400 Days
Nine months after twelve-year-old Siya vanishes, the police have closed the file and even her own family has quietly moved on. Her mother, Alia, hasn't. Desperate and determined, she turns to her neighbour Keshav Rajpurohit, an amateur detective who is, by his own admission, a source of deep disappointment to pretty much everyone he knows. His parents want him married, qualified, and socially active. Mostly, they want him to shut down his detective agency. Then Alia knocks on his door, and suddenly Keshav finds himself very interested in taking on a new case. The novel balances two things at once: a genuinely gripping missing-child mystery and a warm, gently comic romance. Keshav is an endearing narrator, self-deprecating without being tiresome, and his dry observations about family pressure and romantic confusion give the story real personality. The mystery itself is well-paced, with enough twists to keep you reading well past a sensible bedtime. Bhagat is one of India's most widely read authors, and it's easy to see why. His writing is accessible, fast-moving, and quietly affecting. At its heart, this is a story about a mother's refusal to accept the unacceptable, and that emotional core gives the whole thing genuine weight. A solid, satisfying read.
- Author: Chetan Bhagat
- Publisher: HarperCollins India
- Genre: Science Fiction
- ISBN: 978-0143064244
- Pages: 356 pages