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.
Forthcoming. Publication date to be announced.
The book
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.
The Cultural Guide
The wedding week
A guide to the wedding week in 500 Steps Down, with the days, the places and the words, is coming soon.
The author
Tej Arora
Tej Arora, Canadian novelist and founder of RazzyTech, based in Surrey, British Columbia.
I started out trying to write a memoir. It had the emotion and the dry humour and most of the moments that made me, and I kept stalling, because some of those chapters belonged to other people. 500 Steps Down came out of that. I started it as notes the year after my own wedding. It turned into a mystery about a woman who is a different person to everyone who knows her.
I was born in Vancouver and raised in Surrey, British Columbia, and I still live a few minutes from the house I grew up in.
Q&A
Questions people ask about Tej Arora
Who is Tej Arora?
Tej Arora is a Canadian novelist and software founder in Surrey, British Columbia. He wrote 500 Steps Down, a mystery set in Surrey and Vancouver, and he runs RazzyTech, the company behind Relay, a lead management and communication platform for car dealerships.
What has Tej Arora written?
500 Steps Down is his first novel. His second, Somebody Else, Somewhere Else, is in revision.
What does Tej Arora do outside of writing?
He runs RazzyTech in Surrey, builds Relay for dealership sales teams, and takes on marketing and consulting work. Before that he spent a decade in operations across automotive retail, marketplaces and ecommerce.
Mailing list
Get an email when 500 Steps Down is out.
One email on the day 500 Steps Down is published, with the links on it.
No weekly newsletter. The list is not sold or shared. 500 Steps Down is the only thing on it.
Tej also runs RazzyTech, a software and marketing company in Surrey, British Columbia. The work side of the site.