Asking Questions: An Inspector Ghote Mystery

The legendary Bombay inspector returns in his most perplexing and surprising case yet, sparked by an unexpected early-morning visit to Ghote's home by the Commissioner of Police. The commissioner, on behalf of India's reigning film star, would like Ghote to make discreet inquiries into a nearby institute for medical research. It appears that someone there is smuggling out a dangerous drug made from the venom of highly poisonous snakes. Ghote's interview with a talented young female scientist points him toward one obvious suspect - the snake handler. But when that man is found dead in the locked Reptile Room, a deadly viper slithering across his back, Ghote must battle the intricacies and foibles of international science to find a killer. His list of suspects includes an overanxious researcher, his overzealous disciples, and a national celebrity with a desperate interest in the scientists' secret project. Once Inspector Ghote starts asking questions, he finds it difficult to stop, and with every question, he grows closer to a fiendishly dangerous answer.

The exalted circle surrounding film star Asha Rani has long been enjoying the clandestine benefits of ACE-i, an experimental medication for hypertension that some obliging soul's been smuggling out of the Mira Behn Institute for Medical Research. But when a faulty batch of ACE-i almost kills a director friend of Asha Rani's, a purred request from Greater Bombay's lordly Commissioner of Police sends Inspector Ghote to Mira Behn's door to ask who supplied the bad medicine. The answer to the Commissioner's question is obvious--the culprit must have been Chandra Chagoo, the snake handler responsible for extracting the venom on which ACE-i is based--if only because Chandra Chagoo has been murdered and can't defend himself. The Commissioner, satisfied that the case is closed, insists that Ghote's top priority in investigating the death be the protection of Mira Behn's reputation. But how can Ghote comply when the only three suspects--the Institute's director, Prof. P.P. Phaterpaker; star biochemist Dr. Gauri Subbiah, the developer of ACE-i; and Dr. Ram Mahipal, who just quit his research job to lecture lowly first- year medical students--are the very lifeblood of Mira Behn? Beloved veteran Ghote (Doing Wrong, 1994, etc.) succeeds at last by tactfully asking every indiscreet question possible, except for the shudderingly obvious one that would've cut this archly amusing fable to short-story length. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In this twenty-first entry in the series, Inspector Ghote of Bombay is directed by the commissioner of police to interrogate the scientists at a prestigious research center. It seems that the friend of an international film star has been relying on the effects of a dangerous drug made from snake venom, and this drug is being smuggled out of the center. With his melodious, fractured English and a dogged persistence, Ghote tackles the case and thinks he's solved it when he finds the obvious suspect, the snake handler, dead in the Reptile Room. But the commissioner intervenes again, and Ghote must find the murderer. Asking questions is Ghote's specialty, and he battles indifference from the local police, the egotism of the head scientist, and foot-dragging on the part of his own superiors to find the guilty party. Ghote is as endearing as ever in this satisfying, entertaining mystery that conveys the rarefied atmosphere of elite scientific research and offers a host of intriguing secondary characters. Joanne Wilkinson