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"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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