Title: Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line
Author: Deepa Anappara
Publication Date: February 4, 2020
Publisher: Random House
Format: NetGalley eARC

I’m a really simple person. I see Djinn, I pick up a book. That’s it.

Unfortunately, the Djinn weren’t really a thing in this, which was … disappointing? I have so many mixed feelings about this book that the review was really hard to write.

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line is so much more than a mystery. It’s an exploration and commentary on life in India, poverty, classism, friendship, family, and so much more. I felt so immersed in this book that I didn’t want to leave.

I think where the book fell down the most was in trying to be too many things. If it had just been a contemporary mystery, I think the narrative would’ve been stronger, but it had in it these really poignant, beautifully promising moments that hinted at magical realism that just never quite panned out. Also, the ending really killed it for me, and it’s frustrating to be so invested in a book and feel like the payoff just wasn’t there.

❧ The narrator is nine-year-old Jai, and seeing the story through his perspective was both charming and honest, because no one sees the world quite like a child.

They can be both naive and brutally honest, and the two worked really well here, I thought. Children also don’t always understand everything, which leads to a subtle unreliable narrator, and that’s a trope I will never tire of. Especially when the character doesn’t mean to be unreliable. They just are.

Jai is living in a rough area, with an even rougher upbringing, but he’s just naive enough to have hope in the people around him and faith in himself, which was refreshing to see. It never seemed to be an issue that he couldn’t do something, just that he might have to work to get there eventually.

The part I enjoyed the most is just how obsessed Jai was with crime shows and becoming a detective. Because, I mean, what kid doesn’t want to solve some sort of mystery, even if it’s not of a criminal sort? Mine was dinosaurs, thanks for asking. I was obviously going to grow up and figure out all the important things there were to know about them.

❧ When this book begins, you’re sort of just thrown into India, which has its advantages and disadvantages.

On the one hand, Anappara weaves a beautiful story about poverty, classism, struggle, and being an underdog in a world that isn’t interested in giving you handouts. It’s an often brutal, unjust, and shocking society, but it’s real and honest at the same time.

On the other hand … I don’t know any of these terms. And there is a lot of them. It was very hard to follow, and I felt like I needed to read next to a computer so I could look things up, and it just disrupted the flow of the book. I love learning about other cultures and being immersed in them, but I need a foothold, and here, I felt like I was just sort of free-falling.

❧ The first chapter of this is absolutely stunning and eerie and everything I had hoped the book would be.

Unfortunately, the narrator changed and the rest of the story was … not. I would’ve absolutely devoured a book written in the style of the first chapter, and I thought, after reading that, I would just love this book. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it. But the first chapter definitely set me up for an experience that the rest didn’t quite follow through with.

There were also chapters scattered throughout that built on this feeling of legend and beliefs, and I just absolutely loved these chapters.

They were written as if a storyteller was speaking directly to the reader, and there was something very poignant and also kind of spooky about them. Like anything could happen. Like the world was bigger than anyone imagined. Which was such a juxtaposition to the small world that Jai lives in and that the people in the basti often feel trapped in.

❧ Jai has a funny, often tongue-in-cheek sense of humor that kids often have without even trying, and it made his narrative all the more enjoyable to read.

He isn’t trying to be funny, per se, but it still comes across that way because I’m an adult, but also, I was once a kid and can relate to the struggle. Even just little things, like being disappointed that his detectiving doesn’t go the way it does on television. Or someone else figures out something before he does. He was such a tough kid, struggling through hard times, yet still trying to believe in the world. I just wanted to hug him.

❧ There were point of view chapters from each child that disappeared that gave a glimpse into why they disappeared, and I’m a little torn on how I felt about them.

On the one hand, they obviously added to the mystery a bit, since the reader gets to learn things that the narrator just can’t. On the other … it led to me figuring out the mystery ahead of time, because it kind of gives things away. I didn’t like the answer I had come up with, though, and expected that of course it wasn’t that obvious, and I was wrong. So that was a bit of a bummer.

I did like all their personalities, though. These were characters we didn’t really get to meet until they became pertinent to the plot, so having a little time in their head did make me feel more for them.

❧ There’s a trio of detectives here (some more willing than others), and the friends balanced each other so well, while making me laugh at the same time.

There’s Jai, the narrator, who instigates the investigation, because he’s obsessed with cop shows and is completely sure that he can solve it thanks to that. Then there’s Pari, the girl who wants to make a place for herself in a world that thinks girls are worthless, except for their ability to bear sons. She’s smart and pragmatic and balances Jai’s impulsiveness with calculated logic. Then there’s Faiz, who’s a Muslim in a Hindu world, who has to bear the brunt of xenophobia. He’s an unwilling accomplice in the investigation, yet he still plays a big part because … well, these are his friends, right? Sometimes, ya gotta put up with their silliness.

I thought the dynamic between these three worked so well, and they all had something to offer.

Not just as far as their abilities in the investigation, but also to the larger narrative about society and everyone’s role in it. It was a nice bit of diversity, to see how each one of them was affected differently as the book went along.

❧ There’s a lot of telling in this book, instead of seeing things happen in action.

There are several sections where Jai sort of sums up what he’s learned checklist style, and a lot of clues are gathered “off-screen,” so to speak, so we learn about them when someone tells Jai. There’s still some actual action and investigating, but it felt like a lot of the book takes place elsewhere and we just hear about it after the fact. I definitely felt like the story lagged in places, and I think this is why, because the narrative focused on more quotidian things and just summarized Jai’s discoveries instead.

❧ It seemed like the book tried to do a little too much, promising things that it couldn’t quite deliver. In particular: magical realism.

I mean, it’s named Djinn Patrol, so I expected that to play a bigger role, and it just didn’t. I was so disappointed that the magical realism wasn’t fully realized, because it was so freaking promising and wonderful.

My favorite chapters were the ones that delve into the local ghosts and their power, plus the power of their stories, which seemed like the author was priming us for them to play a big role in the story. But they didn’t.

It’s unfortunate, because it just rendered these chapters pointless to me. I kept expecting them to tie in, but they just never rid.

❧ The ending felt so rushed and unsatisfactory for me.

I don’t want to go into too much detail, but I was gripped at first, around 80%, just not wanting to put it down. But once the mystery solved, I was kind of like … that’s it? Really? I kept expecting something more because surely that couldn’t really be it. And it didn’t feel like the ending really wrapped anything up, just sort of … ended. The words just stopped, and it left a bad aftertaste for me.

If someone you know went missing, would you try to play the detective and look for them?

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