The perfect murder

by H.R.F. Keating

Paper Book, 1997

Status

Available

Publication

Chicago Academy Chicago 1997

Description

It is Inspector Ghote's bad luck to be landed with the case of the perfect murder at the start of his career with the Bombay Police. As if it were not enough to have to contend with the cunning and important tycoon Lala Varde, Ghote finds himself investigating a mysterious theft of a single rupee from the desk of yet another very important person, the Minister of Police Affairs and the Arts. "If people would only behave in a simple, reasonable, logical way," sighs the Inspector, as he struggles through the quagmires of incompetence and corruption to solve these curious crimes. The Perfect Murder introduced Inspector Ghote: Bombay CID's most dutiful officer, and one of the greatest, most engaging creations in all detective fiction.

User reviews

LibraryThing member PeterCat1
Perfect Murder is the sixth or seventh Khote 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
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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 Khote series, a reader should probably start with one of the later works.
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LibraryThing member Eyejaybee
Very disappointing - one of the most irritating and sanctimonious novels I have read for a long time, suffused with triviality.
LibraryThing member Condorena
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
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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.
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