The Body in the Billiard Room (Inspector Ghote Mystery)

High above the sweltering plains of South India sits the tiny hill station of Ootacamund. “Ooty,” as it is known, is quite out of place in modern India: a bastion of the Empire, it remains very British and boasts rose gardens, zebra-striped pedestrian crossings, some “Colonel Blimps” who stayed on, and the famous Ooty Club. And in this club, filled with silver trophies and stuffed tigers and portraits of the Queen (Victoria, that is), the unthinkable happens. On the very billiard table where snooker was invented, one of the Club’s servants is found lying very neatly on the dark green felt, dead as a cue ball. Ooty is shocked by the murder (for it so proves to be), and Inspector Ghote, the great detective and lovable bumbler, is summoned to solve the crime. Ghote finds himself cast in the role of the new “Great Detective,” spiritual heir to Poirot and Sherlock Holmes, required to perform superhuman acts of analysis and deduction. Secretly cursing his luck, he dutifully sets about with Surinder Mehta—his irrepressible and tireless Watson—in tow to investigate a true detective-story list of suspects: the efficient secretary, Iyer; the voluptuous Maharani and faithless Maharajah; the mysterious Lucy Trayling; the puzzling Professor Godbole; and the elusive retired railway official Mr. Habibul-lah. Taxed by the ingenuity of the killer—and the oddness of his surroundings—Ghote struggles with the puzzler that is his most charming and hilarious appearance to date. Inspector Ghote is summoned to solve the murder of a servant found dead on a billiard table in the Ooty Club in South India