What readers think of Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, plus links to write your own review.

In a corrupt society where the poor are lumped in the with garbage surrounding them, a boy tries to channel detective skills he learned from TV to solve the random disappearances around him, aided by two school friends. Reading this novel was a delight from start to finish, and it was hard to put it down throughout. The setting and the characters jumped off the pages, making some of the gut wrenching scenes even more powerful. Mix in some humor and the infectious enthusiasm of youth, and you have a great story that I'll think about long after the last page.

Because I adore India and have traveled there several times, I treasured the authenticity revealed in this novel. There are some who may be reluctant to read this because it is filled with poverty, class divisions, sadness, kidnapping ,and abandoned children. However, from my time there I found a richness of spirit that is reflected in the characters. Despite very difficult circumstances, the children who narrate this book were independent, bold, saucy, and determined. We follow a triumvirate of children whose mandatory schooling becomes disrupted due to family obligations and religious tensions, to a life brimming with ambiguity in their day to day life and their future expectations. When children in their neighborhood go missing, the trio attempt to become"detectives" and try to find the answers. Muslim and Hindu tensions arise, which is not dissimilar to what is happening in today's world. The characters felt true to reality, from the scavengers, the beggars, to the local police. Narrated by the children, it felt genuine and honest. This is a novel to explore the credible issues in slum areas, the plight of the children living there, and the power of murkiness regarding their future worlds.

This was no popcorn thriller that pulled you to alarming heights. No, this was a book to savor slowly enjoying each sentence, sipping slowly to obtain the full body and essence. Her words spilled out with a sumptous resonance, along with piercing observations along the way.It was also one of the most clever and unusual books I have discovered in a long time. I found myself rolling the words around my tongue, tasting their heft and density.There are so many passages I underlined that I felt were exquisite, wanting to store them away safely for my lifetime. The beginning of the novel was eerily prescient when she was taking about the sounds of the city. During this period of coronavirus, I experience sound so differently and find myself quietly tuning in to the absence and presence of echoes and noise around me. The book itself, you can read about in the jacket cover, but I found that it doesn't even do this book justice. If you want a contemplative piece, you will be in your glory.

I received this as an ARC from Random House and Netgalley. I'm not sure I would call the book enjoyable, because it ends on a dark note and I wished there had been a different ending. But the author has done a masterful job meeting her stated intentions (in her notes afterward) and draw attention to the issue of child disappearances without sensationalizing it or turning it into a serial killer type story. Her ability to get inside the head of her pre-teen narrators was fantastic. If you enjoyed the non-fiction Behind the Beautiful Forevers, or the novel A Fine Balance, you should like this too.