Son of the Circus

No one could accuse John Irving of writing the same book twice. A Son of the Circus takes us out of the safety of his New England safe haven and relocates to India for a bizarre murder mystery involving twins separated at birth, movie actors, an anxious doctor and the circus. Cobbling together many different plot strands, A Son of the Circus shows Irving's funnier side for, despite the brutality of the murders that set the book off and the cat and mouse game that expands over the decades, the richness of his tongue-in-cheek view of India's high classes is very funny.

Years ago Dr Farrokh Daruwalla helped the police with a series of murders that took place in Bombay. When this affects an upper-class club and Daruwalla's stepson is threatened, the killings are investigated by a sympathetic criminal inspector who long ago married a girl who had witnessed one of the murders. Another story line concerns twin brothers who do not know each other at first. One is a famous movie actor starring in the Inspector Dhar series, which are scripted in secret by Dr Daruwalla. The other is a Jesuit who causes all sorts of confusion when he arrives and gets on everyone's nerves. The twins meet when the Jesuit apprentice leaves his religious ambitions behind.

The book is a mix of Irving's more beserk themes: wrestling; venereal disease; bombs; car and other freak accidents. Vienna; bears; sex-change operations; dwarves; prostitutes; New England; precarious marriages and necessary infidelities, while his chapter headings provide much light relief, The Doctor Dwells on Lady Duckworth's Breasts, or A Misunderstanding at the Urinal.