Out of Order

"A spicy quest tale in an India at once modern and ancient."―Publishers Weekly

At 27, Jason Talley of Corning, New York, leads an orderly life, processing loans for a mortgage company. Its warmest spot is his friendship with Sriram Sundaram and his lively wife Vidya. One night Sriram secretly confides he's planning a trip home to India to visit his mother and asks Jason to hold her gift, a gorgeous red silk sari. The very next evening Jason arrives home to sirens and cops―Sriram and Vidya are dead. The cops call it a murder/suicide.

Grieving, Jason decides to fulfill Sriram's quest and books himself a trip to India. There's a gorgeous young train buff named Rachel on the tour, and before he knows it, Jason has cast aside all semblance of order and embarked with her on a perilous journey.

Edgar-nominee Benoit's assured second mystery (after 2004's Relative Danger) introduces 27-year-old Jason Talley, a nerdy Corning, N.Y., loan processor whose rare heroic gesture launches him on a journey into danger and romance. When Talley's married friends, Sriram and Vidya Sundaram, are found dead in their apartment, victims of an apparent murder-suicide, the shaken Talley decides to go to India to deliver a special sari to Sriram's mother. He also alerts friends and colleagues of Sriram's from a failed high-tech startup company that he's en route to their country. The sedate tour group that Jason joins is a disaster until he's "rescued" by Rachel Moore, a beautiful train-mad woman who's as adventurous as Jason is not. Soon the two are traveling on their own, meeting up with Sriram's bitter or forgiving ex-colleagues. The search for Sriram's mother, Rachel's madcap unpredictability and the stalking of Jason by one or more of Sriram's former partners add up to a spicy quest tale in an India at once modern and ancient. (Feb.)
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Benoit's second novel, after the outstanding Relative Danger (2004), is a bit of a disappointment. He again features a clueless but likable protagonist who embarks on a jaunt to distant lands. This time the hero, Jason Talley, of Upstate New York, is thrust into an international adventure when he travels to India to return a sari to the mother of his friend Sriram, who died, along with his wife, in an apparent murder-suicide. It wasn't, of course, and soon enough Jason discovers that his friend had lots of enemies. Readers of Relative Danger will find this -follow-up tiresomely similar, but the engaging tour of India's back roads helps offset the deja vu. Jenny McLarin
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