THE BODY IN THE BILLARD ROOM

London: Hutchinson, 1987. 1st edition. Fine in fine dust jacket, not price clipped, £ 9.95 intact, in protective mylar cover. Bombay's Inspector Ghote, an overworked and very insecure Bombay policeman, has been invited to a former exclusive Birtish colony in South India by a man who is steeped in classic British mysteries. Having read about Ghote's prowess (presumably in other books by Keating!), he assumes him to be the rightful heir to Holmes and Poirot, and presents him with what appears to him to be a classic locked-door mystery: a body on a billiard table. His first briefing contains a sentence to the effect "Of course we assume that the fact that the billiard-room window was smashed and the club's silver trophies stolen is merely a trick to throw us off the scent." And so it goes. Ghote goes through the book haunted by this flattery as a great detective of fiction, and does to a certain extent follow the pattern, but in the end comes up with a solution that nonetheless fits the more prosaic norms of routine policework!. First Edition. Hard Cover. Fine/Fine. Book.