Book review - One Down

 

One Down by Diana Wilkinson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A wonderful thriller, well woven tale that keeps you on edge right through.
It is about the pit falls of addiction be it alcohol or crossword, that the two main characters in the book are addicted to.
She is an alcoholic and one who loves to live it up and he is a cruciverbalist (crossword setter/one who enjoys solving crosswords). He is also a control freak and wishes to keep her under his control all the time. She describes his mind as Inside his skull I imagine criss-cross wiring that links up nerve endings, as lexicographical data gets analysed and stored on a hard drive. He studies words the way an entomologist studies insects, dissecting phrases into the smallest possible components and always on the lookout for a rare species of word formation
In the end it is a murder mystery so saying anything more will be a spoiler.
Suffice to say it is a well written book for the murder mystery lover and specially for a crossword lover as there are plenty of pointers on how to solve cryptic clues.
Go for it. You won't regret it.

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A book review

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A beautifully written book delving into an autistic mind, viewing the world and relationships through the thoughts of a 15 year old boy.
It is the story of a boy, an avid fan of Sherlock Holmes, who wants to find the killer of a dog that has been brutally murdered.
The writing is racy and grips you right through. It is a one sitting read.
I shall leave you with some pertinent excerpts from the book and urge you all to give the book a read. You will not regret it.

I think people believe in heaven because they don’t like the idea of dying, because they want
to carry on living and they don’t like the idea that other people will move into their house and put
their things into the rubbish.

All the other children at my school are stupid. Except I’m not meant to call them stupid,
even though this is what they are. I’m meant to say that they have learning difficulties or that they
have special needs. But this is stupid because everyone has learning difficulties because learning to speak French or understanding relativity is difficult and also everyone has special needs, like
Father, who has to carry a little packet of artificial sweetening tablets around with him to put in his coffee to stop him from getting fat, or Mrs. Peters, who wears a beige-colored hearing aid, or
Siobhan, who has glasses so thick that they give you a headache if you borrow them, and none of
these people are Special Needs, even if they have special needs.

People think that alien spaceships would be solid and made of metal and have lights all over
them and move slowly through the sky because that is how we would build a spaceship if we were able to build one that big. But aliens, if they exist, would probably be very different from us. They might look like big slugs, or be flat like reflections. Or they might be bigger than planets. Or they might not have bodies at all. They might just be information, like in a computer. And their spaceships might look like clouds, or be made up of unconnected objects like dust or leaves.
And sometimes, when someone has died, like Mother died, people say, “What would you
want to say to your mother if she was here now?” or “What would your mother think about that?”
which is stupid because Mother is dead and you can’t say anything to people who are dead and dead people can’t think.

Eventually scientists will discover something that explains ghosts, just like they discovered
electricity, which explained lightning, and it might be something about people’s brains, or
something about the earth’s magnetic field, or it might be some new force altogether. And then
ghosts won’t be mysteries. They will be like electricity and rainbows and nonstick frying pans.
And it made me think how all the water in the world was connected, and this water had evaporated from the oceans somewhere in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico or Baffin Bay, and now it was falling in front of the house and it would drain away into the gutters and flow to a sewage station where it would be cleaned and then it would go into a river and go back into the ocean again.

People who believe in God think God has put human beings on the earth because they
think human beings are the best animal, but human beings are just an animal and they will evolve
into another animal, and that animal will be cleverer and it will put human beings into a zoo, like
we put chimpanzees and gorillas into a zoo. Or human beings will all catch a disease and die out or they will make too much pollution and kill themselves, and then there will only be insects in the world and they will be the best animal.



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A murder on Malabar Hill - Book reviewed

A Murder on Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A beautifully knitted tale of a murder using different colourful strands of cultural conflicts, class conflicts and interpersonal relationships in India during the British Raj.
Sujata Massey has also delved into the issue of women's rights and the attitude towards them in the given circumstances. The story is womancentric and revolves around the protagonist Pervin Mistry who despite the ban on women appearing in court, finds a way around to fulfil her desire to practice law and do her bit for the pardanashin women (women in burqa who do not have any direct contact with male strangers), hence giving them an opportunity to present their fundamental rights to property and life.
This is not the sitting in the armchair and solving mystery tale but full of adventure out on the streets and homes.
The ideas and the language flows seamlessly and keeps the reader engrossed in all the goings on during the entire length of the book.

Wonderful read. It has induced me to look forward to reading more of her books.


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Bhrigu Mahesh PhD - Book reviewed

This novel is based on the Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson story format, authored by Nisha Singh.

 A murder mystery being solved by Mahesh Bhrigu Ph.D. (based on the character of Sherlock Holmes) and narrated by Sutte, yes, you guessed it right, based on Dr. Watson’s character but in this case Sutte is a journalist.

The site of the murder is a remote village in India, Senduwar where the villagers experience a windfall when they discover a buried treasure of precious gold jewellery in an abandoned part of the village. But their joy is short-lived as the person who finds it is found dead in mysterious circumstances giving rise to a myth of an evil spirit residing on that precious land.

Mahesh Bhrigu is an ex-cop who has left the forces to practice his craft as a private detective as he felt the Police force cramped his style. He could not bear to see suspects being given the third degree treatment when all it needed were some mind games in which he excelled. But despite him leaving the Police force they relied on him to solve a lot of cases which they could not, hence his decision of starting out on his own was a mutually beneficial one.

Nisha Singh has woven the plot beautifully and the reader is kept guessing till the end. The characterisations of the protagonist and the others in the book too are well thought out.

In the acknowledgements, Nisha Singh has stated that she spent a year in writing the book. I wish she had spent some more time in editing the book too to make it reader friendly. The language she has used is overly flowery and adjectives are crammed in every nook and corner of the book. And to top it she has provided enough ammunition to any grammar Nazi! Possibly she thinks in Hindi and has put it down in directly translated English ignoring the grammar of the English language. Given below are a few glaring examples.

Someone was in a fixture….

Bold over by the logical marvel….

Took a stool and lapsed into it….

Jiyashree got the wind of the news…

Apart from the mowing of the buffaloes….

People were scared of her in her life so were frightened more so in her death.

He went ballistics on a philosopher.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you before.

‘Legend?’ Bhrigu ejaculated ‘What legend?’

This time I reeled and the light of mirth dancing in my eyes was extinguished as if on a switch.

Be you the most reasonable and logical person on the planet…

Humanity struggling to jerk off the thick blankets of gloom.

And the common mistakes these days of ‘there’ for ‘their’ and ‘quiet’ for ‘quite’ to name a few.

Despite being a literature student, she has attributed the authorship of ‘Tale of two cities’ to Leo Tolstoy!

As I said, if only she had paid more time on editing and simple English language the book would have been a winner!

This book seems to be a self-published book hence the lack of professional editing.

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