This is a carefully structured, action-packed story of intrigue and adventure in British India. Fifteen-year-old Chokra Laing, an apprentice to a prestigious racing stable in England, returns to India because he believes his benefactor, Major "Tags" Mactaggart, has lost his money and needs help. Chokra and his Afghani friend, Gul Akbar, search for Tags in Lahore, Pindi, and Muree.
The glory of the British Raj is convincingly evoked through descriptions of regimental life with sprawling bungalows and salaaming turbanedservants, royal visits, and tea drinking. Despite the Indianized hero, the novel is thoroughly colonial and Eurocentric in perspective. Indians and Afghanis are constantly denigrated. For instance, Mahatma Gandhi is considered mad, and his nonviolent struggle for freedom is seen as a political nuisanc caused by the magnanimous British for admitting Indians to the civil service and army. Gu Akbar and other sympathetic characters in the story prefer to be ruled by the British to living in independent India.
--The Indian Subcontinent in Literature for Children and Young Adults by Meena Khorana
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