– recommended holiday reading for India
The latest in a series of Irish-Indian cosy crime mysteries by author Paul Waters, Death at the Elephant House, is recommended holiday reading for the 1 million Brits expected to visit India over the next year.
The novels feature offbeat mystery-solving crime fighters, Irish nun Sister Agatha Murphy and Indian hotelier, Avtar Mehta. This time they must contend with a hidden killer, a police commander with a vendetta, and a cigarette-stealing elephant.
In Waters’ earlier work, ‘Murder in Moonlit Square’, when semi-retired Sister Agatha meet Mehta round the back of his historic Delhi hotel, they formed an instant bond over a sneaky smoke and good gossip. Then a street robbery outside the hotel, a dead body inside it, and the disappearance of a pilgrim guest bring the local police to the hotel, determined to close their cases quickly, and with them the Delhi Haveli Hotel. The pair must race to stay one step ahead of the police, the Indian secret service and a hidden killer – as well as keeping their sense of humour through a terrorism scare in the run up to Christmas on the colourful streets of old Delhi.
Set in Chandni Chow, the historic, labyrinthine heart of Old Delhi, the books promise to transport readers to the authentic tastes, energy
and colour of India. The series was directly inspired by his wife, Aneysha, who is from the city.
Critics agree, saying, ‘We can almost smell the spices and baking tandooris.’
Alexander McCall Smith describes the books as ‘a complete delight.’
Award-winning Indian film director Shekhar Kapur calls them ‘gripping and enchanting.’
According to official data from the Indian government’s Ministry of Tourism, the United Kingdom accounted for 992,300 foreign tourist arrivals, making up roughly 10.28% of all international visitors to India, peaking over the Christmas period.
This volume ranks the UK as the third-largest source market for international tourists to India, trailing only behind the United States and Bangladesh. The majority of these visits are driven by holiday leisure travel, business, and British citizens visiting friends and relatives within the country,
Leisure and holidays make up about 46% of these trips, while visiting friends and relatives (VFR) and business travel account for the remainder.
The books have been praised by the Sunday Times, the Literary Review, Sunday Times and newspapers across India – including the Deccan Chronicle which describes them as ‘the cosiest, most charming murder mysteries ever.’
Published in hardback, paperback and ebook by the No Exit imprint of Bedford Square Publishers in Britain and Ireland, in audiobook by WF Howes (narrated by Paul Tylak), and in India and south Asia by Penguin India. Murder in Moonlit Square entered the Indian fiction bestseller charts at No.3. Available online and from all good bookshops.
Paul is also the author of Blackwatertown, published in paperback and ebook by Unbound, and audiobook by WF Howes (narrated by Patrick Moy), in 2020. He is also the author of The Obituarist, and short stories in the Taking Liberties (published by Breakthrough Books) and Christmas Murders on Bedford Square (pub by Bedford Square Publishers) anthologies.
He is also an award-winning BBC producer, reporter and presenter – most recently of the BBC World Service In The Studio arts documentary strand. Paul is also co-host of the award-winning We’d Like A Word books and authors podcast – shortlisted for 2020 Books Podcast of the Year – which features globally bestselling writers, emerging authors and other insiders from the book industry, including editors, agents and publishers.
Paul is UK Director of the annual Khushwant Singh Literary Festival London (with offshoots in Oxford and Sutton), which features Indian and south Asian authors and creatives, and literary work relating to the region.
He grew up in Belfast during ‘the Troubles’, was involved in cross-community peace groups and went on to report and produce for BBC Northern Ireland, BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 5 Live, the BBC World Service and Channel 5. He also covered elections in the USA, created an alternative G8 Summit in a South African township, gone undercover in Zimbabwe, conducted football crowds, reported from Swiss drug shooting-up rooms, smuggled a satellite dish into Cuba to produce the first BBC live programmes from the island and produced the World Service’s first live coverage of the 9/11 attacks on America.
Paul has taught in Poland, driven a cab in England, busked in Wales, been a night club cook in New York, designed computer systems in Dublin, presented podcasts for Germans and organised music festivals for beer drinkers.