A fabulous gripping tale set in a poor Indian slum where children have a habit of disappearing. Friends work together to unearth clues in the face of inept and or uncaring authorities. This book was eye-opening about conditions much of the world is forced to endure every day.

This book combined some of my favourite things: mystery, crime solving Kidd and mythology! Such a well woven story set in a fascinating real world location makes this well worth the read

4.5 "brilliant, immersive, heartbreaking" stars !!

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and Penguin Random House Canada for an ecopy of this novel. I am providing my honest review. This was released February 2020.

We are immersed in a semi-rural basti (slum in India) where children and teens begin to go missing. The police do not care but take bribes and most of the other families are busy working two and three jobs in order to survive and pay for their one room homes. The Hindus and Muslims live in an uneasy peace but blame each other for whatever calamities fall on the little community.

We see the world through 9 year old Jai and his best friends Pari (girl) and Faiz (boy) as they navigate their world through the constraints of poverty, gender, religion and family functioning. Ms. Anaparra with written artistic skill paints this world of pollution and destitution with traditions, community and will to survive. There is plenty of love in this dog eat dog dangerous world. She is able to impart the tastes, smells and sights of modern India and the difficulties and dangers that the underclasses experience day after day.

This is a sociological reflection under the guise of a mystery novel. A phenomenal debut !

A heartbreaking story about the children who go missing in India every day. It is a well written story told with humour and warmth and the author describes the Indian settings so well. My only complaint would be that it is repetitive at times.
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC

I loved this book! The POV of a 9 year old, Jai, was enjoyable to read. Jai is fascinated by crime shows and wants to be a detective. When his friend goes missing, this is his chance to make a name of himself and practice true jasusi (detective) skills. I loved going on this adventure with Jai, however terrifying and close to reality it might be. Jai is fearless in his pursuit of the truth once his classmate goes missing. What are the police doing? Have they asked everyone they were supposed to? Can a kid learn more than the police already know? Jai is going to do his best to find out, with help from his friends!

He has grand ideas, and I loved him for that. He may be young but that doesn’t mean things escape his attention. He knows that the place to work as an undercover detective at is the tea shop where people drink tea and share gossip. The plight of his little home community does not escape him either – the terrible state of public hygiene, the way the police ignores their pleas to look for the missing kids, the religious divide in the community and the difference between boys and girls are all things he is aware of. He is also aware of superstition – the djinns that haunt parts of the city, to help those in need.

Overall, this was an amazing job at showcasing the important issue of children going missing. In a time when politics and gains overshadows so many other issues, we need stories like this one.

These young children on the search like the detectives to find one of their friends who has gone missing.
This dives deep into the slums of India and creates a picture so clear in my mind of how hard it is for the poor communities and their children in India. It was devastating and eye opening and an amazing read but it was quite repetitive.

I'm not sure this style of story is for me. I didn't feel like there was a lot that kept my attention right up until the end. I did love the stories of the Djinn throughout the book, those added a fun little bit of fantasy to the overall feel of the book. I just found that there was a lot of drag throughout, " this happened, then this, then we did this", that made it difficult to follow closely.
The children characters were definitely the best part, which is obviously good because they were the main focus. They were funny and caring, and seemed like they cared the most about the missing children. I really enjoyed seeing the world through their eyes.
The author did an excellent job with the feel of the surrounding as well. Everyday scenes, you could almost smell the air. The spices, the people, the trash, everything was described in the best kind of way. When the scenes transitioned to the dark moments, the way Anappara words it, you feel the chill in the air. You are 100% immersed in the moment when the characters go from their own thoughts, to the feel or terror, the ice up their spine.
The ending was the best and worst. The best because there was so much more activity, and I was holding onto the same hopes as the characters. The worst for the emotional drop off at the end. I was so sure there would be a brightness at the end, but reality isn't always sunny, so why should fiction be? I'm glad the author ended it the way she did, as I really felt more connected at the end than throughout the rest of the book.
I give this one a 3/5.

The story is vivid, captivating, and assaults the senses with its descriptions of smells, sounds, and food. I think the author really did a great job of making you feel like you were there with the kids as they wandered the city doing their investigations.

That being said, I did have trouble staying engaged with the story. Part of this had to do with the amount of words that required referencing the glossary (ex: chowki, hafta, shaitan), these types of words occurred frequently and I found myself getting pulled out of the story often. I also had trouble with the pacing of the plot.

Although the story is fictional and told from a child's point of view, the subject matter is dark and based on unfortunate truths. Children are disappearing in India daily and child trafficking continues to be a problem there. As many as 180 children are said to go missing in India every day. I really appreciate the author bringing awareness to this issue.

DJINN PATROL ON THE PURPLE LINE is an amazing story.
Nine year old Jai is our narrator. He lives with his parents and sister in a small dwelling in a crowded urban neighbourhood. Jai loves to watch police shows and believes himself an expert crime solver. One of his classmates goes missing and Jai decides to take on the case since the police aren’t helping. Jai enlists the help of two of his friends. Pari is one of the best students in the class. Faiz who has a job to help out his family knows his way around the neighbourhood. Even though Jai has watched my the shows it turns out Pari is very clever and knows which questions to ask. Poor Jai is always a step or two behind. As more children go missing from the basti, fear grows throughout the whole community and the story gets darker.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started DJINN PATROL ON THE PURPLE LINE. The story turned out to be much darker than I thought it would be. Life in urban India is bleak. There are those that have and those that have not. The gap between the the two groups is cavernous. Despite the poverty, the reader feels the strong bonds that keep Jai and his family together. The neighbourhood itself has a strong sense of community and they all look out for each other. Great characters, an interesting storyline and excellent writing makes DJINN PATROL ON THE PURPLE LINE a powerful story.
It deserves all the high praise and good reviews it has been receiving.
Highly recommended!

Rating: 4 Stars

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line is about the real-life prominence of missing children in India and the lack of media coverage and police interest for the issue. Deepa Anappara was a journalist with firsthand experience and sheds some light on the issue through a fictional story.

The story follows the life of a nine-year-old boy named Jai who is keen on reenacting a TV crime series by playing detective when a boy from his slum goes missing. At the onset, it seemed like a fun mystery written from the perspective a child. When the first child goes missing, the minimal attention given by police authorities is almost comical and I didn’t quite understand the gravity of the situation. I thought he would turn up at some point in the story and it would all be some kind of joke. But that was not the case at all. When others slowly started disappearing and I realized the true gravity of the situation, it was heart breaking to see that the only people who cared were direct family and the kids playing detective. As the book concludes, I found myself desperate for a sense of closure or natural resolution of the story’s major conflict. But the real tragedy of the situation is that there is no closure for the families affected by this loss and there is no understanding of the cause.

I recommend this book to awareness about a crucial issue that is present in India today and the need for the involvement of a higher authority to resolve this problem at a macroscopic level.

Thank you Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read this book. I enjoyed reading about the slums of India as seen through a young boy who has grown up there his whole life. The imagery of the slums and the social problems are told with great description that it leaves you wanting to know more. I loved the parts of the books that told more stories around the Djinns and kidnappers and found that it became slow towards the end with repeats of children going missing and a building sense of despair in the community.

My Synopsis:   (No major reveals, but if concerned, skip to My Opinions)

Nine-year old Jai lives at the end of the Purple Metro line with his family.  It is crowded, it is dirty, and it is a slum, but he and his best friends Pari and Faiz don't seem to mind that their homes are one room shacks, and they have to walk a bit to get to the toilets, or to an area where they can bring back fresh water.  This is their life.  But Jai watches a little television, and dreams of being a detective.

When Bahadur, a classmate from school goes missing, the dreaded police are called by his worried mother, and things become tense in the neighborhood.  Although everyone pays the police for protection, they know that their homes could be bull-dozed if too much attention is drawn to the area.

Jai decides to find Bahadur himself, with Pari and Faiz as his assistants.  After all, Jai believes himself superior to his friends and he is a dedicated television "Police Patrol" fan, so he knows best.  Mind you, Pari is very well-read and brighter than most, and Faiz actually has two jobs, so they may be of some help.

When more children go missing from the area, Jai and his friends increase their efforts to find them.




My Opinions: 

I must admit to having a hard time getting into this one.  It was annoying to have to stop reading to look up unfamiliar words...and there were a lot of unfamiliar words.  Having a dictionary at the back of the book is useless if you are reading from an e-reader.  

The book's setting of a slum in India and the mixture of people who inhabit it was quite interesting.  It centered on missing children, corrupt police officials, and day-to-day living that sometimes echoed our own (school uniforms, working parents, family struggles), and sometimes displayed more things characteristics of the slum (poor sanitation, over-crowding, child labour).  It also showed that even in the slum, there is a hierarchy, and bigotry abounds.  Overall, it was sometimes an uncomfortable read.

Told from the perspective of a 9-year old boy, his voice often amused me, but sometimes amazed me.  He alternated between being a typical child who is easily distracted, to being a child with wonderful insights, often within a few minutes (although it was often Pari who had the insights).  The characters were well-rounded, and the fears of the parents shone through, as did the selfish attitude of the teenagers, and the naivety of the children.

Again, it was sometimes a hard read because of the topic.  Over-crowded slums, missing children, abusive relationships, political corruption, bigotry, indifference among the social classes.  Yet, the courage and determination of the children depicted in the story was a light in the darkness.

After Bahadur disappeared, Paresh is telling Quarter about the police constables who demanded gold and cash from all the ladies and hit Buffalo Baba with a baton when they asked for help to find Bahadur.
Jai, 9 years old who lives in the slums of India, likes to think he knows a lot about solving mysteries as he watches a lot of cop shows. He tells his friends, Pari and Faiz that he is going to solve the case and Faiz is going to be his assistant. He creates the Djinn Patrol.

Then another person disappears and another and yet the police don’t seem to care. Could it be a Djinn....no they are not real. Jai and the parents of the missing youths are the only ones that seem to be working on the case.

A great read and one that brings to light the lack of concern for the underprivileged by the police in the slums of India......and elsewhere?

It took me a while to get into this book, but knowing it was based on real events made me want to get to the end.

Children are disappearing from Indian Bastis. Is the the Djinn that are taking them? Or something more sinister?
Schools don't seem to care these children are missing, so the children who are left must work together along with their neighbours in the bastis to help find the missing.

I liked this book because most of it is told from the point of view of a child, but I found myself scanning over some parts as I lost interest. However, that could have just been me as I'm having trouble concentrating lately due to my anxiety and depression.

I definitely recommend this as a read to anyone like me who likes novels based in India!

Based on the description of children turned detectives and rumours of soul-snatching djinns, I requested a free advanced reading copy of this book from NetGalley. After receiving the ARC, I was excited and began reading it right away. This excitement quickly dissipated, and I found myself struggling to finish the book.

My favourite part of the book is the side story of Mental and his boys. Other than providing a glimpse into the life of street kids and the possibility of ghosts protecting us I am not sure why they were introduced. The author also does a great job of describing India and the challenges faced by the people living in the slums. This book just wasn't the book for me.

#DjinnPatrolonthePurpleLine #NetGalley

I received a complimentary ARC copy of Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara from Penguin Random House Canada and Netgalley in order to read and give an honest review.

"…atmospheric, intriguing story, with unique and sympathetic characters makes this such an incredibly engrossing read…”

Debut author and seasoned journalist, Deepa Anappara creates an atmospheric, heartbreaking and vivid portrayal of life in a basti when children go missing from an Indian slum. Bringing to light social issues, misogyny, religious conflict, police corruption, poverty, elitism and even a touch of folklore this book is more than meets the eye.

Obsessed with true-crime television, 9-year-old Jai dreams about becoming a detective.  When a classmate goes missing Jai and his friends Pari and Faiz decide to investigate when the local police are indifferent. "The Djinn Patrol" decides to look into the case but when more children are taken the case becomes much more than they bargained for and hits closer to home than they expected. 

Personally, this book is one that will stick with me for a long time.  The author brings to life vivid details in each and every scene, immersing the reader in the culture. Knowing that although fiction, much of the book is based on facts, is chilling.  The author also shares the tragic statistic that approximately 180 children go missing in India every day and that many never make the newspapers or are ever thoroughly investigated.

Flawlessly written,  atmospheric, intriguing story, with unique and sympathetic characters makes this such an incredibly engrossing read that I would highly recommend!

Nine-year-old Jai lives with his parents and older sister Runu in an Indian basti (slum). When a classmate goes missing, Jai recruits his friends Pari and Faiz to become detectives to help find the missing boy.
Jai is addicted to television crime shows and feels he has picked up crime-solving skills which he hopes to put to use. What starts as a game becomes more serious as more children disappear. The police seem indifferent though the community becomes more concerned. As a result, tensions within the basti arise and, because the missing children are Hindu, Muslim residents are blamed.

Jai is the first-person narrator. It is interesting to have a child’s perspective on the events. Because of his age, Jai is naïve and somewhat confused and so not always totally aware of the horror that is happening around him. Of course, as events touch him more personally, his innocence is taken from him. Jai has both Hindu and Muslim friends so his open-mindedness contrasts the opinions of many of the adults in his neighbourhood.

Interspersed throughout are chapters giving the point of view of each of the children who disappears. We learn about their daily struggles and their dreams. What they all have in common is a hope for a better life than the one they are currently living in the basti.

The characterization of Jai is very realistic. He is a very convincing young boy. He is over-confident and so over-estimates his skills as a detective. He lacks maturity so often asks awkward or insensitive questions and finds it difficult to accept that his friend Pari asks better questions than he does; after all, she is a girl. He is rather lazy and easily distractible. He is self-centred; though his parents worry about both Jai and Runu, Jai prays only for himself: “Please God, don’t let me be kidnapped or murdered or djinned.” Through the course of the novel, events force Jai to mature; he realizes his shortcomings and becomes less focused on self.

This book takes the reader on an emotional roller coaster. It begins slowly and seems rather light-hearted. The three children play a game at being detectives. Pari’s constant overshadowing of Jai as an investigator adds humour. Of course, suspense is gradually ramped up as more and more children go missing. As the novel progresses, a reader would have to be unfeeling not to be almost overwhelmed by sadness and anger.

The portrayal of life in the slums seems very realistic. People live in one-room shacks and though both of Jai’s parents have full-time jobs, he often grows hungry: “I find a twig that I can chew to fool my tummy into thinking more food is on its way.” The slum dwellers live under constant threat of having their homes destroyed; they fear going to the police or protesting police inaction because by drawing attention to themselves, they risk authorities demolishing the entire basti.

The lives of the poor are contrasted with those of the rich, the “hi-fi” people. The wealthy have all the power; one man accuses a policeman, “’you are suspicious of maids and carpenters and plumbers, but when you see a hi-fi madam or sir, you bow your head and jump out of the way.’” The plight of the poor is just seen as an inconvenience by the rich. For example, when a woman’s daughter goes missing, she calls her employer to ask for two days off and the employer responds, “’Should I find a new bai to do your job? Your daughter must have run off with a boy. I heard it’s happening a lot in your area.’”

Not only is there inequality between the rich and the poor but also between genders. Girls' lives are especially difficult. Khadifa, a young girl, bemoans how she must always look after her brother Kabir. Their mother “had sent Kabir out to buy a packet of milk in the evening, and then Khadifa to bring him back when he didn’t return a couple of hours later. No matter that Khadifa had friends to talk to, and sewing to complete. Each time Kabir misbehaved, it fell on Khadifa to set things right. How was that fair?” Their mother is pregnant and Khadifa fears, “The new baby brother would probably be a rogue too, just like Kabir. All of Khadifa’s time would go in chasing after these brats; she wouldn’t have a minute to try on a new nail polish or a hairband at a friend’s house.” She covers for her brother because she fears their parents “would pack him off to the village where their grandparents lived, and no doubt assign Khadifa the position of his minder. . . . the mullah [in this village] said girls should be married off before they turned too old, and his too-old was thirteen or fourteen. Kabir would lose nothing if they moved to the village, and Khadifa would lose everything.”

Runu thinks of how Jai has daydreams and the self-confidence “that the world granted boys (which, in girls, was considered a character flaw or evidence of a dismal upbringing).” Runu feels “she existed solely to care for her brother, and the house. Afterward, she would similarly look after her husband, her hands smelling of cow-dung cakes. Her own dreams were inconsequential.”

The author explores an important issue: “As many as 180 children are said to go missing in India every day.” The novel shows the effect these disappearances have on the families, families which are already marginalized. The result is a book that is both thought-provoking and heart-breaking.

Note: I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.

Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

When children start to go missing from his basti, 9-year-old Jai begins to investigate with his friends, emulating the detectives he watches on his favourite TV show, Police Patrol.

More 'Coming of Age' than plot-driven Mystery, the story follows Jai as he interprets the world around him and tries to figure out what's happening in his community. According to the afterword, journalist Deepa Anappara set out to tell the story of the 180 children who go missing in India every day - not only to bring this issue into the spotlight, but to tell the human side of the children, their humour and resilience, which didn't find a place in her journalistic reporting.

I really enjoyed getting to know the basti, Bhoot Bazaar and the book's many characters (particularly Pari and Runu). I also enjoyed the chapters written from the perspectives of the missing children, the railway journey (despite the title, the Purple Line is rarely mentioned) and how Anappara wove in some wider issues (like domestic violence, religious conflict, addiction, poverty, class differences etc.) I was intrigued by the mystery, but overall found the pacing very slow, with not much plot driving it. At first I felt the story was more for a younger audience, what with naive 9-year-old Jai as the protagonist, but as the story progresses, it becomes darker and darker, with more adult themes. The ending was a little disappointing (one of those times when you flip the pages to make sure it's really the end), but I understand why Anappara ended it as she did.

Overall I would rate the book 3.5 stars out of 5. Reminded me a bit of Anita and Me, Brother, and The Wrong Boy.

I really enjoyed how this story took me to a different place. I love to travel in the my reading. I also was very fond of the child narrator. It reminded me a bit of Flavia deLuce. It was very interesting to see this whole story through a child's eyes.

“What is a whole life? If you die when you’re still a child, is your life whole or half or zero?” asks the narrator of Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line. Jai is a nine year old boy from the slums of India whose schoolmate has disappeared and he is determined to find the missing boy. Jai is a fan of the TV crime drama Police Patrol and decides to apply all the “detectiving” skills he has learned from the show to his efforts to locate the missing boy, enlisting a couple of other schoolmates to help in the process. As they conduct their search, other children from their neighbourhood also go missing and although the local police are also enlisted to search for the missing, their services are lacklustre at best, and wholly ineffective.
Djinn Patrol is a well written and thoughtful commentary on the shocking statistic of missing children in the poorer areas of India. Some of these are runaways but many have been taken for the purpose of involuntary organ donation, sex trafficking and other exploitation. The story is all the more moving and poignant because it is told using the voice of a child. It is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit which somehow can carry on despite extreme poverty, societal rejection and indifference, and repeatedly being told you are unworthy of sharing in the bounty that accidents of birth have afforded others.
This book, although disturbing, is one that should be read.