Ganja Coast - Softcover

Mann, Paul

3.87

116 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804114196 ISBN 13: 9780804114196

Publisher: Fawcett, 1995

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"MANN'S INDIA GRABS YOU BY THE THROAT. . . .Sansi, an ex-cop turned lawyer, is complex and compelling."
--The Philadelphia Inquirer
Even Goa, a sleepy beach community along India's "Ganja" coast, cannot escape the creeping reach of corruption. As voracious developers gear up to turn Goa into a moneymaking machine, lawyer George Sansi is pressured to dig up evidence on the man who stands to steal the most: the Minister for Economic Development, Rajiv Banerjee. Most of the burned-out inhabitants of Goa seem blissfully unaware of the coming changes--until the strangled body of a child is found floating in the waves, shattering even the aging Western hippies' view of Goa as an innocent paradise.
With his American lover, newspaper reporter Annie Ginnaro, Sansi sets out for a luxurious Goan resort, where he and Annie will pretend to enjoy a much needed rest. But relaxing is the last thing they will do, as they hack their way through a tangled jungle of Western dropouts, drugs, money, and murder that has overgrown around the last refuge of pleasure in India....
"[MANN] SETS ASTOUNDINGLY VIVID SCENES OF A DECADENT CITY in the throes of life, the better to draw sharp, grim portraits of characters flirting with bizarre forms of death."
--The New York Times Book Review
"CHILLING. . .TRULY SHOCKING. . .An intriguing look at another culture--one where the best and the worst of East and West meet."
--San Francisco Examiner

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From the Publisher:

I have been fascinated with all things Indian in the time of the Raj, but had not found a "modern India" that held me enthralled until Paul Mann's books came into my life. All the novels are wonderful, but my favorite is THE GANJA COAST. In this novel, lawyer George Sansi and his girlfriend Annie, pressured by a man to whom George owes his allegiance, journey to Goa, a coastal community inhabited by Western hippies and native drug dealers. Posing as vacationers, Annie (an American news journalist) and George (a Indian lawyer) attempt to find evidence of the corruption in the political machine behind the group that plans to develop sleepy paradise of Goa and turn it into a money-making enterprise. When the very young child of a couple of the local residents is found strangled, the investigation turns dangerous and the story becomes hypnotic. After reading this book, Goa went straight to the top (along with the Vale of Kashmir) of my wish list of places to visit.

Tanya Thompson, Executive Assistant

From Publishers Weekly:

Tough to put down, this engrossing follow-up to Season of the Monsoon (1993), brings back half-Indian, half-English George Sansi, newly retired from the Bombay police. Sansi is tapped by his former boss, Narendra Jamal, for some undercover sleuthing around the city of Goa, where plans for a free port have shifted greed and crime into high gear. Jamal hopes to bring down a corrupt, high-ranking minister through his links to the dealings of Prem Gupta, who manages the minister's illegal business (and Goa's government). Using a vacation with Annie Ginnaro, his California-born lover who writes for the Times of India, as a cover, Sansi soon finds that one of Jamal's contacts has fled town and that the other, a former police pathologist disturbed by the suspicious death of a nine-year-old American girl, is afraid to help. "There is no law here," he warns. While Sansi stakes out Gupta, Ginnaro makes friends among the area's transplanted American hippies, who are now in the way of Goa's development. Sansi's blue eyes are more distinctive than his personality and Ginnaro is often more irritating than spirited, but Mann sketches the character of "the most corrupt society on earth" with enthusiasm and detail, delivering his imaginative, unpredictable tale with nearly irresistible style.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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