The Fast and the Dead

All of Habba Galli, Shivajinagar, is disturbed when eccentric Dondi Pais empties her double-barrelled shotgun to scatter a pack of noisy mongrels on Karwa Chauth night. But their distress turns to shock the next morning when it is discovered that one stray bullet has ploughed into the skull of a sour, spiteful jeweller, leaving him quite definitely dead.

The more devout residents immediately recall how, on the previous afternoon, the jeweller’s wife of thirty years had broken her Karwa Chauth fast, well before the appearance of the sacred moon. ‘Aiyyo,’ they whisper, ‘she’s gone and angered the Goddess!’

But several mere mortals have motives too—including rising Bollywood star Haider Sait, back in Shivajinagar to visit his widowed mother and still eager to charm Habba Galli hottie Jhoomar Rao, now newly poor, newly single and a veterinary surgeon.

By a happy coincidence, ACP Bhavani Singh is on hand to investigate. But as corpses start piling up in the bustling bazaar, will the canny old policeman be able to prove his powerful hunch—that these deaths are not accidents, or the hand of the goddess, but a sinister case of murders-most-meticulous?