H. R. F. Keating's Inspector Ghote Draws a Line

     "'Threats to my life, Doctor? And how old am I? Eighty-two years of age. No, it is Allah himself who threatens my life now.'

     'Nevertheless, sir, the issuing of a threat to a person's life is a criminal offence.'"

It's the 1970s and Sir Asif Ibrahim is a former judge receiving death threats. He's long since retired, and is living in a falling down house a bullock's cart ride away from some place in India that's already nowhere. Sir Asif would just as soon live--or die--with no fuss. But his cousin is a member of parliament and the daughter who lives with him is worried. So Inspector Ghote is sent to see what he can do. He can expect no assistance from Sir Asif.

The threats reference the Madurai Conspiracy Case. Forty years earlier, just before the British finally quit India, a group planned to assassinate the governor of Madras but failed. Nevertheless, Sir Asif convicted and issued the death penalty for the conspirators. The death threats reference that ancient case.

 

There are servants in the house, but the main suspects are four: that daughter, still living at home; an itinerant Buddhist mystic who comes and goes; an American left-wing Catholic priest, foisted on the judge by a different cousin; and a local journalist who publishes the judge's musings, and is in love with the daughter. Remember that the house is remote. No one else could drop off those notes.

 

Is one of these four connected somehow to the Madurai Conspiracy Case? Or is that ancient case just a cover for some other motive? Or is it not even one of the four obvious suspects? And does Ghote save the judge in the end? Well, I'm not going to tell you any of that...😉 I will only note that the book does violate at least two of S. S. Van Dine's rules for writing mysteries...  

 

Despite those violations I found this pretty entertaining (though not amazing). Once upon a time I read Keating's list of the hundred best mysteries and like any serious reader of books approaching such a list I gobbled it down, while at the same time quibbling at the margins--The Green Ripper is the best Travis McGee book? How can you say that when it's actually the worst! etc., etc.--but this is the first of his mysteries I've read. If you've read him, how does it rank? 

 

Vintage Mystery Scavenger Hunt

 

Silver Age (1979). Spooky House or Mansion.