Krimi. When a young Indian couple - Ram and Deepa - fall in love, the young woman's parents are dead set against the union. She's from a high caste family. Her boyfriend is an Untouchable, a member of society traditionally doomed from birth to sweep the streets or worse. Deepa's father locks her up and promises to hunt down and kill the "loverboy dog." Fortunately, India's Love Commandos, a group of volunteers dedicated to assisting mixed caste couples, come to their rescue

When Tulsi falls in love with Ram, the young woman's parents are dead set against the union. She's from a high-caste family; he's an "untouchable," from the lowest stratum of Indian society. Tulsi's father locks her up and promises to hunt down the "loverboy dog." Fortunately, India's Love Commandos, a group of brave volunteers dedicated to helping mixed-caste couples marry for love, come to the rescue. But as soon as they liberate Tulsi, Ram is mysteriously snatched from his safe house. The task of finding him falls to Vish Puri, India's "Most Private Investigator."

The Love Commandos are dedicated to helping lovers from different castes marry for love in spite of India's millennia-old caste prejudices. But when a would-be Romeo from the Untouchable caste is kidnapped, the Love Commandos turn to Vish Puri for help. Has his fiancée's father made good on his promise and done away with him? Or is his disappearance the result of other forces at work? It falls to Vish Puri to find out. Unfortunately, he's not having a good month. He can't locate a haul of stolen jewelry. He's been pickpocketed. And the only person who can get his wallet back is his interfering Mummy-ji.Things only get worse when he discovers that his archrival, Hari Kumar, is also trying to locate the abducted boy -- as is a genetics research institute exploiting illiterate villagers. As the story moves from the pilgrimage site of Vaishno Devi to the "Moonlight Garden" in the shadows of the Taj Mahal, the world's greatest monument to love, we see India's past and future collide in ways that will change Puri and his undercover operatives forever.

The first in a detective series that “immediately joins the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency as representing the best in international cozies” (Booklist, starred review). Meet Vish Puri, India’s most private investigator. Portly, persistent, and unmistakably Punjabi, he cuts a determined swath through modern India’s swindlers, cheats, and murderers. In hot and dusty Delhi, where call centers and malls are changing the ancient fabric of Indian life, Puri’s main work comes from screening prospective marriage partners, a job once the preserve of aunties and family priests. But when an honest public litigator is accused of murdering his maidservant, it takes all of Puri’s resources to investigate. With his team of undercover operatives—Tubelight, Flush, and Facecream—Puri combines modern techniques with principles of detection established in India more than two thousand years ago, and reveals modern India in all its seething complexity.

"In India, there are 650 million people under the age of 35. These are men and women who grew up with the Internet, and the advent of smartphones and social media. But when it comes to love and marriage, they're expected to adhere to thousands of years of tradition. It's that tension between obeying tradition and accepting modernity that drives journalist Mansi Choksi's THE NEWLYWEDS-also signaling the arrival of a major literary talent. Through gorgeous, lyrical prose, Choksi shines a light on three young couples who buck against arranged marriages in the pursuit of true love. Choski illustrates the challenges, shame, anger, triumph, and loss their collective actions set in play. Against the backdrop of India's beautiful villages, mountains, and cities, Choksi introduces readers to: Reshma & Preeti, a lesbian couple forced to flee town for a chance at a life together-all while the headstrong Reshma continues to convince Preeti their love is right and unconquerable: to Monika & Arif, a Hindu woman and Muslim man leaving their families behind in the cover of night as they and their loved ones are harassed by the "Love Commandos," a violent militia group (implicitly sanctioned by Narendra Modi) whose chief aim is to prevent all interfaith marriages: and to Neetu & Dawinder, an inter-caste couple who, despite learning about a similar couple being burned alive for their "crime," resolve to work towards a different fate. Ultimately, while thousands of miles separate the principal characters from readers, the questions their pursuits ask are universal. Specifically: What are we really willing to risk for love? If we're lucky enough to find it, does it change us? If so, for the better? Or for the worse? The answers to these questions vary upon the three couples, but their collective fight allows readers into a world whose customs and traditions are rarely discussed-or questioned"--

The delightful, amusing, and deeply mysterious second novel to feature Vish Puri, a man after Hercule Poirot's heart, in a series that has already won diehard fans on three continents. The bizarre murder of an Indian scientist in public by the goddess Kali is no laughing matter. Yet Dr. Suresh Jha, best known for unmasking fraudulent swamis and godmen, dies in a fit of giggles at his morning yoga class when the hideous deity appears from the mist and plunges a sword into his chest. The case is a first in the "annals of crime" according to Vish Puri, head of Delhi's Most Private Investigators. To get at the truth, Puri and his team of unstoppable undercover operatives must travel from Delhi's Shadipur slum, home of India's ancestral magicians, to the holy city of Haridwar on the Ganges — entering a world in which illusion and the supernatural are virtually indistinguishable.