Pretty Things by Janelle Brown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three point review:
-Nothing out of the ordinary, plot wise, but it did have some nice twists.
-Characters were few, and they were perfectly tailored for a thriller.
-Cloud have done with a little bit of editing and shortening of length.

View all my reviews

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.

View all my reviews

Life or Death by Michael Robotham
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Life and Death by Michael Robotham is no ground breaking work of crime fiction. Moreover it is filled with clichéd points which guarantees success for a standalone thriller. A wronged hero, some crooked cops, a “more” wronged woman who becomes the lady in the hero’s life, an honest cop with a physical attribute that makes her colleague point her out as a prank-target, and a sort-of-larger-than-life ally of the hero.

But, I loved it because it encompassed some of my favourite points too, the one which according to me makes a thriller thrilling to read. They are,

1.Pace- The book was the definition of “Unputdownable”

2.Plot – Though nothing out of ordinary, Robotham’s writing style kept me guessing for the larger part of the book. The characters were drawn into black and white but the plot was tightly woven and the lid was kept tightly shut.

3. Unbelievable characters and situations – I read purely for the purpose of entertainment. So, I love these impossible crimes, unbelievable characters, all woven into a plot which is fast pulpy and fun to read.

What more could I ask for???


View all my reviews

The Darkest Room by Johan Theorin
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

When I had read Echoes from the Dead, I was not really expecting a taut thriller, with a sad and believable protagonist and a plot which racing between two time periods and an unlikely outcome, a twist in the very last pages. It kept me hooked up to the last page. I made the mistake of underestimating the book, and I was properly thrilled with its stature. And, then I made the mistake of over estimating The Darkest Room, and was not really thrilled by the book and its contents. Make no mistake of the fact, Johan Theorin is a great writer, and I still consider him a personal favourite, but somehow I guess he tried a little too hard to make this book exotic and in the process ended up in writing a book which neither could become a complete thriller nor a complete family drama.

The publishers note in my edition said, “In this powerhouse of suspense–at once a crime novel and a searing family drama…” So, from a purely crime fiction point of view I was sorely disappointed. The plot was not fast, it wasn’t well weaved, the crime never looked like a crime until almost 65% of the book had gone by, the criminal had, at most a total of 5 paragraphs dedicated to him and at the end neither did we get to know what was his fate. There was a subplot which at the end was revealed to be connected to the crime, but the sub plot was way too long and could have been shortened without causing any harm to the main plot. But I never skipped pages, because Theorin after all is a good writer. The book looked like a family drama, sounded like a family drama, read like a family drama, with a bit of supernatural thrown in. As for a work of crime fiction, it was not worth it.

The characters unlike the first book failed to make any mark on me. The semi-protagonist of Tilda Daviddsson gets way to little space to be fully developed, Joakim Westin also comes out as unfinished. His situation brings out sympathy but that’s not the credit of the writer. Reading about him made me bored, but thinking about a man who lost his wife made me sad. A character from the first book makes a cameo appearance and does the Mycroft Holmes thing by pointing out the crime, but sadly that doesn’t salvage the book. Even the old-new connection which worked so well in the last book failed this time. It was boring, and never felt remotely connected to the main plot.

Final verdict, this book, as a work of crime fiction doesn’t stand up. But as far as reading it like a family drama goes, there might be some merit. But then again why would a reader read Johan Theorin to read a family drama???


View all my reviews

The False Inspector Dew by Peter Lovesey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

THE FALSE INSPECTOR DEW by Peter Lovesey is a standalone novel by the author best known for his crime series featuring a Victorian policeman Sgt. Cribb and another featuring Bath CID policeman Peter Diamond. This novel is set in the year 1921, and based on the Cunard liner Mauretania, taking up the case of Dr. Crippen and his crime as a backdrop. Dr. Walter Baranov, a London dentist falls in love with a patient of his. Suffering under his dominating wife, the doctor along with his love struck patient plans to murder his wife, and escape to America aboard the Mauretania, taking up the pseudonym of Walter Dew. When a passenger is killed on board the false Inspector Dew is called upon to solve the mystery.

I can safely say, I did not enjoy the book as much as I would have liked to enjoy it. Yes there were funny moments in the book, and there was a nice little twist in the end, but somehow this book came out for me as a half hearted attempt from a writer capable of writing much funnier and twisted crime novel.

Though not at all a dull one to go through, but the book being shortlisted for the Dagger of Dagger by the CWA is a bit over the top. But, then again a lot of duller books have been awarded the best crime fiction title of the year by the CWA, and compared to those this one was a much better read.


View all my reviews

Echoes from the Dead by Johan Theorin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Echoes from the Dead by Johan Theorin set in Oland, Sweden starts when Jens Davidsson, a 6 year old boy goes missing on a foggy day. Years later his grandfather a retired sea captain receives a shoe, a shoe which Jens was wearing on the day he disappeared. He then, along with his daughter, sets off to find out what really happened on that day, and what became of his grandson.

Now, how many times do we come across a crime thriller which, literally, has a twist in its last page? It’s far and rare. And in today’s world of deceitful blurbs and dubious ways of giving away awards for crime writing, it has become much more difficult to come across a book which actually provides a roller coaster ride, all wrapped up in the garb of a run-of-the-mill plot, filled with oh-so-clichéd and drab characters, nothing exotic but believable. Johan Theorin provided us a book which had all the above points. Potent enough to make a crime reader like me suspect, that I am yet again stuck with a book which while calling itself a crime novel would present me with a bouquet of descriptions and scenes of the locale, the deep psychology of the characters, long paragraphs filled with over the top lines, and very little crime and thrill. I was properly and thoroughly hoodwinked.

The book begins with all the above mentioned shortfalls, and as one continues, it appears that though not as bleak like some fellow award winners, this book might just fall flat. But, something stops the reader from putting down the book. Be it the characters. The woman with a missing child, the elderly grandfather settled in an old age home, with a mission to find out the truth. The narrative, which jumps between the present day, and past, talking about a man who gets perceived as a villain, yet something about that man seems to not fit the bill as a villain. All these discrepancies within the over-tested formula of exotic locale, and the super tragic crime of a missing child, kept me interested. I ploughed on, and the book as it progressed, picked up speed. Though not much was happening, clues weren’t getting discovered, nor were people turning up dead by numbers. Yet, the local characters started revealing some odd bits. And when the ending came, I thought that was the best it could have been, only to be presented with a twist in the last page.

Surely one of the most entertaining and suspenseful crime novels I have read in recent time. Standalone thrillers if not treated right gets boring. But, it seems Theorin knew his job, and in the process created a book, which was worthy of all the Awards heaped upon it.


View all my reviews

The Chimney Sweeper's Boy by Barbara Vine
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

THE CHIMNEY SWEEPER’S BOY by Barbara Vine is a standalone novel from the renowned British crime novelist, who is best known for her psychological thrillers. Gerald Candless, a bestselling and a onetime Booker prize shortlisted author dies suddenly, the day after entertaining guests at his house on the British coast. As his publisher approaches one of his daughters, Sarah (the other daughter being Hope) to write a memoir in her father’s memory, she accepts. But, while moving forward with the project, she encounters the first and a decisive hurdle as she realises that her father was not Gerald Candless at all, he just used that name, as she digs deeper she comes to realise that although she played the perfect daughter to her daddy, but she never really came to know the real person behind the man they called father.

As the author information of my edition pointed out, that Ruth Rendell is Barbara Vine. Now, a Ruth Rendell novel never focuses solely on the crime, they also digs deeper into abyss of human minds. Though this eternal search of the human abyss does not always provide the novel with the extra punch, but she does manage to keep the focus of the book on the crime, and not turn the book into psychology thesis paper. Barbara Vine maintained the trend, and as a result we got a novel where the mainstay of the plot becomes the mingling of lives and psychology of a famous author who lives under an assumed name, his wife who has a platonic and distant relation with him, his daughters who worships him as he makes them move away from their mother emotionally, and the authors relation with his books. Left to these, this book could have well turned into a drama, but Vine using her skill as a crime novelist ties all these aspects with an unsolved crime which gives this book the much required pace, and the atmosphere of a good crime novel.

But, once again hats off to Vine. How does she create such wonderful characters? Sometimes I feel that if an author starts devoting countless pages towards character development then in most probability the book loses the plot, literally. But what if the characters and their development becomes the part of the plot? As it happened here, had the characters been not developed this book would also have fallen flat. To understand and hate Gerald Candless, his deep characterisation was needed. Same goes for his wife, Ursula, who comes out as a sad and much victimised character. But the greatest triumph was the daughters, Vine wanted them to be hated with gusto, I guess, so she made them snooty, mother hating, Daddy’s spoiled brats. And she was extremely successful. When it came to Sarah and Hope Candless there were few other characters that I have hated as much.

Lastly, I don’t know, but while reading the book, I had a distinct feeling that maybe Rendell takes a dig at the so called “Serious” writers in this book. She gets it done by showing how upset Gerald Candless gets when his book is deemed a thriller and gets reviewed by the crime fiction reviewer of a newspaper. So, if anyone picks up this book, i would advise him/ her to get into it with an open mind. This is not a crime thriller in the strictest of sense, but if one can keep the patience, this is an enjoyable read.


View all my reviews

In A True Light by John Harvey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

IN A TRUE LIGHT by John Harvey is a standalone thriller from the writer who is better known for his series of jazz influenced police procedurals featuring Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick . Sloane, a painter, after being released from prison, where he spent time in relation to a forgery case, gets called to Italy to meet his former partner, a famous painter herself. There he is informed that he has a daughter, and that it’s his partners last wish(she is dying of cancer) that he finds that daughter, who has gone off to USA, and has no contact whatsoever with the mother, and tells her that her mother is dead, and that Sloane is her father. He agrees, and finds out that the daughter in question is a singer, and she has hooked up with a shady person called Delaney, with mob connections and a violent streak which makes him aggressive towards women.

The plot was believable, though it was a bit too short. The sequence of the events were well placed and helped in the continuity of the book, but they were in my opinion a bit too short and always felt like a summary of a long scene. But, that didn’t stop the book from being fast. I normally have an aversion towards crime novels where the outcome is known from the first page. Either these books are filled with over detailing, which in my opinion is way of compensating the lack of plot and twist on part of the author, or they are so obvious that trudging through them becomes an ordeal. But in this case, though it felt a bit hurried, the book never felt being over detailed nor was it too obvious to make me yawn.

Coming to the characters, Sloane was believable, and got the required number pages needed to show that behind the bohemian facade he is a caring man. Delaney was frightening, but in a comic way, not funny but it felt that he came out of a comic book where the villains are pretty scary but are never well developed as characters. He needed a few more pages dedicated to his character. Same with Connie, the daughter. Apart from being a jazz singer, and a daughter disconnected with her mother, she remains undeveloped as a character. Again a few extra pages wouldn’t have hurt.

But lastly, a short, fast crime novel filled with a bit underdeveloped characters is far better than an over detailed, richly characterised yet a boring one.


View all my reviews

Blacklands by Belinda Bauer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Billy Peters got lost eighteen years ago never to be found again. Everyone believed that he was kidnapped and murdered by Arnold Avery a serial killer of children. But, Billy’s body was never found. So, when Billy’s nephew 12 year old Steven Lamb decides to find uncle Billy’s body, and in the process bring peace and mend his broken family consisting of his mum, his nan and his brother Davey, he enlists the help of the same person accused of murdering Billy, Arnold Avery. Thus starts Blacklands by Belinda Bauer and we are gifted with an Award winning crime novel featuring a cat and mouse game between a young boy of 15, who wants to find his peace, and a murderer who wants this boy to fulfil his one last wish.

Once again i was faced with a book where the suspense of a crime was absent as the protagonist and the antagonist gets marked from the very first pages. But, then the phenomena of “If we know both the parties, then why is this book a suspense novel” sets in. I got hooked into the thought of,
“Okay, Steven is a kid of 15, and Arnold is in gaol. So there must be some point lying somewhere in the pages ahead that will drive this book into a high gear suspense novel”.

I was wrong, as no such revelations are made, but I was also right as Bauer made the whole part of the cat and mouse chase dangerous, and created an atmosphere where I, the reader started biting my nails, and felt that this is wrong, and wanted to shout out at Steven, as I knew that what he was doing would surely lead him to a trap. But then Steven did not know that and he went on his way searching for Uncle Billy, and the tension rose within me as I desperately wanted to know what happened? Did he succeed, or did he fail? There were no hidden secrets in the book, but the feeling of helplessness on part of the reader fills it with nail biting suspense.

Writing a credible crime novel, with a juvenile as its protagonist is one of the toughest aspect of crime writing. John hart did it in Last Child, Belinda Bauer does it in Blacklands. And what a character did she create. Steven lamb. A Liverpool fan, who belongs to a family broken by the death of a member which happened 18 years ago. His nan, and mother doesn’t love him, he gets bullied at school. Though these might seemed clichéd, but while reading the book, Steven and his life is sure to make the reader feel heartbroken and sad.

A must read for any crime fiction lover. A book which strays from the conventional norm of crime writing, yet delivers in a big way.


View all my reviews

Blue Heaven by C.J. Box
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Blue Heaven by C.J. Box starts when little Annie and her brother William, while walking in the North Idaho woods stumble upon a group of four men, who they witness executing a fifth man. Immediately the siblings get spotted by the killers, and they are on the run. Later they end up on the farm of Jess Rawlins, a rancher, who is broke and whose ranch is on the verge of foreclosure. The local Sherriff, overwhelmed by the incident of missing children, accepts the help of the same four killers, who happens to be respected ex-LAPD, for helping him in the search of the missing children.

Officially C.J. Box has become my favourite author, period. What a piece of crime writing. With this book he took the extreme risk of pointing out the good and the bad guys from the very beginning. Normally I don’t appreciate this type of crime fiction, where the element of suspense or detection is not much present. As was the case here. From page one we come to know the four bad guys, we find out the victims on the run, we also recognise the hero of the story. But, instead of getting bored by the format of the novel, I got hooked to it from the beginning. Box using his talent as a writer created moments which were full of suspense, created characters who were not totally white, but various shades of grey. And to keep the ambience of a crime novel intact, he even threw in a subplot, which at the beginning looked like a subplot, but in the end merged with the main storyline, and formed the base of the motive for the crime. Another point scored by Box was the creation of the 4 killers. He made them feel real, cold, brutal, cunning and ruthless. And the fact that he made them ex-cops also added a feather to his hat, as this made the culprits more villainous, as it showed that it can get real bad when the saviour turns into the hunter.

Jess Rawlins, I wish there were men like you in real. They used to be, but now you are an extinct breed. What a man, what a hero. Never the knight in shining armour, he fights his own personal tragedies and his fear, to save the siblings. The scenes where he sees his ranch slipping away from him, and where he sees his son, but fails to communicate with him in a normal way, can get the heart bleeding in the toughest of men. I wish there were many more characters like him in fiction and in real life.

Lastly, the setting of North Idaho. Although I like reading crime novels set in exotic places, but if the novel gets interesting I gradually start losing interest in the setting, concentrating more on the plot. Here that was not the case; he made me feel the weather, the surroundings and the people of North Idaho. He made it impossible for me to ignore this aspect, and wrote about the place in such a way that by the end of the book I felt that had Blue heaven been set in any other place than North Idaho, the book would have lost 50% of its charm.

This book goes highly recommended for all crime fiction fans. Read it not as a suspense novel, but as a western where you know the outcome, but still want to read it as it is set in a beautiful place, full of cunning criminals, a hero with a big heart and personal tragedies, a damsel in distress, and most importantly of all, read it because it is written by a great author, who knows how to write.

P.S. If possible read the last 50 pages with a Ennio Morricone spaghetti western soundtrack playing in the background.




View all my reviews

Ashes to Dust by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Of all the Nordic crime writers I had experienced, I had an opinion that Jo Nesbo is the mad-dest of them all. And, why shouldn't he be?? With the kind of brutal torture scenes in his books, and the ability to make a very peace-loving reader like me relish those scenes, he certainly deserves his status as the “mad-writer” whose taste for brutality can be called an act of a Genius.
Yrsa Sigurðardóttir might not have reached that level of madness with her scenes of violence in her book ASHES TO DUST, but when it comes to the theme of the book, she beats Nesbo hands down, and presents us with a book the ending of which left me in a dark mood. Unlike most crime fiction where the ending means the culprit being detained, and with a few losses of bodies here and there, the ending leaves the reader satisfied and happy, well almost. But, such was not the case here. Yes, the culprit did get apprehended, but the ending was dark, and by the time the motive of the culprit comes out in the open, I was left with a sense of an utter sadness. So, if you want to read this, beware, no doubt you will read a great work of crime fiction, but you will also read a book which is dark, very dark.
Þóra Guðmundsdóttir, was the protagonist. A single mother and a lawyer, who gets entangled in this mystery didn't make a deep impression in my mind. Maybe because the plot was so overwhelming that it eventually overshadowed the protagonist. Unlike other Nordic crime fiction, the speed of the book was slow.
Summing up, this book is definitely not for all and sundry. A voracious crime reader should go for it, I can vouch that he/she wont be disappointed.



View all my reviews

Tell No One by Harlan Coben
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What happens when a soccer match, where a hyped and much talked about team was supposed to win with a margin of 5-0, wins by 2-1. The winning team fails to justify the hype and aura surrounding it, though the record books would show that they won. The same problem got associated with this book. It was too much hyped, everywhere you saw. “Tell No One” got blurb-ed as the book which will keep you awake throughout the night just so that you finish it. As far as justifying this hype, the book fell short of its mark. But once you take the hype factor away, it comes out as a neat, fast and twisted crime thriller, filled with a twisted plot, enjoyable(though not believable) characters, and a happy ending.

The plot though air tight was predictable. By the half of the book, any seasoned crime reader would get to know who’s the bad guy. But, knowing the baddie would also make the reader want to know why he did all those bad things. And, although the main baddie gets pointed out, there are other characters whose behaviour and actions would tell the reader loudly that they have got secrets too, which would make the reader stay glued. In short by midway the book transfers from a WHODUNNIT to a WHYDUNNIT or rather WHAT’S HAPPENING.

In toto, this is a arithmetically correct, i.e. no loose ends, work of crime fiction, which is fast and pulpy. Although I enjoy reading Coben’s Myron Bolitar novels more, as they have Myron in them, I nonetheless enjoyed reading this one too. I guess others would enjoy it too, if they are not searching for detailed psychology analysis, or exquisite writing style and impeccable language.


View all my reviews