The Fast And The Dead

Anuja Chauhan

Oct 2023 · Sold by Harper Collins

About this ebook

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, the previous afternoon, the jeweller's wife of thirty years had broken her fast well before the appearance of the sacred Karwa Chauth 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 by the hand of the goddess, but a sinister case of murders-most-meticulous?

About the author

Anuja Chauhan worked in advertising for over seventeen years and is credited with many popular campaigns, including PepsiCo's Nothing Official About It, Yeh Dil Maange More, Mera Number Kab Aayega, Oye Bubbly and Darr ke Aage Jeet Hai. She is the author of six bestselling novels (The Zoya Factor, Battle for Bittora, Those Pricey Thakur Girls, The House that BJ Built, Baaz and Club You to Death), the screen rights for all of which have been acquired by major Bombay studios. She lives outside Bangalore in an empty nest with her husband, Niret Alva, with whom she shares three valiantly adulting children and a varying number of dogs and cats.