Spring Tide by Cilla Börjlind
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Spring Tide by Cilla Börjlind, Rolf Börjlind is set in Sweden and features the duo of Olivia Ronning and Tom Stilton. The writer duo is known for their script writing for the martin Beck film, and this book also feels like a well scripted fast mystery movie. Keeping in tune with Nordic crime thrillers the book did have its moments of brutality, but these moments were instead of being put on paper, more left to the imagination of the reader.

The plot was fast, and had it fair share of twists and turns. And most importantly the writers were able to stop me from guessing quite early where the whole story was heading; instead they did a brilliant job of putting a BIG red herring and leading me the wrong way. A very enjoyable mystery which without going too deep into psychological thing, kept the book crisp and entertaining.


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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 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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The Secret Dead by S.J. Parris
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“Because I believe God is bigger than the rules we impose on one another. I think He does not mind if we find different paths to Him.”

The more I keep reading these Historical mysteries , the more I come to realise that its religion in its purest form remains as Holy as ever, but somewhere down the line the "HOLY MEN" took matter into their own hands and turned religion and the concept of God, into one of the most vilified and untrustworthy of all human beliefs.

The story was fast, and the character of Giordano Bruno reminded me of another God fearing true man of God, Brother Cadfael. The story came out as a tragedy mystery element in the story was not that potent, but the writing skill of the author kept the pace high from the very first paragraph, and never slacked in between.

My first S.J. Parris experience, and it was a sad but a beautiful one.

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