The following edition was used to create this study guide: Anappara, Deepa. Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, Random House, 2020.

Growing up in the grinding poverty of the smoggy slums of a major Indian metropolis, 9-year-old Jai lives most completely in the world of television, particularly the real-life crime stories where murder mysteries are solved by clever detectives. The small television dominates his family’s tiny one-room apartment. Although his older sister, 12-year-old Runu-Didi, excels in track and in academics, certain that an athletic scholarship to a university will be her way out of the slums, Jai is indifferent to school. He has two close friends, Pari, a nerdy girl dedicated to her studies, and Faiz, a Muslim boy deeply fascinated by the world of the supernatural.

One morning, Jai’s neighborhood is rocked by news that a boy from Jai’s school, Bahadur, is missing. The boy’s parents are frantic. Bahadur, with his asthmatic wheezing and his stutter, has long been the object of ridicule at school. Bahadur’s father, disappointed in his son, beats him regularly, and his mother, a maid in the nearby high-rise upper class apartment complex, is often called away. This leaves Bahadur on his own, often wandering the streets of the slum. Police, called to investigate, evidence no real interest. Jai sees this is a chance to put into practice the protocols of crime solving he watches nightly on television. Enlisting the help of Pari and Faiz, Jai begins to poke around the neighborhood looking for clues. For Jai, the game is afoot. Early on, Jai zeroes in on an older kid in school, nicknamed Quarter, who is known for running a neighborhood gang that steals from merchants. Faiz, for his part, fears Bahadur has been taken by djinns, shape-shifting spirits known for terrorizing children.

Within a few days, however, the game quickly turns serious when a second child, a friend of Bahadur’s named Omvir also goes missing. Jai believes that the two friends may have headed for the city using the Purple Line, a metro train with a station near the neighborhood. Health concerns about the heavy smog closes the schools, and Jai sees this as a chance to do some real investigating. Although school official caution the children to stay at home, Jai wants to head to the city. Stealing money his mother has saved for emergencies, Jai, along with Pari and Faiz, board the Purple Line and travel to the city to find their friends.

The sheer size of the city frustrates Jai in his investigation. On a hunch, following an advertisement the three see posted in the metro station, Jai leads the trio to the headquarters of a charity organization committed to protecting children. Jai explains their mission. Jai is advised told to find a man who lives on the streets known as Guru, who might be able to help them. Guru offers little help although he shares with them stories of other children abducted and then killed, cautioning them the city was no place for kids.

Jai returns home. Weeks pass with no breakthroughs. Plagued by guilt over stealing from his mother, Jai secures a menial job in a neighborhood tea shop determined to return the money to his mother as he earns it. The hours are long. Jai befriends a stray dog that hangs around the shop. Because he has seen it on television, he wants to use the dog to track down the missing boys. With the help of Omvir’s mother, Jai sets the dog on the chase. The dog only leads Jai to the edges of the slum, near a massive city landfill.

A third child, a girl named Aanchal, goes missing. She is older than the first two. She is 16 and strikingly attractive. Aanchal takes night classes in English to improve her job opportunities. She has a Muslim boyfriend who works in a call center. Beginning to see the dimension of the missing children, Jai remains dedicated to his investigation, talking with Aanchal’s parents. Jai finds out that whoever kidnapped Aanchal later used her cell phone. Rumors in the neighborhood now whisper that the Muslims who live among them might be responsible for the kidnappings, that Muslims steal Hindu children as part of an insidious global human trafficking network. At that point yet another child, this time a 5-year-old girl, goes missing.

The neighborhood is in full panic. Four children are now missing, and the police are doing little. Jai’s parents insist that Jai and his sister stay home. The sister objects. Her track coach will certainly replace her on the track team thus costing her a chance at a scholarship. Anti-Muslim sentiment grows. After all, only Hindu children have been taken. With little hard evidence, the police round up four Muslims, among them Faiz’s older brother, and charge them with the abductions. When subsequently two Muslim children go missing, however, the neighborhood is certain the police have arrested the wrong people. Jai is still certain Quarter is somehow involved.

Runu-Didi refuses to abide her parents’ orders to stay home. With Jai’s help, she continues to attend track practice to ensure her place on the team. When her parents discover her deception, her father in a moment of desperate frustration slaps his daughter. Runu is upset by her father’s action. The next day, she tells Jai after school that she wants to go talk with her coach. Jai reluctantly heads home alone. That night Runu never comes home. The police, alerted by Jai’s frantic parents, say that they can do nothing for at least 48 hours.

The next morning the neighborhood is stunned by news of a commotion in the landfill. A witness claims to have seen a suspicious figure, a large man, appear to hide a small box amid the piles of trash. The police retrieve the box and find in it a curious assortment of stuff, each object, they discover, tied to one of the missing children. The description the witness gives leads police to arrest Varun Kumar, a gawky man known in the neighborhood as Wrestler-Man. Hoping that Runu is still alive, Jai’s parents are part of the crowd that goes to the hi-rise complex where Kumar works even as police continue to comb through the landfill for addition clues. Kumar’s employer, a wealthy woman, tries to appease the unruly gathering and agrees to let them come into her swanky penthouse apartment to look for any of the missing children. They find nothing.

Detained and beaten by police, Kumar confesses to abducting and killing the missing children. Police are not sure how many Kumar may have killed. The neighborhood is mystified. No explanation, no motive is provided. Over the next weeks, Faiz and his family move away to the city’s Muslim neighborhood. Then in short order Pari is accepted for study at a prestigious private school in the city. Jai is left alone. His mother seldom talks, his father drinks more and more. For his part, Jai no longer watches television crime shows. He has lost his faith in what he calls “detectiving.” He has learned that mysteries cannot be solved.