Ok, so don't let the middle of the road stars fool you -- this is an excellently well written book. It's an astonishing portrait of Delhi and of a very specific time. It's also a compelling, noir-ish mystery with intertwining, episodic vignettes of violence and political manipulation.

Because it is all of those things, it is not really to my taste -- I found the drifting, nonlinear storytelling to be intriguing, but not satisfying.