Pavithra Srinivasan
The Ghost Hunters of Kurseong By Shweta Taneja by Shweta Taneja Hachette, India, 2013, 220 pp., 295
November 2013, volume 37, No 11

Remember all those Enid Blyton stories that you used to love? You’d grab a Famous Five or Five Find-Outers mystery, and retire to a corner, engrossed in the adventures of Julian and George, or Fatty and Bets, laughing or gasping alternatively as they went rootling into crumbling houses, discovered secret passages or were caught by the local policeman.

Shweta Taneja’s offering, aimed at young adults, follows this pattern as well: 12 year-old (or nearly 13 years old, as he much prefers it) Kartik Godse is forced to move from cosmopolitan Mumbai to a tiny place no one seems to have even heard of: the hill-station of Kurseong. He’s pretty sure he’s never going to make it out of there alive (as he’d be dead of boredom), and manages only to control himself, because his mother is so happy at going there on an assignment—she lived there once, and has very happy memories of the place.

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