[Review] Vaseem Khan: 'The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra'

Yes, Vaseem Khan can certainly write. He writes with a sense of humour that pervades the entire story. His description of today's hot, humid and filthy India is spot on. But something is not quite right. Let me explain.

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'The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra' starts with the day Inspector Chopra retires from the Mumbai (formerly Bombay) police force. On this last day, two unexpected events came to pass: he inherits a baby elephant called Ganesh and he has to deal with the death of a young boy who appears to have been drowned.

Now, a pensionado, Chopra still feels the need to investigate the death of the boy, because something doesn't quite feel right about the case. Chopra and his baby elephant dive into the murky underworld and the glittering 'upperworld' of Mumbai in search for the truth. There's also time to explore the relationship between Chopra, his wife, and his mother-in-law.

So far so good, you might think at this point, but no, it's not. There's a rather large discrepancy between the lightheartedness of the writing and the darkness of the crime. And I have the impression that the elephant is written into the story simply because nobody has ever done that before.

Well, there's a reason that an elephant has never been used as a side-kick before. That's because it doesn't really work. It is just a gimmick.