satisfying my need.
But back to Mr. Williams—I’m not sure that he needed to leave England to find two of the best mystery writers—R.D. Wingfield and H.R.F. Keating. Perhaps R. D. Wingfield wasn’t published yet when John Williams began his quest. Perhaps neither Wingfield or Keating is hard-boiled enough for his taste.
Wingfield is responsible for the Inspector Jack Frost series (A Touch of Frost, Night Frost, Winter Frost, and Hard Frost). Jack Frost is a rumpled, politically incorrect, anti-establishment character whose only purpose is to bumble through a case until he solves it. He is not motivated by acclaim or hope of promotion. He seems motivated only by motive. I suppose that, technically, the Frost books are procedurals. But they are procedurals not in the sense of how-the-cop-solves-the-crime but in their evocation of how organizations really work. In most murder mysteries you begin with a dead body and the detective starts talking to people. One clue leads to another until the crime is solved. With Wingfield’s books you get a clearer picture of what the life of a homicide inspector might be like with multiple cases which may or may not link together to deal with simultaneously. In addition, the interaction of the the folks in the office affect the pursuit of justice, or injustice. And, he shows how the self-serving antics of Frost’s boss, an incompetent bureaucratic numbers cruncher gets in the way of the pursuit of criminals. Frost is untidy, his life is untidy and his job is untidy. Everything in his world is a great big mess and he is relieved when he finally clears a case. Even then, there is no sense of finality. We know that Jack Frost has more to do. Wingfield’s books race at a high rate of speed, usually for about four hundred pages which is long for a detective novel, with short stops for Frost to wipe the ashes off his shirt and try to recover from insulting someone. These books are highly recommended. They are never contrived—a problem with detective novels.
But my favorite of all the detectives is Inspector Ghote, the creation of H. R. F. Keating. Inspector Ghote lives not in LA or New York, Chicago, New Orleans or London. Ghote lives and works in Bombay, India. In contrast to the detectives who people most other novels, inspector Ghote is rather soft-boiled; curried even. I’ve only read two so far but there are more than a dozen left to read.
Inspector Ghote seems mostly unknown in the United States. If you check Amazon.com you will see that there are virtually no reader reviews. But Keating is a proflific writer with perhaps twenty books on his resume. Without knowing his body of work I have the highest respect for his skill based on reading The Sheriff of Bombay and Dead on Time. Both are short, two hundred pages or so and quick reads. Quick but very satisfying. Anyone who has ever tried writing anything will appreciate the craftsmanship you’ll find in these books. In addition, Keating has a wonderful sense of place and if one has an affinity for or interest in India, it’s delightful to spend time with Ghote.
Inspector Ghote seems overmatched by his cases, his superiors, his suspects and witnesses. But he has extreme confidence in himself and pushes tenaciously for a conclusion to his assigned crimes. And, while we follow his progress Keating gives us some education about India, parts of India that most Westerners will never know. The Sheriff of Bombay is set in the red-light district of Bombay and we meet prostitutes of every class and caste as Ghote pursues the killer of one of the “ladies.” Yet Ghote’s trip through Bombay’s brothels doesn’t feel seedy, nasty or sinfull. It seems instead to be karmic reflecting the Hindu belief that past lives determine the present one. Karma dictates that we are each actors playing our parts. The women are treated with great sympathy and even the suspects are treated with dignity. Ghote occasionally uses a heavy hand but it is mostly through raising his voice and browbeating rather than roughing someone up.
In Dead on Time Ghote travels to a rural village where he recalls his own village boyhood and relives the vision and smells of the hour of cow dust when the cattle return from the fields at dusk. And in Dead on Time Keating has fun with his title theme contrasting city time with village time and making constant, clever word plays on time. There are persistent references to clocks and wrist watches and scenes that take place in watch towers. The murder occurs in a clock shop with a clock salesman as victim and one of the chief suspects is a watch salesman. Ghote is put on a severe time deadline by his superior who owns a beautiful new wristwatch while Ghote’s timepiece goes on the blink. Ghote is chastised by his wife for not spending enough time with his son. In the end he is “dead on time” for his deadline (as in “dead on target.”)
It’s hard to say what genre Mysteryguide.com would place Ghote in for, shockingly, Keating doesn’t appear on the website at all. From our provincial point of view we can place him in the genre of Foreign Detective. H.R.F. Keating is the author of Crime & Mystery : The 100 Best Books. Presumably he knows where he belongs.
A few years back an Englishman named John Williams who loved American detective fiction traveled to the US to seek out and interview his favorite American detective fiction authors. He toured the country and met and talked with James Lee Burke, Tony Hillerman, James Elroy, Andrew Vachss, James Crumley, Sara Paretsky, Joe Gores, Gar Anthony Harwood, Carl Hiasson, Elmore Leonard, George V. Higgins and the late Eugene Izzi. If you’ve never read a detective novel, this is a pretty good track to run on. (Though Williams tastes run to what might be described as “hard-boiled”). His trip was memorialized in a worthwhile, but now out of print, memoir titled Into the Badlands.
There are so many detective novels out there that a reader needs the kind of help that Into the Badlands provides. Mystery Guide.com http://www.mysteryguide.com/index.html is a great on-line source for information on the grand category of “mystery” and breaks it down into seventeen different genres! These include “private eye,” “hard-boiled,” and “history,” to name just three. Yes, a history genre. That is correct. There are shelves full of mysteries set in medieval times, for example, where nuns, or monks or retired soldiers solve murders in an historical milieu. I don’t prefer them, myself, but a couple I’ve read are very engaging and skillfully done. What I look for in a detective novel is a sense of place and a well-defined main character. On the Williams list James Lee Burke and Tony Hillerman do the best job of satisfying my need.
But back to Mr. Williams—I’m not sure that he needed to leave England to find two of the best mystery writers—R.D. Wingfield and H.R.F. Keating. Perhaps R. D. Wingfield wasn’t published yet when John Williams began his quest. Perhaps neither Wingfield or Keating is hard-boiled enough for his taste.
Wingfield is responsible for the Inspector Jack Frost series (A Touch of Frost, Night Frost, Winter Frost, and Hard Frost). Jack Frost is a rumpled, politically incorrect, anti-establishment character whose only purpose is to bumble through a case until he solves it. He is not motivated by acclaim or hope of promotion. He seems motivated only by motive. I suppose that, technically, the Frost books are procedurals. But they are procedurals not in the sense of how-the-cop-solves-the-crime but in their evocation of how organizations really work. In most murder mysteries you begin with a dead body and the detective starts talking to people. One clue leads to another until the crime is solved. With Wingfield’s books you get a clearer picture of what the life of a homicide inspector might be like with multiple cases which may or may not link together to deal with simultaneously. In addition, the interaction of the the folks in the office affect the pursuit of justice, or injustice. And, he shows how the self-serving antics of Frost’s boss, an incompetent bureaucratic numbers cruncher gets in the way of the pursuit of criminals. Frost is untidy, his life is untidy and his job is untidy. Everything in his world is a great big mess and he is relieved when he finally clears a case. Even then, there is no sense of finality. We know that Jack Frost has more to do. Wingfield’s books race at a high rate of speed, usually for about four hundred pages which is long for a detective novel, with short stops for Frost to wipe the ashes off his shirt and try to recover from insulting someone. These books are highly recommended. They are never contrived—a problem with detective novels.
But my favorite of all the detectives is Inspector Ghote, the creation of H. R. F. Keating. Inspector Ghote lives not in LA or New York, Chicago, New Orleans or London. Ghote lives and works in Bombay, India. In contrast to the detectives who people most other novels, inspector Ghote is rather soft-boiled; curried even. I’ve only read two so far but there are more than a dozen left to read.
Inspector Ghote seems mostly unknown in the United States. If you check Amazon.com you will see that there are virtually no reader reviews. But Keating is a proflific writer with perhaps twenty books on his resume. Without knowing his body of work I have the highest respect for his skill based on reading The Sheriff of Bombay and Dead on Time. Both are short, two hundred pages or so and quick reads. Quick but very satisfying. Anyone who has ever tried writing anything will appreciate the craftsmanship you’ll find in these books. In addition, Keating has a wonderful sense of place and if one has an affinity for or interest in India, it’s delightful to spend time with Ghote.
Inspector Ghote seems overmatched by his cases, his superiors, his suspects and witnesses. But he has extreme confidence in himself and pushes tenaciously for a conclusion to his assigned crimes. And, while we follow his progress Keating gives us some education about India, parts of India that most Westerners will never know. The Sheriff of Bombay is set in the red-light district of Bombay and we meet prostitutes of every class and caste as Ghote pursues the killer of one of the “ladies.” Yet Ghote’s trip through Bombay’s brothels doesn’t feel seedy, nasty or sinfull. It seems instead to be karmic reflecting the Hindu belief that past lives determine the present one. Karma dictates that we are each actors playing our parts. The women are treated with great sympathy and even the suspects are treated with dignity. Ghote occasionally uses a heavy hand but it is mostly through raising his voice and browbeating rather than roughing someone up.
In Dead on Time Ghote travels to a rural village where he recalls his own village boyhood and relives the vision and smells of the hour of cow dust when the cattle return from the fields at dusk. And in Dead on Time Keating has fun with his title theme contrasting city time with village time and making constant, clever word plays on time. There are persistent references to clocks and wrist watches and scenes that take place in watch towers. The murder occurs in a clock shop with a clock salesman as victim and one of the chief suspects is a watch salesman. Ghote is put on a severe time deadline by his superior who owns a beautiful new wristwatch while Ghote’s timepiece goes on the blink. Ghote is chastised by his wife for not spending enough time with his son. In the end he is “dead on time” for his deadline (as in “dead on target.”)
It’s hard to say what genre Mysteryguide.com would place Ghote in for, shockingly, Keating doesn’t appear on the website at all. From our provincial point of view we can place him in the genre of Foreign Detective. H.R.F. Keating is the author of Crime & Mystery : The 100 Best Books. Presumably he knows where he belongs.
October 31, 2020
This classic H.R.F. KEATING mystery takes place in the brothels of Bombay. Inspector Ghote unwittingly witnesses a murder scene as he is escorting a visiting British celebrity. Not trusting the diligence of his fellow police inspectors, Ghote takes evidence from the scene in the hope of solving this murder.
We are drawn into the frenetic city life of Bombay that makes our California traffic congestion seem tame.
We are drawn into the frenetic city life of Bombay that makes our California traffic congestion seem tame.
August 19, 2010
Inspector Ghote is tied up in a frustrating theft case that's going nowhere when his superior gives him a new responsibility - accompany an aging film star through Bombay's sex district. Eww. Ghote is not thrilled, but he has no choice. Surely he can put up with this for one night and get back to work. But things don't work out that way.
At their first stop he finds a murdered prostitute, strangled and beaten to death, and he sees the murderer. The problem is, he's the only one to see the suspect, and the man is a celebrity - the Sheriff of Bombay from the title. The position is largely a political one, with just a few real duties and lots of baby kissing and hand shaking, with an occasional bazaar opening thrown in. But the man is also a cricket star with a devoted following. How is Ghote going to put together a case that will stick? Especially since he's ordered not to question the suspect at all, but build a case without telling anyone what he's up to.
This is certainly different from the usual Inspector Ghote story, which doesn't make an effort to sanitize Indian life and society, but is rather a look at police work in the busy, multicultural metropolis of Bombay. But this one is full of the seamy side of life there. It's not really meant to be titillating. In fact, the prostitutes, from the 5 rupee gay girls to the high priced beautiful call girls, all get a chance to tell their story of how they got into the business and why they stayed. There are a few tragedies, here and there, but for most of the women, prostitution is a trade that they are happy enough to be in, since they don't see much else to choose from. The girl Munni is almost philosophical about it. She gets to have fun with many, many men, and if a few are not so nice, well, that happens sometimes.
Overall, it was a well done and engrossing book. If a few of the twists were a bit predictable, it was still a good read and I'm glad I found it.
At their first stop he finds a murdered prostitute, strangled and beaten to death, and he sees the murderer. The problem is, he's the only one to see the suspect, and the man is a celebrity - the Sheriff of Bombay from the title. The position is largely a political one, with just a few real duties and lots of baby kissing and hand shaking, with an occasional bazaar opening thrown in. But the man is also a cricket star with a devoted following. How is Ghote going to put together a case that will stick? Especially since he's ordered not to question the suspect at all, but build a case without telling anyone what he's up to.
This is certainly different from the usual Inspector Ghote story, which doesn't make an effort to sanitize Indian life and society, but is rather a look at police work in the busy, multicultural metropolis of Bombay. But this one is full of the seamy side of life there. It's not really meant to be titillating. In fact, the prostitutes, from the 5 rupee gay girls to the high priced beautiful call girls, all get a chance to tell their story of how they got into the business and why they stayed. There are a few tragedies, here and there, but for most of the women, prostitution is a trade that they are happy enough to be in, since they don't see much else to choose from. The girl Munni is almost philosophical about it. She gets to have fun with many, many men, and if a few are not so nice, well, that happens sometimes.
Overall, it was a well done and engrossing book. If a few of the twists were a bit predictable, it was still a good read and I'm glad I found it.
June 19, 2018
I find the subject of this book to be repulsive and disgusting. I could not get past chapter 3. The Mundane conversation about forced prostitution, crooked madams, crooked doctors, and young girls who are sold into a type of slavery made me sick! And all of that happened before we got to investigating the main crime of the book. What finally sent me over the edge and caused me to get rid of this book is that the murderer was going to be considered a heinous criminal, but the men who used and abused the girls in the Brothels were seen as ordinary, good old boys just having some fun.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews