A mystery novel by Tej Arora
500 Steps Down
A bride leaves her own wedding reception in Surrey, British Columbia. By morning she is missing.
500 Steps Down is a mystery set during a Sikh Punjabi wedding week in Surrey and Vancouver, British Columbia. Simran “Simmy” Bains leaves her own reception in the car of Aman Gill, the family friend she grew up beside. By morning she is missing, and Aman is the last person who saw her.
The Cultural Guide
A guide to the wedding week in 500 Steps Down, with the days, the places and the words, is coming soon.
The book
What happens in 500 Steps Down?
Everybody loves her. Nobody knows her.
Simran “Simmy” Bains planned every detail of her lavish Sikh Punjabi wedding. It almost went according to plan.
After a week of ceremonies and arguments neither bride nor groom can take back, Simmy leaves her Surrey reception in the car of Aman Gill, the family friend who grew up beside her. He drives her to a house in Point Grey. She tells him to leave.
By morning, Simmy is missing.
Aman should be the easiest witness the police have. Instead he keeps correcting their version of the wedding, defending Simmy’s new husband, and deciding which parts of that final drive matter enough to tell.
Everyone has a different version of Simmy. Her husband. Her family. Her friends. All of them filling in the blanks she isn’t there to explain.
The same shelf as The Guest List, You’re Invited and The Plus One.
500 Steps Down is Tej Arora’s first novel. He set it in Surrey and Vancouver because that is where he grew up. The places and the wedding week are real. The missing bride is not.
Getting a copy
Where to buy it
Forthcoming. Publication date to be announced. It is planned for paperback and Kindle, from Tej’s own imprint, RazzyLit.
The setting
Where it happens
Surrey and Vancouver, British Columbia, across one wedding week. The title comes from Trail 6 at Wreck Beach, where a wooden staircase runs down the cliff to the water in roughly five hundred steps.
- Newton, SurreyThe Bains family home. A three-storey house on a street of them.
- A Surrey banquet hallThe reception. Several hundred guests, a DJ with a lighting package, and a bar.
- Point Grey, VancouverWhere the drive ends.
- Wreck Beach, UBCThe staircase on the cover. Trail 6 runs down the cliff to the beach in roughly five hundred wooden steps.
- A Vancouver condoWhere Simmy lives, and where visiting relatives take over for the week.
- Davie StreetAman’s Vancouver.
The author
Tej Arora
Tej Arora was born in Vancouver and raised in Surrey, British Columbia, the younger of two sons in a Punjabi household. He wrote 500 Steps Down the year after his own wedding, and he still lives a few minutes from the house he grew up in. It is his first novel.
Q&A
Questions readers ask
What is 500 Steps Down about?
A bride, Simran “Simmy” Bains, leaves her own wedding reception in Surrey with Aman Gill, the family friend she grew up beside. He drops her at a house in Point Grey. By morning she is missing, and Aman turns out to be a harder witness to question than the police expect. It is a mystery about a woman who was a different person to everyone who knew her.
Where is 500 Steps Down set?
Surrey and Vancouver, British Columbia. Newton, a Surrey banquet hall, a Vancouver condo, Point Grey, Davie Street, and the wooden staircase down to Wreck Beach at UBC, which is where the title comes from.
Does 500 Steps Down have Punjabi characters?
Yes. Simmy Bains, Aman Gill and the family at the centre of the novel are Punjabi Canadian, and the mystery runs across a Sikh Punjabi wedding week in Surrey. The novel is in English. Punjabi and Sikh words are explained in passing, and there is a fuller guide and glossary on this site.
Is it based on a true story?
The places are real and so is the wedding week. The missing bride is not. Tej Arora grew up in Surrey and wrote the book the year after his own wedding.
What genre is it?
A mystery, and domestic suspense: psychological, slow-burn, told by one witness. It sits on the same shelf as Amanda Jayatissa’s You’re Invited, S.C. Lalli’s The Plus One and Lucy Foley’s The Guest List. It is a mystery set inside a Punjabi family rather than a book about Punjabi culture.
What is the wedding week?
A Sikh Punjabi wedding can run the better part of a week: a Paath, a mehndi, a maiyaan and jaggo, the Anand Karaj at the gurudwara, and the reception. The book takes place across one. The week day by day, and the words with pronunciations, are on this site.
Is there an audiobook?
No audiobook edition has been announced.
What is Tej Arora writing next?
Somebody Else, Somewhere Else, an upmarket contemporary novel about a man in the year after his marriage ends.
Forthcoming. Publication date to be announced.
Mailing list
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