The Blind Man of Seville by Robert Wilson
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Ups:
1. A healthy and intriguiging start.
2. A very evocative description of Seville and Tangiers.
3. Falcon Sr.’s journals.

Downs :
1. After 200 pages have gone by the speed starts to slow and slowwwww.
2. The investigation gets nowhere and the personal problems of the protagonist piles up.
3. The ending. After a boring and long drawn 400+ pages, this is the ending that the author wanted to reveal. Dissapointing to say the least.
4. Never knew someone wrote journals in direct speech approach.
5. The protagonist hardly creates any emotion in my mind except that he came out to be weak and whinning.
6. This book felt just like a P.D. James novel.
7. The book should have been names “The Co-Incidences of Seville”

Verdict : Why can’t these guys just write a nicely twisted and fast paced crime novel.



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A Beam of Light by Andrea Camilleri
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A Beam of Light by Andrea Camilleri is the latest in the Inspector Salvu Montalbano series penned by him, set in the fictional Italian town of Vigata. Like many of its predecessors this book also features a classic Andrea Camilleri format of having two crimes run parallel to each other. In this case there is a supposedly “Rape and Robbery”, a case of illegal arms trade, and a Mafia style murder. Also present is the somewhat peculiar relation between Montalbano and Livia, with an additional character in the form of a beautiful gallery owner called Marian.

Some authors fail to turn a book interesting with a pretty twisted plot in the tip of their pens, and whereas Andrea Camilleri with very simple and straightforward plots never fail to create a book which is not only fast and entertaining, but is emotional too. The humour quotient was missing and somehow this one was much more emotionally dark than any other Montalabano books I have read earlier. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed it and would love to pick up the series in near future again.


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The Girl in the Spider's Web by David Lagercrantz
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Girl In the Spider’s Web is the FOURTH instalment which most of us millennium fans had been waiting for. The book reached my hands quite early, but as I was stuck with a slow but steady historical mystery, I was not able to pick it up. Firstly, this book isn’t(I guess) the unfinished fourth book which Steig Larson had left when he was suddenly and sadly taken away from us. David Lagercrantz just took the characters and meshed them into a plot created by him, which was true to the themes of the original Larsson trilogy.

The first thing that I noticed while reading was that Mr. Lagercrantz never compromised with the speed. The first three books were lengthy, and though they never held a typical pure cat and mouse chase between the good and the bad, the books were never dull or slow. The fourth one was also the same. But, one sore thumb coming out of the book was the fact that the villains never felt complete. Their characterisation or their background somehow left me wanting for more. And the sad thing was that these guys were real interesting characters. Some detailing on them would have been much appreciated.

Other than this small glitch, the whole endeavour came out as smooth as silk. The violence made me sick, the pace made me giddy, Lisbeth’s prowess with the computer made me smile and to top it all Mr. Lagercrantz also made that one character appear in a big way, whose name always was mentioned in the previous books, but she always maintained to remain in the background. All in all this was a truly enjoyable read, and I hope this is not just one book affair, and we continue to get a series out of this.

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Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

For me there are always two kind of successful crime novels. One that has a tight plot, a modus operandi of the protagonist which flushes out the culprit from amongst the rubble. A novel as such, might or might not have a very potent ambience attached to it. The reader might not feel connected to the setting in which the events take place. The descriptions might not be that vivid. But the fact that the novel delivers a potent plot with a strong ending makes up for these shortfalls and ultimately turns the book into a successful crime novel.

The second sort is, the one which has a strong ambience to back up a plot which is not that twisted, neither the deduction powers of the protagonist gets called upon to point out the culprit. The culprit almost flushes himself out. But, the reader almost gets carried away to the time and place where the novel is set. The writer not only presents the reader with a landscape but also shows the mentality of the people living at that time. The potency is strong enough to overcome the shortfall of the plot.

Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin falls into the second category. Here we had a novel which managed to encompass three geographical entities into one novel. She brought into the pages of her novel, Cambridge, Salerno and the Middle East all in the setting of 1100s. She gave a short but detailed panorama of the early crusades. She then proceeded to tell us readers, how the Salerno School of Medicine allowed female practitioners in their ranks. Actually this is what I like with historical crime fiction. Even if the crime quotient gets a bit low at times, these books never cease to educate me in terms of history.

But, I expected a bit more from the plot and how it ended. Had this been a run of the mill plot where a king is threatened and the knight is called to save him, I wouldn’t have minded. But, Ms. Franklin laid down a plot which featured gory child deaths, a female coroner, old thirst for vengeance carried over from the crusades. She bought in the Jews being persecuted by the Christians, she introduced a masked devil called Rakshasa. I had expected that the end would come through shifting of clues and finally pinpointing the devil and then a showdown in the last chapters. Unfortunately that didn’t happen. But as I said earlier, the atmosphere compensated for this shortcoming.

A must read for any crime fiction lover, with a serious soft spot for this sub genre.



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The Universal Tone: My Life by Carlos Santana
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

You know who was the original hippie? Jesus—the ultimate multidimensional, multicolor, nothing-but-love hippie. He never said, “It’s my way or the highway.”

How many people can claim that they were on first name basis with Miles Davis, Buddy Guy(though he used the surname of the author more often, Wayne Shorter and many such legends and yet be humble and down to earth. Even when he picks up a project of writing his autobiography. Very few can. Carlos Santana is one of them. He had proved this earlier with his words and music, and once again he proves that through THE UNIVERSAL TONE.

What is the best deal one can get from this book? The one which says that if you read this book, you will not only get to read about the life of Carlos, but also the reader will get a short and concise course on the life of Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Bill Graham. Carlos Santana almost speaks with a childlike joy when he starts on Miles and Coltrane. He gives away the vibe of an awestruck fan when he discusses their life, and their music. He speaks like a music addict high on his drug as he brings Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, Bola Sete, Gabor Szabo in his pages. He creates a book which not only talks about his life, his spirituality his vision but also gives the readers about his idols, his favourite “cats” as he calls them.

His friend Andre Agassi spoke about his addiction in his book aptly named OPEN. Carlos speaks about once hitting a woman, speaks about the infamous Woodstock based “Electric Snake” incident without any shame. He speaks about shunning cocaine and accepting marijuana. On how he felt the cool vibes coming from Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Wilson Pickett. Or how he still considers Frank Zappa a wonderful musician, even after the latter almost parodied Carlos in one of his song. He is open about his admiration for Guru Sri Chinmoy, his friendship mixed admiration for Armando Peraza, the man who urged his to take control of his eponymous band Santana. He speaks about his divorce from Deborah Santana, his devotion for Cindy Blackman. His admiration and anger towards his mom and dad.

This book could have been a five star if not for some minor glitches. One, he speaks almost nothing about Raul Rekow, the ultimate conger in the Santana family, or Orestes Vilato, the timbalero who along with Raul and Armando created the best rhythm section. I did skip a few pages where he talks about Alice Coltrane. I never synced up to Turiya’s music, and never went through the pages with her in them. That took away a star. Even though this still will be a must have for a Santana fan.




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As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust by Alan Bradley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The last book had warned us readers, and this book confirmed our fears along with that of Flavia. She gets banished, to Miss. Bodycote’s Academy in Canada, to start her “training” which according to Aunt Felicity would fulfil her destiny, just like her mother. Flavia reaches Canada, accompanied by two “pills” called Dr. amd Mrs. Rainsmith. Mr. Rainsmith puts up his name in Flavia’s bad books as soon as he introduces himself,

“Dogger had once warned me to be wary of any man who introduced himself as “Mr.” It was an honorific, he said, a mark of respect to be bestowed by others, but never, ever, under any circumstances, upon oneself.”

On reaching Bodycote, Falvia gets assigned to a room called Edith Cavell. No sooner does she settles into her bed, she starts getting slapped, and then no sooner had she stopped and started the deduction process to find “why”, the assault-ress manages to bring down a body of a woman, which was hidden inside the chimney. As the head slides down the floor, the Chimney Sweepers come to dust, to clear away the puzzle regarding the dead woman, missing students and ghosts.

Flavia misses her village and her family, and Dogger. And we miss them as much as she does. But, to keep us away from our sadness we get to meet some entertaining students with nice names, a teacher suspected of homicide, a wheelchair bound mistress who keeps stuffed animals, birds and skulls in her laboratory and lastly a principal, who loves to punish her students in unimaginable ways.

Flavia transforms from a happy-go-lucky, and sometimes sad girl, into a “banished” adolescent far away from home, who realises that no letters are coming from home, except from Dogger. Who realises that the truth must be reached through facts, and only facts and that emotions should be kept at bay. And she also comes face to face with deep sadness. As such faced by a little girl who is far away from home, with no letters to look forward to, and no laboratory turn to.

“Magic doesn’t work when you’re sad.”

Flavia might have been heading towards new territory, but Alan Bradley stays rooted in his original position and presents us with a taut fast paced mystery, once a spy thriller and the next moment a gothic murder mystery, with “lights out after dark”, ghosts in the hall, and dead bodies never discovered, and if discovered, they are found stuffed inside chimneys. And he doesn’t disappoint when it comes to twists too. Not one, but two twists remain to be served in the last course.

P.S. Isn’t Dame Agatha Christie the greatest of them all?? Sometimes she looks to me like that Blues guitarist whose licks are sampled by everyone but no one gives him the credit for being a master musician. I think it’s for once and all that the tag attached to Christie, saying that she is a great plotter and a horrible writer, should be dropped. If she was a horrible writer then why would she be “sampled” hither and tither, and even if she IS a horrible writer, she still will remain the best. The Queen.
As Flavia said,
“Could I, by sheer chance, have stumbled upon one of those classic killings, such as those written about by Miss Christie, in which the murderer mocks the police by carrying out killings that mimic nursery rhymes or fairy tales?”


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The Snack Thief by Andrea Camilleri
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Snack Thief begins when a Tunisian immigrant, while on sea aboard a fishing boat is gunned down. Salvu refuses to get involved in that case as another body is found inside the elevator of a residential building. The two cases gets connected later as Salvu finds himself in front of a mystery involving characters ranging from a snack thief to an international criminal.

Camilleri, though used international politics in this book, kept it minimum and thus didn’t turn the book into a hardcore spy thriller. Rather he used the backdrop of international terrorism to create a piece of crime fiction which had a simple plot, and the flow of which wasn’t to bumpy. The book never entered the zone where the plot gets too twisted to follow; rather it maintained calmness throughout, with liberal sprinklings of twists here and there.

The book like the others from Camilleri weren’t devoid of humour. Paras which contained scenes of Salvu reading the newspaper and going through the headlines, though brutal, still brought laughter to the reader. These scenes return in every book, and the way in which the crimes are described makes them funny each time. Such is the quality of Andrea Camilleri as a writer.


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