It took me a while to settle in to Djinn Patrol. It's an unusually atmospheric and evocative read, and it felt a little overwhelming at times. It's overlong and occasionally overly repetitive, but it's also incredibly transportive - Anappara's descriptions take you right into the heart of Jai's basti, with its vivid patchwork of sights and smells.

Jai is an interesting protagonist. He has a distinctive voice, and Anappara perfectly captures the tone of a curious - but lazy - nine year old. His eyes offer the perfect window onto the world of the basti - everything smothered by mysticism and naivety as thick as the smog. As a reader, you are always wonderfully aware of the importance of things that Jai sees, but doesn't quite understand.

The secondary characters are particularly charming - especially Jai's sister Runu and his friends Pari and Faiz. They would all be brilliant protagonists in their own right, and their relationship with Jai is the perfect gateway to explore the impact of complex issues such as sexism and religious intolerance through the eyes of a child.

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line is a smart, unique novel brimming with heart and humanity.

Nine-year-old Jai’s favourite TV show is Police Patrol. When one of his classmates goes missing, Jai and his friends Pari and Faiz put their detective skills to work. As more and more children go missing, Jai learns that life is more serious than his TV show.

A nine-year-old narrator can be hard, but I liked Jai, his naivety and his innocence mixed in with his expectations and assumptions. He assumed he’d be the detective despite Pari being much smarter than him. He expected his sister to cook and clean and wondered why she didn’t appreciate his ‘you missed a spot’ comments. He’s an interesting character and together with Pari and Faiz, they held the novel together.

Despite the age of the narrator, this is a serious novel of poverty, religious intolerance, abuse and neglect. The police are clearly not there to help and there is no one else the kids can turn to.

I’d liked to have seen more from the women, like Jai’s sister Runu or his friend Pari. Perhaps more around how Faiz felt with the sectarian violence that isolated him.

The ending doesn’t deliver a neat conclusion to the disappearances, but it’s understood that there is no easy answer to this. Jai and his family might never know. A sadly realistic conclusion to this horrible fate.

A heartbreaking read but a realistic one. A story of the slums and child disappearances told through the eyes of a nine year old child. There’s a bit of a sense of adventure about it all too as Jai, the narrator has watched his favourite TV shows and wants to copy them. Childhood innocence makes this story read like YA at times but it also highlights the true horror of what is actually going on on Delhi’s streets.

Kids go missing all the time, we are told by one character and this doesn’t seem to surprise or horrify anyone. There’s a lot to think about here and I hope the novel will help raise the issues of missing Indian children and show up the extent of the scandal.

The group of friends in the book travel around the city and the stations on the purple line. They seem more bothered then the adults in the book. Adults who tell them there’s djinns who take children and that it’s happened for years. Djinns are a type of spirit or animal from folklore and so the story takes on quite a mythical tone when this cultural and spiritual belief systems is explored.

As well as the disappearances of the children, there’s also a great insight into the way life in the slums is portrayed.The day to day life there, how children cope, how they play etc and what they eat is all drawn with care and attention. The TV show they watch is of course the key which sparks off the whole story!

I found the main character very unique. You can tell he’s innocent of course at that age, but also street smart. You can tell he’s excited to solve crimes like his hero but doesn’t seem to be aware that he, too, could be a victim. Well you don’t think of crime like that at that age, do you?

A quirky read which will surely help to highlight the issues at the heart of it.