From 1984 to 2001, Josh Pachter published a total of ten stories about Mahboob Chaudri, a Pakistani policeman living and working in the island emirate of Bahrain. Writing in The Ethnic Detectives, critic Bill Pronzini called Chaudri "one of crime fiction's most delightful new detectives." This book collects all ten of the Chaudri stories — which originally appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and elsewhere — in one volume. Each story is followed by an illustrated afterword, in which the "story behind the story" is presented.
Genre: FICTION / Crimehttp://www.joshpachter.com/bib/bib.tree.html
The corridor was deserted — all the Presidential’s guests but one, he felt certain, were downstairs at the buffet, even the Westerners, who had been cautioned not to eat in public during the daylight hours as a sign of respect to Ramadan and to the Muslims observing the fast. He walked quickly down the hallway to the fire door, let himself through it, and climbed the last two flights of stairs to the hotel’s top floor.
Here, too, there was no one to be seen, no one to see him as he crept along the thick brown carpeting to the door marked 613.
He selected one key from the dozen on the ring and fitted it soundlessly into the lock set into the doorknob. He held his breath as he turned the key, turned the knob, and swung the door inward just enough to allow himself to slip through the opening and ease it shut behind him.
The room was dark, illuminated only by the faint glow of the hotel’s exterior lighting that filtered in through the drapery covering the single window.
He waited. The only noises in the room were the gentle hum of the air conditioner and the deafening pounding of his heart. When his eyes had adjusted to the almost-blackness, he was able to make out the shape in the left-hand bed, imagined he could actually see the one thin blanket rising and falling with the breathing of the figure who lay there asleep.
He stole across the room to the side of the bed and reached once more into his thobe’s deep side pocket.
When his hand reappeared, he was holding neither cigarettes nor keys. He was holding a small black revolver that glittered evilly in the diffused light admitted by the curtains, and his hand was steady as he touched it to the temple of the sleeping man in the bed.
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French
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Already translated.
Translated by Charlotte Cadorel
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Spanish
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Already translated.
Translated by Graciela Aprea
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Author review: Graciela was very responsive to email contact, always friendly yet professional, and easy to work with. |
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Swedish
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Already translated.
Translated by Camilla Sundell
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