I could write and endless review or go for something short. I decided for a short review.
This book is excellent, it's heart wrenching and engrossing, it strucks a lot of emotional cords and you are not able to put it down because the storytelling is excellent.
Great characters, great plot and great descriptions of the slum life.
It was a great read, strongly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

Jai is addicted to reality cop shows and is itching to put all the theory he’s learned into action. When local children begin to go missing Jai, along with his best friends the very bright Pari and loyal Faiz, launches himself into some serious detective work. But having to work with distraught parents, an insouciant police force, getting at the truth is not going to be easy and fraught with danger.

This interesting novel blends childish perception with worldly wisdom, as well as adventure with the very real peril in India of child abduction.

Through the eyes of enthusiastic and determined Jai, the reader is able to experience the slums of Dehli through all its sights, sounds, smells and tastes.

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line is an immersive experience, both joyful, heart-warming, heart-breaking and terrifying.

If there was ever an effective way to make the rest of the world aware of the challenges people, particularly children, in the slums of Delhi face on a daily basis, then this is the way to do it.

Deepa Anappara really knows her subject, of that there is no doubt, but at no point does the story give a sense of wearing the depth of research on its sleeve. Instead, you are too busy living in the children’s world, enjoying their adventures and at the same time constantly anxious for their safety when they come perilously close to danger.

Although this is clearly a novel with a social purpose, it is also a story of close childhood friendship and loyalty and, because of the way it is written, is capable of and should reach a wide age-range of readers.

Nine year old Jai lives in a basti at the end of the Purple Line. When his classmate goes missing, Jai decides to put all of his knowledge from Police Patrol and the TV crime series he watches to use, recruiting friends Pari and Faiz to help him.

At first the story seems fairly light-hearted and endearing, only tempered by the mythology of Mental's ghost and the conditions in which these children are working and living. Jai is a bit headstrong, but well-intentioned, and where his detective skills fail the conscientious and clever Pari, and street-wise Faiz make up for it. Along the way Jai adopts a stray dog who he names Samosa for the cart the dog sleeps under, just another example of the innocent, child-like wonder the world is seen through in this book.

However, Anappara has mastered how to lure the reader in, getting you to let down your guard, before packing an emotional punch. Her ability to inhabit the eyes of a child is remarkable, and is integral to how the novel works. If a story of child disappearances was told by an adult, or by someone in power it would be more factual, less emotional, whereas the children at the heart of this novel are discovering the world and trying to make sense of what is happening around them. However, in doing that, she doesn't shy away from the topic, and the implications of it; some of the situations and events witnessed by Jai would give Western parents heart attacks - and that is not a slight against parents in the basti, who do their damndest to protect their children, but cannot completely control the environment they live in.

In this way, the novel is an eye-opening social commentary on life in metropolitan India. The main characters of the novel don't even count themselves as being too badly off, compared to other children we see in the novel, Jai has a family, a roof over his head, food every night, he goes to school and doesn't have to work. We see a vibrant cast of characters across the story in terrible circumstances, children who work to support their families, women and daughters who cook, clean and care for those around them, but also a tight knit community who pull together to support each other.

Alongside the plot, the atmosphere and detail of the novel is so immersive, you can almost smell the scents of Bhoot Bazaar, and feel the oppression of the smog. There are a huge number of themes covered in the book, from class to gender roles, politics and religious violence to the more personal; growing up, loss, grief, fear. It is such a moving, heart-wrenching tale, with entire sections that will have you holding your breath. Through this stunning and inventive novel, Anappara forces you to think about the very real instances of children disappearing in India, everyday.

I seem to have chosen via Netgalley some very sad books of late but as I have said before we should all read books (true in nature) to make us realise who lucky we are as a whole. Jai lives with his family in a slum and gets concerned when friends of his disappear and he feels it is up to him to look for them and started a detective gang to find out where they had disappeared to. Having been to India I have knowledge of street children and a lot of them think that leaving a town or village and going to the city is the thing to do but they do not realise the dangers that lurk around corners. I thought the way the djinns were written about was interesting and you could very easily understand the way fear grips them – spooky and control over the children by the parents to a certain extent. Hunger is never far away for these families. The author very obviously has an amazing knowledge of life and has portrayed it well although I did feel that it could probably have been condensed. Jai and his friends attend school which is a bonus for them and you can only hope that as it is a small community things will be better for the children. The story is harrowing and you do finish the book feeling what could I do to make their lives better knowing full well there is nothing. I do wonder how many children disappear around the world

The voice is effective but the story isn't quite as gripping as I was expecting. I wanted a bit more from this. While it is loaded with details these slowed the story down and I would have enjoyed more well chosen details than the 'everything and the kitchen sink' level we get.

I struggled to form a real connection with the characters and while I'm sure some people will love this, unfortunately I didn't.

I always like to see representation and I'm glad this book has been published and will find readers - I just wasn't the right reader on this occasion.

My thanks to Random House U.K. Vintage Publishing/Chatto & Windus for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line’ by Deepa Anappara in exchange for an honest review. This is her debut novel and was published on 30 January.

“Three weeks ago I was only a schoolkid but now I’m a detective and also a tea-shop boy…”

In a shantytown (basti) in an unnamed Indian city, nine-year-old Jai lives with his parents and older sister. Jai attends school and hangs out with his friends. He is obsessed with the true crime reality show, Police Patrol.

When one of his classmates goes missing, Jai decides to use the crime-solving skills he has picked up from the show to find him. Along with his friends Pari and Faiz, Jai ventures into some of the most dangerous parts of the city including the bazaar at night and the railway station at the end of the Purple Line. As further children disappear from the neighbourhood the group wonders if one or more djinns might be responsible (hence the title).

Parents in the district are terrified and the police appear indifferent. The novel builds to a confrontation as the community seeks to assign blame.

Jai is the main narrator in this powerful coming-of-age novel though there is the occasional aside including from the children who have vanished just before something happens to them. This increases the tension while preserving the mystery.

I found this a deeply moving story, both heartwarming and heartbreaking. It started off with quite a comic feel as Jai and his ragtag gang seek answers and takes a darker turn by its closing chapters.

The Author’s Afterword states her background as a journalist reporting on poverty and religious violence in India. She relates the real world social issues linked to the disappearance of these children. It makes for sobering reading. She provided a list of her sources and also notes various organisations working for the welfare of India’s children.

This novel’s quirky title had initially attracted me though I became aware recently that It had generated quite a lot of prepublication buzz. I certainly feel that it is warranted. I would hope to see it recognised by this year’s literary prizes.

An important novel that is also a very engaging read. Highly recommended.

I enjoyed this book, and keep seeing lots of reviews and comments about it everywhere online.
The story seemed to take a sudden turn towards the end after building for a while, but I did like the narration and how it evolved from Jai's naive point of view.
I particularly liked the individual chapters from the missing childrens' points of view, but won't say too much as I don't want to give anything of the story away.
I also particularly liked the ending. Jai does feel like he is alone but he also seems to make peace with the fact that he may never get the answers or closure he wants, and I'm not sure what difference it would make if he did.
I would definitely recommend reading this book.

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line comes with a reasonable amount of expectation - chatter on book podcasts and blogs and the Observer listed it as a debut to look out for in 2020.

On the whole, it deserves those plaudits. Told from the perspective of Jai and his friends who live in a slum, they pick up and “investigate” as their classmates go missing. Drawing on Jai’s love of TV reality police shows, the friends and families bring to sharp focus the cruelties of endemic child kidnapping, police indifference and a cruel class structure.

The characters are superb and there is a real warmth to the storytelling. The only niggles I had were an over abundance of local vernacular (thank goodness for my Kindle where the meaning pops up when you hover over a word) and the ending lacked the closure I was seeking, but nevertheless was appropriate for the story.

With thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Random House / Vintage for an advance copy in consideration of an honest review.

I was sent a copy of Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara to read and review by NetGalley.
What a fabulous book! Evocative, engrossing, tragic, emotive and ultimately informative, teaching westerners like myself about the way a whole slice of humankind must live – or should I say exist. Other novels such as A Fine Balance and Slumdog Millionaire (Q&A) have focused on the lives of India’s lower classes, but this novel is slightly different being taken from a child’s perspective with the fact of living in hardship and squalor being almost unquestioningly the norm. Beautifully written with authenticity, the author has really captured the essence of the characters’ lives and relationships while vividly painting the locations and even the smog that encompasses the whole story. I could go on about all the things that made this novel worthy of 5 stars - and more in my opinion – but I just recommend that you go ahead and read the book yourself!

A tender, heartwarming novel yet a harrowing read! A dichotomy, I know, but nonetheless true. Anappara talks about the harsh reality of poor Indian families living in slums, the corruption of governmental institutions(I really liked this hilarious yet evocative phrase describing the police: The letters P and O are missing from the Keep's side, so it reads LICE), the high rate of child abductions, illicit rings involved in child smuggling; social constrains especially for girls/women etc through the eyes of a group a children. I don't know about others, but I really love the world of children. I love how they see the world, how the explain to themselves what is going on around them, sometime in unexpected ways that fill you with wonder.

My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars.

Nine-year-old Jai fancies himself as a bit of a detective and thinks of himself as the smartest person in his immediate circle. When a boy goes missing from his school, Jai decides to use the sleuthing skills he’s picked up from watching too many reality cop shows to find the missing boy. With his best friends at his side he sets about exploring the dangerous recesses of his local basti. But as more kids begin to go missing, Jai and his friends have to deal with an indifferent police force, scared and angry parents, and maybe even soul-sucking djinns in their search for clues.

Deepa Anappara was formerly a journalist in India, where she spent much of her time investigating and reporting on the impact of poverty and religious violence on children’s education, and that definitely shines through in the narrative she unfolds in this novel. Told from the point of view of nine-year-old Jai, this is a dark and somewhat disturbing tale. Despite this, it’s also a highly engrossing read which draws the reader in as the mystery deepens.

As the mystery of the missing children begins to have progressively more of an impact on Jai’s life and family his initial confidence and enthusiasm begin to wane, until gradually even he loses hope. What starts out as a game for the protagonist soon becomes overshadowed by the very real, very personal stakes he has to face towards the novel’s denouement.

To be clear, this is not a novel for the faint-hearted. It addresses some very real, very heady subjects and doesn’t pull any punches. It is believed that as many as 180 children go missing every day in India, and this novel draws attention to that fact in such a vivid, heart-breaking way that you can’t help but feel the pain of the characters represented in the narrative, especially the parents of the missing children.

Anappara’s writing is superb throughout. Her descriptions of the poverty-stricken slums and community bring Jai’s world to life brilliantly, while at the same time providing a scathing commentary on the social, financial and cultural inequality prevalent in modern India. By also weaving in the urban legends that have grown up around the basti she manages to add a faintly whimsical, faintly otherworldly feel to the narrative, hinting at a supernatural source for the disappearances, even while reminding the reader that this is impossible, that real people are far more capable of horrific acts than any imagined monster.

If you’re looking for something to read that’s a little more substantial than the usual detective mystery, and can put up with having your emotions pulled in every direction at once, then I’d certainly recommend giving this one a try.

Our protagonist in this story is nine-year-old Jai, who just so happens to be obsessed with crime dramas and when his schoolfriend goes missing, he and his friends Pari and Faiz, take it upon themselves to find him. Taking inspiration from the crime dramas that Jai watches, the Djinn Patrol sets out to find their missing friend. Things change on their search as more and more children are going missing and the police are showing no interest.

The parents of his missing schoolfriend having to bribe the police to look for their child and the general difficulties that these families face living in the poorest parts of India. Seeing this as you read through the eyes of a child is quite breathtaking and you as a reader, really feel for Jai and his friends. They are fearful of the corrupted police and always afraid that the bulldozers will come and destroy their shantytown and build shiny new high-rises.

It's a very rich, diverse book and mirrors Anappara's aims of communicating the shocking statistics that over 180 children go missing in India every day. There's a clear divide between the people living in the slums and the high rises, the opportunities that are afforded to some and not others. I think it is rare to see topics such as this communicated in such a way, through the eyes of an innocent child which makes this story all the more breathtaking and heartbreaking.

Anappara has written this in such a way that you get sucked in and then hit with the horrors behind the words. It's a haunting story being told from the perspective of a child. While the story and the origins of it are shocking, it is also written with such warmth and is often quite uplifting. A rollercoaster of emotions.

Definitely worth a read.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

I really liked this book. I think Anappara did a great job of showing the everyday lives of the people who live in slums in India, particularly the children. Jai, Pari, Runu and Faiz jumped off the page and Jai's narrative was engaging and enjoyable. It also highlights many of the issues these people face, such as religious persecution, abandonment by the authorities and downright snobbery by those who have managed to escape.

I could have done with the story moving a little bit faster, but I'm happy to trade off a slightly slower story for a more in-depth view of the world and characters.

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Indian debut novelist Deepa Anappara is a refreshingly original and wonderfully unique read. In a sprawling Indian city, three friends venture into the most dangerous corners to find their missing classmate. . . Down market lanes crammed with too many people, dogs, and rickshaws, past stalls that smell of cardamom and sizzling oil, below a smoggy sky that doesn’t let through a single blade of sunlight, and all the way at the end of the Purple metro line lies a jumble of tin-roofed homes where nine-year-old Jai lives with his family. From his doorway, he can spot the glittering lights of the city’s fancy high-rises, and though his mother works as a maid in one, to him they seem a thousand miles away. Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line plunges readers deep into this neighborhood to trace the unfolding of a tragedy through the eyes of a child as he has his first perilous collisions with an unjust and complicated wider world.

Jai decides to use the crime-solving skills he has picked up from TV to find him. He asks Pari and Faiz to be his assistants, and together they draw up lists of people to interview and places to visit. Drawing on real incidents and a spate of disappearances in metropolitan India, Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line is extraordinarily moving, flawlessly imagined, and a triumph of suspense. It captures the fierce warmth, resilience, and bravery that can emerge in times of trouble and carries the reader headlong into a community that, once encountered, is impossible to forget. The indifference of the police force regarding those missing broke my heart and highlighted just how deep the corruption runs. This is a witty and respondent debut and an introduction to a writer of enormous talent.

Every now and again a book comes along that is impossible to ignore; this is one of them. Many thanks to Vintage for an ARC.

I was actually expecting it to be about djinns, but the only supernatural elements are two spirits, who each have a chapter each and the rest of it is a pretty straight mystery. It's a shame because I loved the opening chapter about Mental, who protects his band of kids from beyond the grave. The other ghost is a woman who avenges her daughter's lethal rape.

The bulk of the story is told from Jai's point of view and I'm not the biggest fan of child narrators in works intended for an adult audience. Sometimes it works but I just found Jai a bit of a simple character. He's not a great detective and I didn't feel like I could use his investigation to guess who was responsible. There were moments when he was charming or funny but I definitely preferred the chapters in third person.

The core of the story is the plight of poor children in India, where it's estimated that 180 children go missing every day. Jai and his friends live in a basti, which is basically a slum, but they are better off than the street kids. Some of the parents work for "hifi" people, the middle classes who live in gated communities and shut themselves away from the poverty on their doorstep.

As more children go missing, racial tensions start to rise and people start to blame the Muslims who live peacefully among them. This Islamophobia is sadly a common occurrence, and India is no exception. The police are also indifferent at best and corrupt at worst, preferring the protect the rich from the poor than find the missing children. It highlights the divides along wealth and religion in modern India.

Deepa Anappara does an excellent job conjuring up the sights and smells of the basti and bazaar, with food being not far from Jai's mind. The kids make sure they go to school to get a free meal and any spare rupees they can scrounge together will be spent on the food stalls.

This is an eye opening read. I had no idea how many children disappear in the slums. The poverty and conditions described mean that it is hard to keep reading in places. The story is told by Jai and the writing style was easy to read. The characters and their story are memorable.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

Jai is nine years old and lives with his family in the slums of New Delhi. He loves watching reality cop shows, especially Police Patrol (presumably a fictionalised version of Crime Patrol), waits hungrily for his mother to bring back special food from her job as a maid in one of the ‘hi-fi’ flats of the city, and is watched over by his older sister, Runu, who dreams of becoming a successful runner and winning a sports scholarship that will allow her to escape. When children start disappearing from Jai’s basti, he forms a detective gang with his two best friends, Pari and Faiz, and they determine to find out what is happening. Their investigations take them onto the Metro’s Purple Line, into a part of the city they have never been before. Jai is convinced that there may be something supernatural at work, and that the children may have been snatched by the hungry djinns that are said to hunt at night. Framed by the fact that around 180 children in India go missing every day (although this article explains that the reasons behind this statistic are complex, and not all of these children are abducted), this debut novel is unafraid to highlight the limited interest from the Indian media in the fate of poor kids and to go to some very dark places. Indeed, I found this one of the most upsetting things I have read for some time.

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line draws from Deepa Anappara’s own origins in Kerala and her experience of working as a journalist in India for eleven years, and, as expected, is rich in detail. Anappara slips seamlessly between English and Hindi in such a way that the language of the novel is never difficult to follow, and Jai’s basti is vividly brought to life. Anappara has written thoughtfully about the difficulties of inhabiting the voice of a poor urban child, even given her own background and experience, in the Times [paywalled], an article that feels even more salient given the recent reviews of Jeanine Cummins’s American Dirt. ‘I had been concerned that any representation of a marginalised, vulnerable community in India risked stereotyping or romanticising their difficult circumstances’, she writes, recounting that ‘I had witnessed how children’s voices had been absent from the news reports about their disappearances, and I wanted to reframe the narrative so they would be at the heart of it.’ Ultimately, she writes, it was only after her sibling was diagnosed with incurable cancer that she really felt at one with Jai, and his need to tell stories about the world to make sense of the horrors he witnesses.

Although I can’t comment on how accurate Anappara’s depiction of the New Delhi slums actually is, I do think that she has successfully achieved her aim of not writing ‘poverty porn’. Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line presents a diverse cast of characters not defined by their personal circumstances, and also pays close attention to the social and economic hierarchies within the basti, rather than presenting a mass of human misery. When Jai visits the home of the first boy who disappears, Bahadur, he notes that Bahadur’s family must be better off than his because they have ‘more of everything: more clothes hanging from the clothes lines above us, more upturned pots and pans… more framed photos of gods on the walls, the glass turning sooty because of the joss sticks stuck into the corners of the frames, a bigger TV, and even a fridge’. The novel is also attentive to anti-Muslim feeling among the predominantly Hindu population.

If there was something about this novel that made me feel a bit uncertain, it was Jai’s voice, which feels too much like the kind of chirpy, cliched child narrator I’ve read in many other novels set in wildly different times and places. A brief segment of narration from his older sister Runu sets this into context somewhat, giving us a very necessary external viewpoint on Jai. After a family argument where she is slapped by her father, she sees her brother ‘gleefully narrating the events of last night’ to his friends and reflects that ‘Since he had been born, she had considered Jai with a blend of loathing and admiration; it seemed to her that he had a way of softening the imperfections of life with his daydreams and the self-confidence that the world granted boys’. The first two-thirds of this novel are overlong, with Jai’s rambling narration becoming a bit frustrating, but the interspersed sections from other narrators are much stronger, especially those that relate urban legends from the basti – I was especially gripped by the tale of Junction-ki-Rani, who is said to stand guard at highway junctions to protect women who are threatened by men. And to be fair, the harrowing ending justifies much of the build-up, even if this could still probably have been achieved in a shorter page count. I’ve rarely read a final chapter that stayed with me so long, and that’s probably the great achievement of Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line. [3.5 stars]

Oh my goodness what a read. I’m really glad that in advance I knew little of the story behind his novel and approached it very open to the contents.

A truly wonderful voice in 9 year old Jai who lives with his parents and sister in a slum dwelling in a city in India. Shining a profound child like view of the only kind of life he has ever known where family and friendship are everything. Whilst he can only imagine the lives of the those that live in the “hi-fi” buildings that they can see in the distant, Jai gives us an innocents view of life in the slums in India. The only life he has ever known.

The story takes a sinister turn as one of his friends goes missing.... and then another boy from the slum. Ignored by the police, we see the true lives of the “ underclass” in this city. We truly get a glimpse into the lives of the forgotten... but throughout told in Jai’s unique voice.

Truly moving and unforgettable. This is a remarkable novel.

Found this to be a quirky book. This might be because I hadn’t really digested the blurb in the description and I was expecting more of a ‘who done it’, which it didn’t turn out to be. It is more an observed social commentary on the difference between the ‘have’ and the ‘have nots’ in India and the casual way in which missing children from the poor shantytowns are not looked into and it’s just accepted by the authorities. Shocking that the value put on these lives is low to nil, whereas in the rest of the world if 180 kids a day went missing, there would be a massive outcry.

I clicked on this book by mistake and I am so glad I did. Jai a nine year Indian boy watches far too many reality cop shows and when a boy from school goes missing Hai and his two friends decide to play amateur detectives. A heart warming and emotional tale. Also an eye opening insight into the dangerous world of the slums of India. A little gem.
I would like to thank the author, publisher and Netgalley for the ARC in return for giving an honest review.