Artemis

Girl On The Moon

In Andy Weir’s last sci-fi bestseller, The Martian, an astronaut was mistakenly left behind on Mars, and finds ways to survive alone (Ridley Scott directed the movie with Matt Damon), as his colleagues figure out how to rescue him.

In his second novel Artemis set in 2080 (the not too distant future), Weir has created a colony on the moon, called Artemis, where the superrich go to live and vacation. In its gleaming underbelly are people like Jazz Bashara, a young woman of Saudi Arabian origin, who works as a porter and moonlights as a smuggler of contraband items forbidden to be brought to the moon.

Weir describes the working of the lunar settlement in minute—sometimes boringly so—details, and for all one knows when Earthlings finally do get to colonize the moon, they might actually live in a town like Artemis. The small population, policed by just one administrator and one cop, lives with lighter gravity, under sealed bubbles named after real-life moon-landing astronauts, depends on tourism as its main revenue source and uses a form of cryptocurrency called slug.

Jazz is the daughter of a devout Muslim welder, who is fed-up of her wayward lifestyle. So she lives by herself in a ‘coffin’ – a tiny space just enough to crawl in to sleep. She is smart, sassy, and would rather use her remarkable brain on her small criminal scams than to put it to better use; in fact, nothing annoys her more than people commenting on her potential.

She is offered a very lucrative assignment by billionaire Trond Landvik, to sabotage the harvesters of the Sanchez Corporation that supplies oxygen to Artemis, so that he can pick up the big contract for himself. Jazz is as unscrupulous as she is greedy, so she takes it up for a million slugs, and causes such a disaster that she almost wipes out the population of the town. She has to undo the damage then, with the help of her reluctant father, former boyfriend Dale and a tech wizard, Martin Svoboda, who is in love with her. 

Weir concentrates so much on Jazz’s antics that other characters are left half-baked; the dialogue is juvenile and the plot quite predictable, but when it comes to the science, Weir’s imagination is unbeatable.  And he has the ability to make all that jargon quite entertaining.

Artemis is on its way to the screen too, let’s hope they don’t get a white actress to play the brown-skinned Arab badass.

Artemis

By Andy Weir

Publisher: Crown

Pages: 320

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

Only The Lonely 

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine  by by Gail Honeyman has won the 2018 Costa Debut Novel Award, is longlisted for other prizes and is quite deservedly on the best-seller lists. Discovered through a writing competition, the author made a dream debut in her forties, with a book that turned out to be so popular 

The bitter-sweet story of Eleanor falls under the category of novels that have labelled ‘Up Lit’ –because, no matter what the protagonist goes through, the end is uplifting.

Eleanor has mentally shut out the traumas of her past, and lives with kind contentment that comes with being self-sufficient and following a steady routine. She works at a low paid accounting job at a graphics firm, where she has no friends.  The scar on her face and her weirdness—she speaks like a schoolmarm-- makes her co-workers slightly uncomfortable, which results in their making fun of her, often when she is within earshot.

Her strongest feature is her self-awareness, so that even while she cooks up unrealistic dreams of dating a handsome rocker, also stockpiles pills for a possible suicide in the future.  She has conversations with a nasty mother who is away, possibly in prison.

Her loneliness and comforting schedule are broken, first by the cheerful new techie, Raymond, and then by their helping an old man, Sam, who has a heart attack in the street. Suddenly, she has a friend, and through Sam’s family, a kind of social life she had never been part of earlier.

The reasons for Eleanor’s isolation are gradually revealed, and her suffering was horrific enough to drive a lesser person to a mental breakdown. To protect herself from more pain, Eleanor built a shield around herself, but she does not know how to get out of it.

At first, Raymond annoys her—he is unkempt and communicates in the internet shorthand, like U for You, that Eleanor thinks is illiterate.  But then she realizes that he is her friend, and does not expect anything from her, except to be his “plus one” at the parties Sam’s family throw. He is alone too, and looking after an elderly and disabled mother.

Eleanor babe-in-the-woods manner is both funny and poignant.  At one point she comments on her favourite mug, “I purchased it in a charity shop some years ago, and it has a photograph of a moon-faced man. He is wearing a brown leather blouson. Along the top, in strange yellow font, it says ‘Top Gear’. I don’t profess to understand this mug. It holds the perfect amount of vodka, however, thereby obviating the need for frequent refills.”

What the reader discovers, with her, is that to balance out cruelty, there is also inexplicable kindness. Like Sam’s daughter Laura giving her a makeover with a “mate’s rate”, which brings out the beauty hidden by her scar and wild hair. But Raymond befriends her in spite of her off-putting appearance and attitude, and shows her what life can be like if only she opens the windows and lets the light in.

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine  could be seen as modern-day fairytale in which the characters are ordinary, but also special in their own way.

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine 

By Gail Honeyman

Publisher: HarperCollins

Pages: 336

An American Marriage

Cruel Joke Of Fate

Tayari Jones’s An American Marriage comes with Oprah Winfrey’s recommendation, which will undoubtedly help the wonderful novel get a wider readership.

The title sounds dull, but Jones has written a very moving book about a love triangle between three people, whose lives are devastated by a cruel twist of fate.

Roy is an ambitious black man, who rose to corporate success from an impoverished background; his unwed mother was offered love and a name for her child by the kind Roy Sr. Roy Jr. falls in love with and marries Celestial, a rich black woman and artist on her way to success. Celestial has a childhood friend, Andre, who was heartbroken when she married another man, but stood by her regardless.

The 18-month-old marriage is shattered when Roy is arrested for a rape he did not commit and sentenced to twelve years in prison. Because of the inherent racism in the system, Celestial’s testimony is not even taken seriously and neither is DNA analysis sought. Celestial’s Uncle Banks, a lawyer, pursues an appeal, but warns the two that it will take time and money.

For some time, Celestial visits and writes to Roy—their letters form a large section of the book-- but her despair slowly eats into her, and she turns to Andre for support.  Her career takes off, and Roy is saddened to note that she never mentions him; it is as if she is ashamed that her husband is incarcerated, even though she knows he is innocent.

Roy’s cellmate Walter (and there’s a surprise here) becomes his friend and protector, as he tries to keep his spirits up and wait for Banks’s efforts to come through. He does not know what to believe of the existence of his marriage when Celestial stops visiting, but does not initiate divorce proceedings. Then, five years later, he is suddenly released and now comes the dreadful price all three have to pay for their love, hope and patience.

Roy had his life wrecked by a racist justice system, and even though he is was wrongly convicted, no man comes out of the prison hellhole mentally or physically intact. Celestial had not been prepared for the emotional turmoil caused by the incident, and Andre makes up for losing her to Roy by being there for her, and for him like a true friend. But when Roy is released, he does not know what is expected of him.  Their story is full of anguish, but also unexpected love.  Celestial’s imperious father, who had not quite approved of Roy, pays his legal fees and chooses to stand by him, berating his daughter for letting down her husband.  

Roy meets a woman who unselfishly helps him heal. There can be no happy ending when a man has suffered such a senseless tragedy, but there is acceptance and recovery. A story about romance-separation-infidelity could have been banal, but Tayari Jones writes with empathy and without moral judgment, giving reader all three points of view to let them decide right and wrong. This is a book that will remain with the reader for a very long time.

An American Marriage

By Tayari Jones

Publisher: Algonquin

Pages: 306

2 By Michael Connelly

Case Of The Night Shift 

Michael Connelly has already created characters like LA cop Harry Bosch and his smart, brash half brother, Mickey Haller, better known as the Lincoln Lawyer (who had a movie made on him, starring Matthew McConaughey). In spite of all these books being bestsellers, the writer felt impelled to introduce a new character, a female one at that.

Detective Renée Ballard is young, smart, tough, and all kinds of terrific. The first book starring her is The Late Show, the police department’s name for the night shift, which nobody really wants to do. She was dumped there when she complained of sexual harassment by a superior and her partner, Ken Chastain, failed to back her up.  She carries this resentment to her new post, with her dull but loyal new partner John Jenkins, who would rather sit in his office and do paperwork than chase after criminals. But Ballard is straining at the leash, because officers on the graveyard shift have to jut write up reports and hand over cases to day cops on the beat. And she is too dedicated to the force to want to be a gloried clerk.

The book is set in Southern California, where homeless Ballard lives on the beach in a tent, paddling when she has the time and hanging out with her dog, Lola.  Ballard grew up in Hawaii, her father drowned, her mother disowned her, so the only living relative is her grandmother, Tutu.

Even though she is not meant to follow up on crimes, Ballard does not let go, whether it is a credit card theft that leads to a bigger scam, or the case of a cross-dresser who has been savagely beaten and left for dead. The same eventful night, there are five people killed in a nightclub shootout. So Ballard puts a lot on her plate in the breathtakingly fast paced book; she is also kidnapped and tortured, but she solves everything.

Connelly won’t let go of a heroine like that after just one book, so readers will definitely get more of Renee Ballard and hopefully she will head a movie franchise too.  Such a kickass female, who can fight as well as she can tongue lash, is made for showbiz.

Interestingly, Mumbai features in the book in credit card call centre sequences, with a man called Irfan Khan, and the coroner is an Indian woman called Jayalaithaa Panneerselvam—now where did Connelly find  names like that!

The Late Show

By Michael Connelly

Publisher: Little, Brown

Pages: 400

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

Old Detective, New Tricks

Hieronymus 'Harry' Bosch, the jazz-loving hero of twenty Michael Connelly books, does not retire when he officially retires from the LA police force. He is asked to help with cold cases, and he merrily sets up office in a disused jail cell in the San Fernando Police Department.

His thirty-year career is rocked when he is accused by death row prisoner, Preston Borders, rapist and murderer of three of having framed him back in 1988. Now, new evidence using advanced DNA techniques prove his innocence. If Borders’s lawyer, Lance Cronyn, can prove that, Bosch will be in deep trouble. He finds that even his former partner Lucia Soto is suspicious, though she is willing to do what she can to help him.

While he worries about this, he is also called on to help solve the double murder of a pharmacist José Esquivel Sr. and his son.  These murders are linked to a huge drugs racket, run by an East European syndicate, in which homeless old people are used as mules.  For the first time in his life, Bosch goes undercover to investigate and risks his life.

Bur importantly, he must clear his name and win again the respect of his daughter Maddie.  And who should come charging to help but Mickey Haller, whose investigative skills and courtroom theatrics make for an exciting climax.  This one is easily one of Connelly’s best.

Two Kinds Of Truth

By Michael Connelly

Publisher: Little, Brown

Pages: 400

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

The Hate U Give

Racism Alert

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas may be aimed at a YA readership, but it attacks racism in the US like a sledgehammer, and has turned out to be one of the most popular and acclaimed books in recent months.

The young writer creates in 16-year-old Starr, a brave black girl, who sees by the end of the story, that for a black person in racist America, there is no choice but to fight.

 Starr’s parents, Maverick and Lisa, are bringing their children in a small town black ghetto called Garden Heights, but also trying to give them a way to a better life by sending them to an elite white school in an affluent white neighbourhood. All around her, Starr can see poverty and anger at the lack of opportunity for black kids, and their inevitable descent into crime. Teenaged boys and some girls get drawn into street gangs, and risk their lives by getting into the crosswires of cops and rival gangs.

 At the age of ten, Starr saw her best friend killed in a random gangland shooting. The trauma stays in her mind, and blows up again when she witnessed the killing of her childhood friend Khalil by a white cop. Starr and her siblings are taught never to get confrontational with the cops, to keep their hands up, and refrain from making sudden moves. Khalil makes the error of getting aggressive with a white policeman, who shoots him at point blank range without a qualm, claiming that he mistook a hairbrush for a gun.

 Starr has a white boyfriend Chris, one of her best friends is white, the other Chinese, and she never imagined that she would one day have to take a stand for people of her race. Her immediate instinct is to deny the existence of a small-time drug dealer in her life, but the injustice of the killing of an unarmed boy, and the attempt to discredit Khalil as a gangster makes her overcome her fear and agree to appear before a grand jury.  She also sees how the cops humiliate her father by forcing him to lie face down on the ground as they search him; it is their way of warning her against speaking out against one of their own.

The incident of ‘encounter’ killings of black men is so common that were it not for protests by black people, the media would probably not even notice. Starr’s uncle is a cop, and he witnesses helplessly as the incident ignites the Garden Heights community and riots break out. Starr unwittingly becomes the centre of the storm that lashes the town.

The book comes out of Thomas’s own experiences, and though there is rage as well as poignancy in the pages, there is also hope tinged with love. Chris is a wonderfully written character, a rich brat with amazing courage and empathy. Starr is surrounded by people who love her, not just her parents and grandmother but also her uncles, aunt, cousins, and a half-brother, Seven. Thomas is not blind or naïve enough to suggest that there is no crime or violence in the ghettos, but her book makes a case for understanding the underlying problems and trying to solve them.

Thomas’s descriptions are evocative, her ear for colloquial dialogue impeccable. The Hate U Give is an outstanding debut novel, powerful and haunting.

The Hate U Give

By Angie Thomas

Published By: Balzer + Bray

Pages: 444

A Column Of Fire

Rich Historical Tapestry

A Column Of Fire is Ken Follett’s third Kingsbridge novel after The Pillars Of The Earth and World Without End, a sprawling historical epic that spans fifty years and is set mostly in Elizabethan England, though it travels to France, Spain, Scotland, The Netherlands—the core theme being religious tolerance.

 In the sixteenth century Catholics and Protestants were constantly at War, brutally persecuting one another, with torture, excommunication and burning ‘heretics’ at the stake. Wars are fought, massacres carried out, fortunes made and lost.

The thick novel begins in 1558, during in the reign of Catholic Queen known as Bloody Mary, because she had thousands of Protestants tortured and killed. After Mary’s death and some frantic political skullduggery, her Protestant and illegitimate half sister Elizabeth is seated on the throne, with a promise to put a stop to religious fanaticism.

 In England, the Willard and Fitzgerald families take centre stage—Ned Willard is in love with Margery Fitzgerald, but her family is responsible for financially ruining his. Ned’s brilliant mother is reduced to a shadow of herself, his brother Barney goes off to sea and builds his own life away from the family. Margery is forcibly married to a nasty Catholic nobleman Bart, while Ned goes off to work under Princess Elizabeth’s loyal spymasters Sir William Cecil and later, when she is queen, Sir Francis Walsingham.

 In France, the low-born but ambitious climber Pierre Aumande ingratiates himself with the powerful Guise brothers, uses his short-lived engagement to the Protestant Sylvie Palot to spy on her people, and causes a savage slaughter by Catholics, that came to be knows as St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572. Margery’s brother Rollo vows to destroy the Protestant faith, by building a secret army of Catholics in England.

Follett’s fictional characters mingle with the real, and the novel is studded with historical events like the marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots to the ailing young King Henri II of France, the defeat of the Spanish Armada by the swashbuckling Sir Francis Drake, the infamous Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in which Guy Fawkes and his Catholic co-conspirators planned to blow up Parliament, and the beheading of Mary Queen of Scots for treason.

Follett seamlessly blends, history, action, adventure, suspense, romance and thrills to create a highly readable novel that moves at a breathless pace and is also educative. There has to be a sequel to this story, and there is a hint--the word Mayflower. History buffs will get it.

A Column Of Fire

By Ken Follett

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Pages: 916

You Bring the Distant Near

In An Alien Land

You Bring the Distant Near by Mitali Perkins is slightly different from the many Bengalis in the US stories (Bharti Mukherjee, Chita Banerji Divakaruni, Jhumpa Lahiri) in that part of the Das family’s immigrant experience involves interactions with black people.

The book has autobiographical elements as it briskly tells the story of Rajeev and Ranee Das who move with their two daughters Tara and Sonia from Kolkata to Ghana to London and finally to New York in the 1970s. There are the usual adjustment problems, Ranee is concerned that their Flushing neighbourhood is black, and her racism to so deeply set that Sonia does not dare to invite her black friends home.

Sonia is the dark-skinned, studious one, who grows up to be a journalist, while her sister Tars is movie-star pretty and does end up as a Bollywood actress, but that part of the story is kept of the pages. The narration is by Tara and Sonia by turns, and one can’t but note that the book could do with a lot more detailing. There are TV serial like jumps in time, and the reader is left to imagine what might have transpired in the intervening years.

 Later, Tara’s daughter Anna and Sonia’s half-black daughter Shanti/Chantal take over the narration; Anna moves from Mumbai to New York and the reader gets yet another dose of cultural adjustment. The stories of the five women are mildly interesting, and the book is quick read, but it’s the sketchiness  that prevents it from rising above the mundane. There cannot be a novel about Bengalis without several mentions of Rabindranath Tagore, but mercifully, there is no Durga Puja sequence. The one Hindu ritual is hilariously conducted by a hippie priest!

You Bring the Distant Near

By Mitali Perkins

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Pages: 303

The Music Shop

Bitter-Sweet Love Story

Rachel Joyce, who made her writing debut with the bestselling The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry, has written another heart-breaker, The Music Shop.

This book is also about love, friendship, loyalty, compassion; added to it is the healing power of music.  Her fourth novel begins in 1988, when a dishevelled giant of a man, Frank, sets up his music shop, selling vinyl records.  He had grown up with an eccentric mother, who taught him all there is to know about music. So, Frank knows just which piece of music will help a troubled customer.

Frank’s shop with its piled of records piled up in no particular order, is located in London’s Unity Street, where a motley group of neighbors and fellow business owners are trying to keep away the grubby hands of a developer.

There is Maud the tattooist, who is in love with Frank but cannot bring herself to tell him, Father Anthony, the recovered alcoholic who sells religious iconography, Novak the baker and the undertakers, the Williams brothers. And there’s the slightly odd Kit, a young man who helps Frank in the shop, and becomes a catalyst for the joy and sorrow that befalls his kindly employer.

Despite the pressure from music companies, Frank refuses to see CDs, even it means dwindling sales. And he won’t budge from the shop, no matter what threats and temptations the developer offers.

One day, a woman in a green coat, faints outside the shop. She turns out to be a mysterious German called Ilse Brauchmann, who brings about a transformation in the lonely Frank. Ilse asks him to give her lessons in music, and as he takes her through his favourite records, a hesitant kind of unspoken romance grows, watched over by the sullen waitress at the Singing Teapot, where they meet every week.

As the reader follows the various strands of the story, there is the discovery of music and Frank’s passion for it—there are stories about composers and musicians from Aretha Franklin, Duke Ellington and Sex Pistols to Beethoven, Vivaldi and Purcell. Frank’s mother has told him, “Music is about silence… the silence at the beginning of a piece of music is always different from the silence at the end… Because if you listen, the world changes. It’s like falling in love. Only no one gets hurt.” It is these silences the emotions of the characters seem to fall into.

The prose is simple, poignant, often over-sentimental but never maudlin. Joyce makes the reader care about the characters, but does not promise them a conventional happily-ever-after. Still, it offers hope and optimism even in the depths of despair.

There is also a wonderful playlist, so readers can listen to all the music Frank talks about and discover the soul-stirring beauty and silences for themselves.

The Music Shop

By Rachel Joyce

Published by: Doubleday

Pages: 336

Hardcore 24 & Turbo 23

Plum Pudding

Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum’s books are a guilty pleasure—no matter how outlandish the plots, the feisty heroine and her madcap sidekick Lula are bound to make the reader laugh out loud.

For those who haven’t read any books in the series before, Stephanie is a self-confessed Julie Roberts lookalike, of Italian descent and has a crazy gun-toting Grandma Mazur, whose antics have driven her daughter (that is Stephanie’s mother) to despair and alcoholism. She also has a hamster as a pet, a cop boyfriend Joe Morelli and a standby ‘knight’ called Ranger—both of them impossibly hot.  In the latest of the ‘numbered’ series, Hardcore Twenty-Four, another hottie drops by—the enigmatic Diesel, with six-pack abs and extra-sensory perception. 

Lula is an Amazonian black woman, a former hooker, with a red Firebird, a huge appetite and passion for shoes. She wears garish clothes and manages to carry them off.  And if some misguided soul calls her fat, they are asking for trouble.

Stephanie is a bounty hunter, a profession not known in most countries; they are employed by bailbondsmen to ensure that felons do not jump bail and turn up at their trials.

Stephanie works for her mostly absent cousin Vinnie, and with Lula’s help—plus occasional SOS calls to security expert Ranger-- she manages to apprehend most fugitives from justice. Some assistance comes from the office receptionist Connie, who belongs to a Mafia clan and keeps Stephanie supplied with information and donuts. In the process of chasing runaways and feeding Lula, she also solves baffling murder cases, and keeps the love triangle with Morelli and Ranger as amiable as can be.

In Hardcore Twenty-Four, the cops are mystified and the people of Trenton, New Jersey, terrified when headless bodies start appearing around town. The word ‘zombie’ is uttered and believed, because people who look like those living dead creatures are also spotted.

As Stephanie and Lula try to keep their wits together, they promise to look after Ethel, the massive boa constrictor owned by ‘professional’ grave robber, Simon Diggery, or he won’t accompany them to jail. The antics of the snake and Stephanie-Lula’s reactions, provide a lot of the book’s humour; also oddball characters like a compulsive painter of garden gnomes and a guy called Zero Slick who joins protest marches for a living.

As Stephanie dates Morelli and habitually wrecks Ranger’s cars (he keep track of her, and the only reason it does not creep her out is that he saves her skin many times), Diesel lands up unannounced and squats in her apartment. She begins to suspect he has something to do with the ghoulish incidents in town, but there is more to Diesel than she can see.

Of course, Grandma Mazur gets her share of attention, by acquiring a new “honey”, that makes her daughter look avidly at the bottle of whiskey in the kitchen cabinet—the only way to keep her sanity.

The reason for the headless corpses is laughably absurd, but then who reads these books for veracity?

Hardcore Twenty-Four
By: Janet Evanovich
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons

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

In Turbo Twenty-Three, Stephanie Plum and Lula have to solve a most peculiar case. When they are pursuing a convict called Larry Virgil who has stolen an ice-cream truck, a frozen corpse falls out it, covered in chocolate and nuts.

There is rivalry between the town’s two ice-cream manufacturers, which could be the reason for people being killed by freezing. Ranger asks Stephanie has to go undercover in the ice-cream plant to trace the killer.

Lula and the tiny, pesky Randy Briggs want to be TV stars, so plan to do a shoot for a show called Naked and Afraid, and Grandma Mazur gets a new boyfriend and her long-suffering daughter has more to worry about.

This is one of the funniest and raunchiest Janet Evanovich books; just the thing for an idle weekend.

Turbo Twenty-Three

By Janet Evanovich

Publisher: Bantam

Pages: 288

The Woman In The Window

Hitchcock-ian Rollercoaster

If it were possible for a debutant to 'design' a bestseller, then A.J. Finn has done it; The Woman In The Window is a blockbuster of a book and on its way to the screen.

Finn (pseudonym of Dan Mallory) claimed in an interview to The Telegraph (UK), that he thinks like a woman, and his taut thriller with an agoraphobic woman at the centre perhaps proves that.

Unable to step out without getting a panic attack, child psychologist Anna Fox lives alone in a large house, drinks all day and spies on the neighbours through the lens of a camera. The set-up is Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window meets Paula Hawkins’ The Girl On The Train. Finn is quite happy to let his influences show—Anna is also a fan of classic black-and-white thriller movies (Vertigo, Gaslight are obvious inspirations)

She has a cat, a hunky tenant, David, in the basement, and weekly visits from her shrink and physiotherapist.  The reader learns that an accident was the cause of her separation from her husband and daughter, as also her current mental state.

When Anna is not watching films or chatting in an agoraphobes’ online support group, she peeks most avidly at new neighbours across the park—the Russells comprising husband Alistair, wife Jane and teenage son Ethan.

The story actually starts when Ethan drops by with a gift from his mother; the woman turns up miraculously when Anna needs help and befriends her. Then Anna sees her being stabbed from her window and manages to call the cops. In trying to reach Jane, she collapses outside her house and is taken to hospital. When she is brought back, there are no traces of a murder, Alistair brings his wife over and she is not the woman Anna met.

The kindly cop, a mountainous man called Little, helps Anna get home and settle in, but to the doctors and the police it seems that the cocktail of pills and wine that she has been swigging have led her to hallucinate the whole scene.

Layers are peeled off gradually, in short chapters, for the reader to get the whole picture of Anna’s life and that of the Russells, and build up to the climax. The astute reader would guess at who did it (maybe not the why), but the book is still heart-stopping, sad and thrilling all at once. Once picked up, it cannot be put down till the last page is turned. And that’s the mark of a good suspense novel.

The Woman In The Window

By AJ Finn

Publisher: Harper Collins

Pages: 448

Little Secrets

Deadly Dolls

Melbourne-based writer Anna Snoekstra’s Little Secrets is a passable crime thriller set in the small town of Colmstock, from which aspiring journalist Rose Blakey is desperate to escape. As she dreams of a job in a newspaper, she works at a pub with her best friend Mia. Her stepfather Rob has given her the ultimatum to move out of the house within a week, and her mother is too weak to protest.  

When Rose's kid sister Laura finds a doll at her doorstep that resembles her, and other little girls do too, Rose sends off a piece to a tabloid, which is accepted. Since this happens soon after a child is killed in a major blaze in the town’s courthouse, people are agitated.

The town’s cops Frank (who loves Rose from afar) and Bazza (who is soft on Mia) are annoyed with the implication that a paedophile is on the loose and they cannot find him. Will, an outsider to the town, becomes prime suspect, and Rose, in order to impress the paper, adds fuel to the speculations. Later, she is unable to stop the series of tragic events that follow her padded up stories. A few red herrings some loose ends and a dash of romance pepper the quick, but forgettable read.

Little Secrets

By Anna Snoekstra

Publisher: Harper Collins

Pages: 332

Fire And Fury:

Inside The Lair

Michael Wolff’s book, Fire And Fury: Inside The Trump White House is stranger than fiction; if Donald Trump, current President of the United States, had been created by a novelist, people would not have believed such a character could exist. But there he is, ensconced in the White House, keeping the world entertained and terrified with his shenanigans.

Wolff got unprecedented access into the White House, because, as he writes, nobody told him to go away. His book, a terrific blend of fact, gossip, interviews and unnamed sources, written in reckless tell-all tone, makes for a fascinating read, mainly because who would have believed Trump could have become President (nobody in his campaign team thought he would win and his wife Melania, according to Wolff, wept inconsolably when he did), and then hang on, flexing his muscles and shooting his mouth off at every occasion, as the media-–that he hates—slams him repeatedly.

Steve Bannon, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Rupert Murdoch, and a cast of hundreds jump out of the pages of newspapers and TV screens into the book, and Wolff rips many masks off as he goes along.  Making fun of the foot-in-mouth Trump is the media’s delight these days, and Wolff has distilled all that disdain into Fire And Fury.

Many ‘facts’ may have been embellished, but the book is a page-turner— savage, witty and disturbing. It’s a mark of America’s free press and democracy that Wolff could manage to write such a book about the most powerful man in the world.

Fire And Fury: Inside The Trump White House

By Michael Wolff

Publisher: Hachette

Pages: 321

Deep Freeze

Gals And Dolls

Virgil Flowers, used to be the sidekick of Lucas Davenport, hero of John Sandford’s ‘Prey’ series. Then, about ten years ago, the writer gave him a series of his own. Flowers works with Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and hangs out with bunch of colourful cohorts when he is not working on a case.

In Deep Freeze, the killer is revealed in the first chapter, so it’s not the who or why but the how he did it that is at the centre of the novel. On the night of her 25^th high school reunion Gina Hemming is fished out of Trippton’s frozen river. Hemming was a rich and powerful woman in the small town and many people had reason to kill her, as Virgil Flowers finds when he starts to investigate. In a previous novel, Flowers had exposed the corrupt school board as well as a dog-napping ring in the town, so he is a bit of a hero there.

The investigation is routine, but there is another mystery to solve. Who is making a range of pornographic Barbie and Ken dolls?  Private detective Margaret Griffin arrives from Los Angeles to hunt for the culprit. Everyone knows the leader of the ring is Virgil’s former classmate Jesse McGovern, but since she is providing employment in a town on the verge of economic ruin, nobody wants to turn her in. In fact, Flowers gets beaten up by a bunch of women and is forced to go about his work with a broken nose and a blue nose guard, for which he gets teased a lot.

The best part of Sandford’s books is the humour-- the characters are funny, the dialogue crackling and Virgil Flowers a very likeable cop.

Deep Freeze

By John Sandford

Publisher: Putnam

Pages: 391

East Of Hounslow

The Accidental Terrorist

Javid “call me Jay” Qasim lives in London, and is proud of being so assimilated, that no cops ever pulls him over. He has no great objections to being called Paki because he knows what the ignorant racist whites don’t—that it means pure. He looks down his nose the shalwar-wearing louts in his community and goes to the mosque once a week, just to prove his Muslim credentials.

Jay, a smalltime drug dealer, is the wry and clear-headed protagonist of Khurrum Rahman’s excellent debut novel, East Of Hounslow. He lives with his widowed mother, who is completely against the stereotype of the pious Muslim woman, and soon after the book opens, she flies off to with her British boyfriend, leaving the shattered Jay alone.

The neighbourhood mosque is vandalized, and Jay helps clean up because he happens to be there; he also gets pulled into a revenge act of violence, only to protect his childhood friend, the naïve and impressionable Parvez, from the likes of Khan Abdul and his thick-headed cohorts. In the melee, his new BMW is trashed, and a bag full of drugs to sell and money he owes his boss, Silas, are stolen. Before he knows it, his life is on a quick downward spiral.

Through the words put in the mouth of Jay, Rahman presents a remarkably accurate and honest picture of the Islamic world today, and slams terrorism while also emphasizing that a majority of Muslims are peace-loving, and all mosques are not breeding grounds of jihad. Like the others of his community Jay does not think that his friend Idris, who is a cop, is a sellout; still, when Khan berates him for not standing by his people, Jay understands his point of view.

Suddenly, the tone of the book turns dark, as Jay is threatened by Silas’s goons if he does not cough up the money owed, and a school-bombing in Canada deeply affects the happy-go-lucky bloke. It’s the time for MI5’s Kinsgley Parker to recruit him as an undercover agent to keep an eye on extremist activity in the Muslim-dominated area.

It would be a spoiler to give out more of the plot, but it does take a couple of Bollywood-like twists. The book is as thought-provoking, as it is entertaining-- which is a fine combination for a thriller.

East Of Hounslow

By Khurrum Rahman

Publisher: Harper Collins

Pages: 350

Uncommon Type

The Star Writes

Hollywood star Tom Hanks is famously a collector of vintage typewriters. He is also an occasional writer, whose stories have been published in magazines like The New Yorker and Vanity Fair.

Uncommon Type is his collection of seventeen quirky stories that begin with a picture of a typewriter and also feature the now outdated writing machine in minor or major roles.

Hanks is observant, has a sense of humour and an ear for dialogue—the story about an actor being taken on a press junket is hilarious.  The stories vary in tone and style, however—the story about a woman buying a second-hand typewriter and trying to get it repaired is sweet, the sci-fi stories starring the nutty and hyperactive Anna are bizarre.

The characters cover a wide spectrum—a newly-divorced woman who avoids her cheery neighbor; the billionaire who goes time-travelling and falls in love with a woman from the past; a young man who goes surfing with his father on his nineteenth birthday and stumbles on an unpleasant secret.

He may not be as skilled a writer a he is an actor, but the stories show that he is not insular and self-absorbed as stars tend to be—he does look around and see life beyond Hollywood.

Uncommon Type

By Tom Hanks

Publisher: Knopf

Pages: 416