Moghul Buffet (Soho Crime) - Softcover

Benard, Cheryl

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1569471797 ISBN 13: 9781569471791

Publisher: Soho Crime, 2003

Synopsis

An American businessman visiting Peshawar, Pakistan, vanishes from his hotel room. The only clue is an enigmatic message in blood scrawled on the Coke machine. A series of murders follows. But in a country where half the population is hidden beneath chadors, tracking a murderer can be difficult.

About this title

About the Author:

Cheryl Benard is the author of many nonfiction books; she lives in Austria and Maryland.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Benard's fiction debut starts out as a crackling mystery set on the Pakistani frontier, but the author's deft blend of humor and suspense lapses into a confusing tangle of subplots. Micky Malone, salesman for a prefab-housing company, gets suckered into a weeklong journey to Peshawar, Pakistan, to close a major deal. The Hotel Khyber Inter-Continental feels frighteningly foreign to novelty-averse Micky, and as his business contact starts making sinister allusions to smuggling, Micky's only comfort lies in his discovery that a female college classmate is living in the area. Fast forward, then, a couple of days, when Iqbal, a big-city detective, is dispatched to Peshawar to investigate Micky's sudden disappearance. Iqbal and Lilly, a journalist, initially focus on Mara Blake, Mickey's college friend, with whom he'd indeed had a brief fling before falling out of sight. But then other bodies start to turn up, suggesting a broader conspiracy. A dizzying cast is introduced before Lilly recognizes the cryptic scrawlings left on the crime scenes as lyrics from a feminist song. Is one of the womenmaybe Fatima, a village girl forced into prostitutionthe killer? As it turns out, though, Micky isn't dead at all. Ruffled by an unsolicited visit from Fatima, who was impersonating a belly-dancer, he panicked and, with Mara's help, went into hiding in a shed at a remote refugee camp. In a burst of idealistic frenzy born out of crushing boredom, he inspires a pack of Taliban warriors to build a latrine for the womenand, in the meantime, murky explanations of the various killings may or may not hold up under scrutiny, while the author's attempts to weave character sketches into a complex portrait of an Islamic border town also prove only half-successful. The problem: plot and pacing. In her best moments, though, Benard hits a sure tone of fond satire. Still, overall, an overstuffed grab-bag of suspects, victims, and bystanders that invites indifference. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Soho Crime
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1569471797
• ISBN 13: 9781569471791
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272