Sunset Beach

As Good As It Gets

Mary Kay Andrews is called the Queen of Beach Reads, and her fans who turn her books into bestsellers would agree. Her novels have female protagonists, but escape being called ‘chick lit’ because romance is just a subplot; there a lot else going on.

The heroine of her twenty-sixth book, Sunset Beach, is Drue Campbell, thirty-six years old and at the end of her tether. She has just lost her mother, is jobless, single, with a knee badly injured in a kiteboarding accident and a malfunctioning jalopy.  Drue wonders how things could get any worse, when her estranged father, Brice, turns up with an olive branch and lifeline.

 Brice is an embarrassingly pompous personal injury lawyer, who offers her a job at his office, and the keys to her grandparents’ dilapidated Coquina Cottage on Sunset Beach in Florida.  Drue has great childhood memories of the place, and accepts her father’s offer—in any case, she has no other option. There’s one more shock to come as she drives her battered car to Florida—her father has married Wendy, her former schoolmate; she is also his office manager, and hates the idea of having her stepdaughter around.

Drue shares space with two other “cubicle rats” – Jonah and Ben—who immediately show interest in the boss’s daughter. As Drue answers calls and serves as occasional receptionist, she is taken up by the case of a black woman, whose daughter died at a swanky beach resort, that ended up paying her peanuts as compensation, which is not enough to raise her sick granddaughter.  Brice says he did his best with the information gathered by his old buddy and investigator Jimmy Zee, but Drue starts snooping on her own, with her newfound pal, Corey.

While looking through the storage space in the cottage, as she repairs and refurbishes it, she finds newspaper clippings and police files about a woman who vanished sometime in the Seventies. Drue wonders why these have been preserved in the cottage and whether her father is somehow involved.

Putting a budding romance with Jonah aside, ignoring warnings by Brice and Jimmy, Drue starts to dig into both cases and finds that honesty, persistence, and a bit of courage solve the toughest of cases. Her interactions with the local cop investigating the resort case are hilarious

Drue may appear like a bimbette initially, but turns out to be a likeable and spirited.Sunset Beach is fast-paced and funny, with a large dollop of mystery. An enjoyable monsoon read.

Sunset Beach 

By Mary Kay Andrews

Publisher: St Martin’s Press

Pages: 432

Our House

Lies And Betrayals

This is the kind of thing that one could imagine happening in Mumbai.  A woman returns from a holiday to find strangers moving into her house. In Louise Candlish’s scary thriller, Our House, Fiona Lawson discovers that her ex-husband, Bram, has sold the family home without her knowledge or consent; worse still, he is missing and so are their two children.

 The couple that has bought the house has perfectly legitimate documents to prove that they paid in full for the property, so they understandably want her to stop making a scene and get out. In a few moments, Fiona’s life is shattered; the hurt and bafflement is even more than it was when she had caught her husband with another woman, and evicted him from her life.

With this gripping beginning, Louise Candlish crafts a dramatic and suspenseful thriller, in which the secrets, lies and betrayals pile up. The book moves briskly between the past and present, and uses an interesting device of a true crime podcast called The Victim, in which Fiona participates-- and some of the reactions to her predicament are cruelly funny. Bram’s point of view is put across in a suicide note he wants to leave behind, as he is hit by guilt and remorse.

Nothing is as it appears to be, in the complicated web in which Fiona finds herself trapped. The reason for Bram’s behavior may not be too convincing; it happens often with books that start with an exciting premise—they don’t wrap us as well. Still, Our House was listed as one of the best thrillers in recent months and rightly so. The lesson for all women – don’t sign anything blindly and keep important documents safely.

Our House

By Louise Candlish

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Pages: 448

Celestial Bodies

Spotlight On Oman

Jokha Alharthi’s Celestial Bodies is the first novel from the Gulf to win the  Man Booker International Prize—a book by a female Omani author at that, a scholar and academic. The judges called the book ‘A richly imagined, engaging and poetic insight into a society in transition and into lives previously obscured. 

Oman is a small Gulf country, that, like so many conservative societies, changed after the oil boom, or rather, was dragged reluctantly into urbanization and modernity. The past is—like India—feudal, unbendingly patriarchal, with the slavery being abolished as late as the 1970s.

Alharthi tracks the lives of three daughters—Mayya, Asma and Khowla—from a well-off merchant family, and moves from the traditional village of al-Awafi to modern city of Muscat, speaking in multiple voices.

It is a historian’s book as much as a writer’s (there are faint echoes of Jane Austen), as Alharthi charts the transformation of Oman with understated compassion, so that the melodrama of the lives of three generations remains controlled. Still, there are passages like this about a woman’s sorrow over her lost son: “Every day and every night, for ten years, she died a little more. She breathed and ate and drank but she was dead. She spoke to people and walked among them, dead.”)

It begins with Mayya, always at her sewing machine and silently in love with a man who is unaware of her existence; she has an arranged marriage to Abdallah (his name appears after a while, he is simply referred to as Merchant Sulayman’s son, as if his own identity is not important) and gives birth to a daughter (the women kindly point out that she will look after the sons born later), whom she stubbornly names London. As she grows up, London’s story is also included in the tangled web of relationships.

Mayya’s sisters also have their own romantic problems, but they are not as fleshed out as Mayya and Abdallah (his perspective is written in the first person). Indian, or rather Asian, readers will relate a lot more to the novel, since these societies have also gone through similar social and economic upheavals.

It is a sprawling epic, unraveled like pieces of mosaic, and trying to fit in so much, that many of the characters seem underdeveloped. It is not an easy read, but it does generate curiosity about this corner of the Arab world not often depicted in fiction. The prize will undoubtedly bring more Arabic writers into the spotlight, hopefully with fine translators, who are able to read the emotions correctly and find the right words for them.

Celestial Bodies

By Jokha Alharthi

Translated by Marilyn Booth

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

The Strawberry Thief

Love, Loss And Letting Go

Chocolat by Joanne Harris, was a bestseller twenty years ago, turned into an Oscar-nominated film, which is why, when one pictures Vianne Rocher and Roux, Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp come to mind.

Two more books followed the Vianne saga, and the fourth, The Strawberry Thief, brings her back to the lovely little French village of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes, where, in the first book, she has faced the hostility of the residents, the priest, Francis Reynaud in particular. 

In this book, Vianne is going through separation pangs when her older daughter, Anouk, leaves to live with her boyfriend in Paris. Tension flares up, when Narcisse, the village florist, leaves part of his property to Vianne’s younger daughter, the probably autistic Rosette, in his will.  He also leaves a letter of confession to Reynaud, who is terrified that a crime from his own past will be revealed.

Rosette used to spend lot of time in a wild strawberry patch in the oak woods that is gifted to her by Narcisse. The teenage girl runs around wild in the village, communicating through her drawings and strange animal noises, and an invisible monkey as her constant companion, that only people with magical powers can see. There is also her ability to control the wind, that her mother wants her to keep in check.

 Narcisse’s nasty daughter, Michele and her greedy husband, are furious at losing valuable property to Rosette, though their mentally disturbed son Yannick befriends her.

To add to the cauldron of simmering discontent, arrives Morgane Dubois, a tattooist, who rents Narcisse’s old shop, paints the door purple and covers the walls with mirrors. There is something weirdly dangerous about Morgane, as she divines people’s secrets and desires, which she draws on their skins with her tattoo pen and ink.

Vianne is afraid Morgane will take away all that is precious to her, particularly Rosette, who is drawn to the witch-like tattooist. She is aghast when even the most conservative of villagers secretly visit Morgane and get inked.

The story moves from Rosette’s point of view to the long confession by Narcisse that drives the priest to a sleepless dread.

If Chocolat was about tradition and the worldly pleasures that Vianne’s chocolates represent, The Strawberry Thief is about grief, loss and the fear of the unknown evoked by Morgane, and a group of nomadic Muslim migrants who camp by the river.  It seems likely that these characters will play stronger parts if there is a fifth book in the series. Towards the end Rosette does emerge as strong, willful and perhaps an inheritor of her mother’s melancholy, as well as her magic.

Harris writes with a feel for emotion, and does not judge any of the characters for what they did in the past.  She sympathises with a love that binds, but speaks for a love that lets go. And, of course, for all the pain and heartbreak that chocolate is capable of healing, if made by the right hands.

The Strawberry Thief

By Joanna Harris

Publisher: Orion

Pages: 368

Neon Prey

Cannibal Clayton 

This new John Sandford book, Neon Prey, 29th in his bestselling Preyseries, is not for the squeamish, featuring as it does, a cannibal as the villain. It is also a bit offensive, that characters comment on his bad breath, but joke about his peculiar fetish.

Sandford’s hero, US Marshal Lucas Davenport, gets involved in a case that would turn the most hardened stomach. Cops on the trail of loan shark Roger Smith’s hitman, Clayton Deese, find a whole lot of bodies buried behind his house adjoining a Louisiana swamp. As they scour the area for graves, under the supervision of local FBI agent Sandro Tremanty, they are horrified to find that Deese ate parts of his victims.

The man is sharp enough to give the cops a slip, and gang up with his half brother, Marion Beauchamps, who breaks into the homes of the wealthy in Las Vegas, and robs them after threatening, or inflicting, terrible violence on the hapless residents.

Davenport, accompanied by his regular deputies, Rae Givens and Bob Matees (who provide most of the wisecracks in the books), goes on a manhunt to capture the ruthless and elusive criminal, who, after joining his brother’s home invasion team, is doubly lethal. Beauchamp’s crew includes a pretty blonde, who goes by the name of Genesis ‘Geenie’ Cox, with more brains and guts than all the men put together, Davenport included. (One suspects she will turn up in future Prey books.)

The pursuit of Deese, that includes plenty of narrow escapes on the part of the gang, gets Davenport and Tramenty angry, exhausted and frustrated; even Deese’s boss, fed-up of his constant blackmail, would be happy if the revolting man was caught, or better still, killed.

Neon Prey is fast-paced and gripping thriller, even though the brutality inflicted on characters—a kidnap victim in particular—is distressing; more so because Sandford treats it so casually.

Neon Prey

By John Sandford

Publisher: Putnam

Pages: 400

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Redemption

Decker’s Dilemma

David Baldacci’s unusual creation, Amos Decker, the man with a perfect memory, returns in the fifth book of the series—Redemption.  

For those who may not have encountered Decker before, a football injury in his youth, rewired his brain so that he is unable to forget anything--a medical condition known as hyperthymesia. He also suffers from synesthesia, which means his brain associates different emotions with a particular colour—like blue for death. 

In previous books in the series, Decker hit rock bottom and lost his job as a cop, when his wife, daughter and brother-in-law were brutally murdered, and fingers pointed at him—the ordeal made worse by his inability to forget the sight of them lying dead in his house. Later, he is rehabilitated and absorbed into the FBI by the sympathetic Ross Bogart; he has as partner and friend, former journalist, Alex Jamison. 

Decker’s gigantic size, strength and unique memory make him an asset for the force, even though he is emotionally messed up. Every year, he returns to his hometown on his daughter’s birthday to visit the graves of his family. At the cemetery, a called Meryl Hawkins approaches him and claims, that twelve years ago, Decker had sent him to prison for multiple murders he did not commit. Now, he is dying of cancer and demands his name be cleared.

His former partner, Mary Lancaster, thinks the man who has spent so many years in jail, deserves a hearing at least. By the time, they reach his hotel room to talk, he has been shot dead.

Who would kill a man with a few days to live, unless there is a reason to silence him. Now Decker is convinced Hawkins was indeed innocent, and his conscience will not let him rest till he finds out the truth, even it means putting his own career on the line. From what Hawkins tells him, Decker suspects that in his enthusiasm to crack his first homicide case, as a rookie cop, he may have overlooked certain vital clues.

As Decker starts digging, it does look like all the clues they found on the scene of the crime, that helped indict Hawkins were too conveniently planted. When he is at the lowest rung of despair, and Jamison is pulled off the case, who should turn up but his buddy Melvin Mars? Decker had saved Mars from death row in the second book of the series, The Last Mile. Mars has become a sidekick, who rallies around to help Decker, just for the adventure.

When the body count starts growing, Decker realises he is up against a powerful enemy. Baldacci’s writing is always smooth; this book has more twists than the usual investigative thriller, even if the solution to the mystery is  bit far-fetched.  Redemption allows for breaks when Decker handholds Lancaster through a crisis and the impeccably dressed Mars gets to flirt with the town’s beautiful and mysterious entrepreneur, Rachel Katz.  Maybe it’s time Mars got his own series in which Decker makes ‘guest’ appearances, since his total recall plot device has stretched as far as it could go.

Redemption

By David Baldacci

Publisher: Grand Central

Pages: 432

A Noise Downstairs

The Talking Typewriter 

There is a funny bit in Linwood Barclay’s A Noise Downstairs, where a man has to explain to his son what a typewriter is, because, looking at the noisy gadget without a monitor, the kid cannot understand what the thing is used for.

The typewriter plays a starring role in the book, however, as the clack of its keys spook a man who has a lot more to worry about. Paul Davis is driving home, when he sees Kenneth, a colleague at the college where he teaches, driving a car with a broken taillight and erratically at that. Paul follows him to check whether is he drunk or asleep at the wheel. Kenneth’s actions are suspicious—he stops to throw something heavy into a dumpster, and then stops at an isolated spot. Paul approaches the car and what he sees in the backseat shocks him; the next thing he knows, Kenneth has hit him on the head with a shovel.

Thanks to a police car driving past, Paul is saved from being murdered, but suffers some brain damage and has PTSD for which he has to see a therapist, Anna White, who has problems of her own, including a father slipping into dementia and a troublesome patient.

 Paul figures that he will only be able to really cope with what happened that night if he can reconstruct the event, for which he is willing to overlook his unease and meet Kenneth in prison. If anything positive comes out of the traumatic incident, it is the healing of the rift with his estranged wife.

Then, a typewriter that his wife gifted him, starts clacking in the middle of the night, and after all rational reasons have been eliminated, it leaves the supernatural.

Barclay strews the story with red herrings, so the suspense holds to the end. The novel is structured well, the protagonist is likeable, and the reader cannot see the final twist coming. Plenty of reasons to pick up this one.

The Noise Downstairs

By Linwood Barclay

Publisher: William Morrow

Pages 368

Two By Alexander McCall Smith

All’s Well In Botswana

It’s been twenty years and nineteen books—neither Alexander McCall Smith’s Botswana, nor his “traditionally built” heroine, Precious Ramotswe, have changed much.

In the latest No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, The Colors of All the Cattle, Precious and her partner, Grace Makutsi are hard at work as usual, keeping criminals in check in the gentle capital of Gaborane, which remains in an era when computers and cell phones have not yet reached. Instead of Googling for information, the Ladies and their on-off assistants, young Charlie and old Mr Polopetsi, drive around the city and beyond looking for clues. Precious still works out of her husband Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, garage, called Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, keeps her mind sharp drinking red bush tea and runs up once more against the ubiquitous femme fatale Violet Sephotho.

The minor crimes and leisurely pace of Smith’s books in this series are what appeal to fans. In this one, Dr. Marang, an old acquaintance turns up from her village of Mochudi, and wants her to help trace the driver who knocked him down, injured him badly and fled. He does not know the make or number of the car, only that it was blue.

Meanwhile, Precious’s best friend, the formidable Sylvia Potokwane, who runs an orphanage and bakes delicious cakes, insists that the detective stand for council elections, and prevent the construction of the Big Fun Hotel, next to the local cemetery, where even the dead won’t be able to rest in peace.

The feckless Charlie woes Queenie Queenie, ignorant of the fact that she is the daughter of a wealthy man, and sister of the muscular wrestler Hercules, who is notorious for breaking the bones of his sister’s suitors. Worse, Grace Makutsi has her first quarrel with her placid husband Phuti Radiphuti.

Precious Ramotswe may go all out to fight for justice, but is otherwise so peaceable and modest that she thinks it is somehow wrong to vote for oneself!  It is no spoiler for the regular reader, that Violet Sephotho never has a chance when up against the two Lady Detectives.  A quick, satisfying read.

The Colours Of All The Cattle

By Alexander McCall Smith

Publisher: Pantheon

Pages: 240

******************

Crying Wolf

After his many novels set in Botwana and Scotland, the prolific Alexander McCall Smith, rather surprisingly, commences a new ‘Nordic Blanc’ (as opposed to Nordic Noir) series with The Department Of Sensitive Crimes. The protagonist is Ulf Varg (whose name means Wolf Wolf), who works with Malmo’s Sensitive Crimes Department.

The small, understaffed department gets dumped with cases that the regular cops cannot solve—like why a shopkeeper got stabbed at the back of his knee? How did a young woman’s non-existent boyfriend vanish? Why is someone targetting a spa run by Police Commissioner Felix Ahlström’s cousin?

While he is investigating, Ulf also broods a lot, teaches his hearing impaired dog to lip read, and tries to sort out his feelings for his colleague, Anna Bengsdotter, married to an anaesthetist. The others on the team are the super efficient Carl Holgersson and Erik Nykvist, with his passion for fishing. Then there is a uniformed cop called Blomquist assigned to the team--that name has to be inspired by the character from Stieg Larsson’s ‘Girl’ books that first brought fame and best-selling status to Scandinavian crime novels.

The book moves at a meandering pace, the cases and their solutions are bizarre, and it is not as much fun as the Botswana series. Maybe the second Varg novel will get the series going.

The Department Of Sensitive Crimes

By Alexander McCall Smith

Publisher: Hachette India

Pages: 240

The Wych Elm

Lucky Toby

Tana French, best known for her Dublin Murder Squad series, has written a stand-alone novel The Wych Elm, a richly atmospheric and very spooky suspense tale placed in the midst of a family drama.

Toby Hennessy, considers himself lucky-- without too much effort he has achieved whatever he wanted to. A handsome and charming young man, he has a close-knit family, an enviable PR job with an art gallery, a loving girlfriend and loyal buddies. Then, in the matter of one evening, everything goes wrong.

When he interrupts a robbery in his apartment, he is viciously beaten. His injuries leave him physically disfigured and mentally disturbed with memory gaps. His cousins Susanna and Leon, who have been more like siblings to him, suggest he spend time at the family home, The Ivy House, where the three spent many a delightful summer under the benevolent eye of their bachelor uncle, Hugo.

 Hugo is suffering from a terminal illness and needs someone to keep an eye on him, and Toby, obviously needs to recover from his trauma.  He moves there with Melissa and seems to be getting better, when life throws him another curveball. A skull is found in the trunk of the Wych Elm in their garden, The cops come by, cut the tree and dig up the garden. The skull happens to belong to a classmate of Toby’s, and suddenly, he is suspected of murder.

The cops—in particularly Inspector Rafferty-- dig their teeth into the case with a cold efficiency that seems almost brutal towards Hugo and Toby, both not in a fit state to bear the constant intrusion into their idyllic home and the disturbance of their already fragile minds.

French keeps adding layers to the story of the dead boy, and every time a new piece of information is unearthed, the reader’s point of view is manipulated this way and that. If murder had been committed all those years ago, then who among the Hennessey kids did it—they all had motive, as it turns out.

It is a slow-burning novel with does seem to drag a bit, and go round in circles; it is not as straightforward as a whodunit or police procedural, but an exploration of human nature and the testing of family ties. It is heavy going, and Toby is not a protagonist one likes too much, but in the end, the effort of staying with the story is rewarding.

The Wych Elm

By Tana French

Publisher: Viking

Pages: 464

Run Away

The Good Father

In his new standalone book, Run Away—already on top of the bestseller lists—Harlan Coben goes straight for the heart. His protagonist, Simon Greene is the fiercely devoted father, who cannot give up on his missing daughter. The smart and pretty Paige, was inexplicably drawn into the world of drugs, while she was in college. When she disappears on day, Simon, a wealthy Manhattan finance manager, just refuses to give up the search for her, even when his doctor wife, Ingrid, and two other kids shrug her off.

On a tip by a well-meaning neighbour, Simon tracks down Paige to a park, where he is shocked to find a dirty, emaciated girl playing the guitar and busking for coins. He tries to talk to her, and when interrupted by her dealer boyfriend Aaron Corval, Simon hits him. Misunderstanding the situation, onlookers post videos of the ‘attack’ accusing the wealthy man of beating up a homeless person. The video goes viral and Simon’s life into a downward spiral. Just when he is recovering somewhat, a Detective Isaac Fagbenle (described as jaw-droppingly handsome) turns up to investigate the murder of Aaron.

Simon and Ingrid go to the apartment Aaron shared with Paige—a squalid dump—hoping to find their daughter; there is an altercation with a drug dealer, that ends in Ingrid being shot and going into a coma. Now Simon is even keener to find out what is going on, and has as an unlikely ally, Paige’s scruffy neighbour and landlord, Cornelious.

The story of the Greene family troubles is interspersed with Chicago private detective Elena Ramirez, hired to hunt for missing adopted son of the rich Sebastian Thorpe III, and a nasty pair, Ash and Dee Dee, going about murdering seemingly random targets. Going by Coben’s past thrillers, the three threads have to come together, though the connection and the reason for the turmoil is rather far-fetched and much too schematic.

However, Coben’s brisk writing never lets the reader’s interest flag; he makes Simon Greene so earnest and caring that you can’t but root for him. He also has unusual descriptions and backstories of some characters, just in case the book is turned into a film; plus there is a multi-racial cast so that the inclusivity clause is ticked. Meanwhile, the wait for the next in the Myron Bolitar series is on.

Run Away

By Harlan Coben

Publisher: Grand Central

Pages: 384

The Lost Man

A Death Foretold

Jane Harper has made the Australian outback the playground for her bestselling books—the large, flat arid land she describes thus in her latest novel The Lost Man: “The horizon was so flat and far away it seemed possible to detect the curvature of the earth.”  The area is dotted with homesteads so far apart that the ‘next door’ neighbour would be a three-hour drive away.

The only way to make contact is over the radio, and if a person ran out of fuel, water or supplies, death would be quick and brutal. A few days before Christmas, the dehydrated body of Cameron Bright is discovered—he dropped dead of thirst. Neither his brothers Nathan and Bub, nor the cops can understand why, because his car is parked nearby, full of food and water. His body is found by the Stockman’s Grave, a place that ha spawned dozens of ghost stories and local legends about the nameless man buried in the middle of nowhere. Cameron had no reason to be in that vicinity.

Moreover, Cameron, a successful cattle farmer, happily married to Ilse and the father of two young daughters, had no enemies who would want to murder him, and no provocation for suicide, at least not in this painful way, when he had a loaded gun.

The devastated family—including the mother Liz, loyal estate manager, Harry, and Nathan’s son Xander visiting from the city-- gather at the Bright home to grieve and plan the funeral. Nathan, who lives a lonely life and struggles to make ends meet—a state for which Cameron was indirectly responsible—realises that there was a lot going on in the family, that he was not aware of; Cameron was not what he appeared to be to the townsfolk, and the Brights had too many secrets waiting to spill out of the cupboard.

Harper words are so vivid, that the reader can almost feel the heat on their skin, and simmers her plot on a slow flame, till she reaches the explosive, and quite unexpected climax. A book that is very difficult to put down.

The Lost Man

By Jane Harper

Publisher: Flatiron                                     

Pages: 352

Where The Crawdads Sing

Wild Child

It is the stuff of nightmare—a child abandoned by her family, and left to fend for herself. She lives in an isolated area by the marshes, miles away from the nearest town. The people who should care, either shun her, or try to regiment her life. Six-year-old Kya shuns them right back and escapes the grip of the authorities to look after herself. 

Where the Crawdads Sing, the debut novel by Delia Owens, a wildlife scientist, has turned out to be a big bestseller. Reportedly, Reese Witherspoon is planning a film on it, and what a stunningly beautiful film it will be, going just by the location described by the author.

The book begins in 1952, when Kya’s mother, fed-up of her husband’s drunken violence, walks away leaving her five children behind. Kya’s older siblings drift away too, and finally the father disappears.  She grows up alone in a primitive shack, coping with crushing loneliness;  the only help comes from a kindly black couple, Jumpin’ and Merle. It was the time of racial segregation, so a white girl accepting the charity of black people gives the townsfolk more reason to hate Kya, who is referred to as swamp trash or the Marsh Girl.

 When she is a little older, in the manner of a fairy tale, she is befriended by Tate, who teaches her to read, and falls in love with her. But he sees her as a hindrance to his career as a scientist and cruelly leaves her too. The other boys in town see her with the eyes of predators, only Chase realizes that she is to be handled with care.

The prologue of the book has Chase lying dead in the swamp, so Kya’s story is interspersed with the cops investigating, and later arresting Kya for his murder. There is a terrific section in which her case is fought by a fierce old lawyer, Tom Milton, who comes out of retirement to defend the young woman.

The novel combines crime and romance with social commentary and a coming-of-age tale. Owens mixes the ingredients well; her descriptions of swamp life are vivid and fascinating; Kya is a girl with superhuman courage and intelligence, and the reader’s feeling of protectiveness towards her soon turns to admiration and awe. It’s not difficult to understand this book’s long reign on the bestseller charts.

Where The Crawdads Sing

By Delia Owens

Publisher: Putnam

Pages: 384

Winter In Paradise

Caribbean Interlude

Irene Steele thinks she has a perfect marriage, and a gorgeous home that will keep her afloat as her career as a magazine editor starts to slide towards a younger rival. She is shattered when news comes of her husband Russell’s death in a plane crash; worse, is the discovery that his long business trips were cover for a secret life on a beautiful Caribbean island of St. John. 

Elin Hilderbrand’s Winter In Paradise, the first in her proposed ‘Winter’ Trilogy, then takes Irene and her sons—Baker and Cash-- to St John, where they are ushered into a palatial villa that belonged to her husband, known as “Invisible Man” to the locals, who knew of his existence, but never saw him—none except his lover and her daughter.`

Irene’s attempts to find out what really happened are stonewalled, and his mysterious employer is impossible to track down. There is no trace in the villa, of her husband or his girlfriend Rosie, who also died with him, in the same crash, leaving a grieving daughter Maia, stepfather Huck and best friend Ayers.

The town has a close-knit community that cares for Maia and Huck. Baker and Cash both fall for Ayers, who has broken off with her unfaithful boyfriend, and there is some romantic tension going on there, while Irene forms an unlikely friendship with Huck.

 It’s a lightweight beach read, which ends with a tantalizing hook that leaves the reader guessing about the truth of the crash, which will, hopefully, be revealed in the next book.

Winter In Paradise

By Elin Hilderbrand

Publisher: Little, Brown

Pages: 272

Newcomer

Cool Cop

The Devotion Of Suspect X  won Keigo Higashino a worldwide fan following, and his books have not disappointed since. Newcomer, just out in Giles Murray’s English translation, stars the supercool and very, very sharp cop, Kyochiro Kaga.

For reasons mentioned in Higashino’s earlier books, Kaga has been transferred, or rather demoted, from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s Homicide Division, to the quiet, almost crime-free Nihonbashi Precinct.

Kaga gets a feel of his precinct by walking around the main street and talking to the shopkeepers. Since he is casually dressed—and his clothes are described often—in jeans, T-shirt and short-sleeved shirt, and talks with calm curiosity, nobody is intimidated by him. He also has the peculiar habit of buying things from the shops he visits and gifting them to the people he questions as part of his investigation.

A woman called Mineko Mitsui, estranged from her husband and son, is found strangled to death in her apartment. The book begins with short stories that could work by themselves, but they all connect somehow to the murder. In the very first chapter,The Girl At The Rice Cracker Shop, the said girl, Naho Kamikawa, gets a glimpse of Kaga’s powers of observation. He notices, for instance, that businessmen walking from subway station towards home still have their jackets on, while the men going in the opposite direction have them slung over their shoulders? And this fact actually helps get a suspect off the hook.

 The quaint shops on the street include a clock repair shop, one selling china and artifacts, a traditional restaurant, a bakery—all of which become part of the intricate maze of Kaga’s investigation, which drives his immediate superior, Hiroshi Uesugi, up the wall.

Kaga is eccentric, charming, gentle and infallible—to call him a Japanese Sherlock Holmes, would be paying him a compliment. Through his eyes, Higashino portrays life in a small town, suspicious of change, and fearful of outsiders. That Kaga gets himself to belong there so quickly, without giving away anything about himself, is his strength as a detective.

Newcomer

By Keigo Higashino

Translated By Giles Murray

Publisher: Hachette India

Pages: 352