When one of his classmates goes missing, nine-year-old Jai--living in a poor district in India at the end of the Purple metro line--decides to put his detective skills, learned from TV, to the test, and heads out into the too-crowded city with his classmates Pari--who gets the best grades--and Faiz--who has a real job--to find where their classmate went. What begins as more or less a game become serious when they find other children have started disappearing from their neighborhood, and the police seem indifferent about the horrific stories of soul-snatching djinns lurking abroad.

Includes book club guide.