Relic by Preston and Child

Title: Relic

Authors: Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Pages: 480

Rating: 5/5

Genre: Thriller, Mystery, Sci-Fi

 

Critics have described this novel as, “Jaws and Jurassic comes to New York City,” let me add my two piece to it, ”a very hungry Jaws and Jurassic comes to New York City.”

Something is savagely killing and eating people at the New York museum of natural history. Autopsies indicate that the killer is not human and it has developed a very peculiar taste for the hypothalamus gland.

Despite the killings, the museum director decides to go ahead with the grand opening of the museum’s latest exhibition, aptly titled, Superstition. The success of the exhibition could either mean a perennial source of revenue for the museum or a potential feast of hypothalamus glands for the creature.

It is up to Museum researcher Margo Green to figure out the origins of the creature before the big opening and possibly stop it in time with the help of special agent Pendergast and Liutenant D’Agosta.

Relic is a motley of interesting characters. It is hard to pin point a single protagonist in this story. Even though the novel is the first in a long series of Pendergast novels, other characters are given equal prominence. Margo Green is a junior researcher at the museum. She is intelligent, strong willed and charming. Smithback, the journalist, is writing a story on the museum and these killings have landed him a scoop right on the platter. Agent Pendergast can dress down anyone in the most classy and sophisticated manner. Lieutenant D’Agosta is earthy and strong.

Relic is a very well written thriller. Sentences flow into each other, paragraphs merge flawlessly with one another and the punctuations in the novel, give the right pause and effect. The best part of the novel is its long climax. Often climax tends to be short, and wind up in few pages at the end. In relic, the climactic sequences run for a good latter half of the novel.

Relic is the beginning of a wonderful partnership between Duglous Preston and Lincoln Child. Duglous Preston has travelled to the remotest corners of the world as an archaeological correspondent for the New Yorker and one can witness the adventurous spirit of the author as the novel begins amidst the remote lush green Amazon basin.

Lincoln Child’s vast experience of having written a number of thriller and horror anthologies bring in the element of nail biting horror in this novel from the first chapter itself.

Relic is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

Black Widow: The finely woven thread.

Rating: 1/5

“A black widow dangling on a single thread is a dangerous thing.” (probably the only dialogue in the whole volume that was worth mentioning.)

From the comic book cover:

The black widow may be an avenger and an agent of SHIELD but she has her own mission. (which I couldn’t fathom even after reading the whole volume.) to atone for her past as a KGB assassin. (well you may think you are going to get an origin story but you are not.) Her methods are dirty. Her heart is cold. (which they tried to warm up by showing a budding relationship with a street cat, such a cliché) But her work is flawless. On an undercover assignment in Russia, she finds that the hand of god is reaching for her. Outmatched by the brute force of this powerful new villain (more like nonsensical villain) Natasha discovers a deadly globe spanning (by globe spanning they mean taking unnecessary detours to different parts of the world) plot. The trail of blood and destruction will test her strength and cunning – but it may also test her faith. (well it certainly has shaken my faith in this series.)

Natasha Romanoff, aka Black Widow, Russian Avenger, Slavic Shadow, The Red Death, is a lesser known, but much-loved Marvel Character. The Finely Woven Thread spans six issues #1-6. It is not an origin story but it is a story about her, working alone, away from the star-studded performance of other gifted avengers.

The artwork is clean but ordinary. The story lacks punch. The one thing that was blatantly missing was humor. I never expected a laugh out loud humor, but there is always a cheeky, sarcastic, read between the lines humor that was absent, which made the whole affair, a complete drag. The dialogues are casual and unmemorable. The whole volume was a one woman show. There are no memorable side characters, except maybe for the black street cat.

Matt Fraction and David Aja did a remarkable job in Hawkeye; an avenger, a SHIELD agent, a non-super hero, much like The Black Widow. But where they succeeded, Nathan Edmondson and Phil Noto failed miserably.

The kind worth killing : A review

Author: Peter Swanson

Rating: 4/5

Link: The kind worth killing

Pages: 312

A thriller is as good as the thrill. A murder is as good as the hidden body.

 

One word that best describes, ‘The kind worth killing’, is “Shock”. Peter Swanson shocks the readers just when they are getting too comfortable with the plot.

On a night flight from London to Boston, Ted Severson meets the mysterious Lily Kintner. Sharing one too many martinis, the strangers begin to play a game of truth, revealing intimate details about themselves. Ted talks about his marriage and his wife Miranda, who he’s sure is cheating on him. But their game turns dark when Ted jokes that he could kill Miranda for what she’s done. Lily, without missing a beat, says calmly, “I’d like to help.” (goodreads)

The synopsis looks like a modern re-telling of the classic, “Strangers on a Train”. It is that and much more. Committing a murder is easy so is hiding the body. But hiding the very fact that a murder has taken place is an art, an art that the female protagonist of the story, Lily Kintner is well versed with.

I have always had a soft spot for novels with female leads and Lily Kintner does not disappoint. She is calm, patient and strong. She commits murder with her brain and not brawns. Her penchant for murder mysteries, especially all those Agatha Christie’s she read in her childhood gave her an uncanny ability to kill and get away with it.

Peter Swanson gives all the characters a strong foundation through a telling of their past. The story is written in chapters as told by different characters in first person. The story gets your undivided attention right from the first scene. The kind worth killing is what I call a true page turner; easy to read and hard to put down.

Rogue Lawyer by John Grisham.

Rating: 3.5/5

Author: John Grisham

Pages: 344

Link: Rogue Lawyer

I thought I was done with John Grisham after the disastrous debacle that was “Sycamore Row”, but Rogue Lawyer was like a breath of fresh air. It was a typical Grisham novel; gritty, witty and difficult to put down.

Sebastian Rudd is not your typical lawyer; he works from a black mini-van equipped with everything from a mini fridge to wifi. He carries a gun and is always accompanied by a bodyguard. He believes everyone is entitled to a defense and his clients are not always clean and innocent.

Grisham’s new novel was a surprise for me. What I thought was a one big story turned out to be short stories of Sebastian Rudd. It is a collection of cases, where Rudd takes on clients no one else is willing to. The stories are fast paced and as they are short, Grisham made them entertaining as hell.

Like his other novels, the Rogue Lawyer is also a pure legal thriller. The well researched court room antics keeps one thoroughly entertained. Grisham did try to build a bit of family drama around Sebastian Rudd. Rudd’s relationship with his son and his estranged ex wife was explored but I felt it was left hanging at the end. The only thing that I find disappointing was the ending. The stories were good, but there were way too many loose ends, which made the ending a bit abstract. I could only hope this built up was for a sequel.

The rogue lawyer is a very easy breezy read. Some chapters are as small as a single page and almost all the stories have a predictable ending. It is something you can pick when you are in mood for an entertaining light legal thriller.

The Restaurant Critic’s Wife: A review

Author: Elizabeth LaBan

Rating: 5/5

Pages: 306

Link: The Restaurant Critic’s Wife

I received a digital copy of this book from Lake Union publishers through Net Galley for an honest review.

 

The restaurant critic’s wife was a sumptuous read flavored with comedy, suspense, drama, indecision and of course, good food.

The book was, in a way, much like a well prepared four course meal. Right from the look and feel of the cover art to the depths of emotional yet funny drama, each chapter felt like peeling a different layer, keeping the taste buds alive.

The restaurant critic’s wife is the tale of Lila Soto, who moves to Philadelphia along with her husband, Sam Soto. Sam is a Restaurant Critic and wants to give this new gig a chance. But Sam’s preoccupation with anonymity takes him to extremes and pushes Lila into a life of solitude. Lila craves for company, her work and a return to semblance of normalcy.

The novel focuses not just on the taxing relationship between a husband and his wife but also tests the waters of motherhood and career.

Elizabeth LaBan has put in a lot of work building the characters, be it Sam, Lila or people from their neighborhood. Every single character is penned to perfection. Lila, a devoted wife, who bends over backwards to support her husband’s dream job and tries her level best to secure his anonymity at the cost of her own social life and job. Sam, a food critic, who believes that everything, including his family’s comfort can be sacrificed for his job.

The book has a pleasing-to-the-palate humor. I admit to laughing out loud at scenes from review dinners. It is the kind of humor that one finds in Wodehouse novels; light and pleasant. Humor that brings a smile on your face throughout the read.

The author penned every scene to its full advantage never once leaving the grounds of reality. The trial and tribulations of a new mother, are shown beautifully. Be it fixing baby seats in car, to visiting aunts, the elements of humor and drama are never under or over done. However I do feel that the author missed one opportunity. Lila has been shown struggling with her kids, getting them dressed, getting them in car seats or getting them to eat properly. It would have been so much fun to see Lila struggling with baby baths too.

The writing is very refined. There are no abrupt breaks and words flow like melted cheese. The story is no doubt beautiful but the writing is what makes this novel a wonderful read.

I like it how the author portrayed the feelings of young child when she had to share the attention with a new born baby in the house. How Hazel (Lila’s daughter) kept saying “There is no baby.”

The story is fast paced. Every single chapter brought some new twist or trouble in the life of Lila. The novel made me laugh and at times, characters like Sam Soto got so high up on my nerves that I wished I could somehow reach inside the novel and punch the guy!

For all those with the love for humor, family, protagonist female character and food, dive right in!

 

 

Timeline by Michael Crichton: A review

Rating: 4/5

Author: Michael Crichton.

Link: Timeline

Pages: 489

Never judge a book by its cover. Also, never judge one by the plot written at the back. Timeline by Michael Crichton is a time-hop action drama, traversing the present and the fourteenth century medieval past.

History gets opened up to the present as a professor is marooned in the fourteenth century medieval world. His students are swept off to the headquarters of ITC, the multinational organization that made the technology possible. The plan is to send them back in time and rescue the professor, but things go awry the moment they step into the fourteenth century. Wars, torture, death and rape are rampant and the group found itself fighting for survival.

Timeline does not feature your average run-of-the mill time travel. You are not actually travelling back in time, instead you are travelling across multiverse (amongst the multiple parallel universes).

The plot appeared quiet nonsensical at first. An organization develops the technology to time-hop and starts investing in research around historical sites. Their idea is to dig up these historical sites and reconstruct old castles and granaries. What I find ridiculous is that you are sitting on top of the most sensational scientific invention and you decide to use it to create medieval Disneyland and Universal Studios!

But I could not have been more wrong. The book absorbed me right from the beginning, so much so, that by the second half I could not put it down. The writing is remarkable and the subject matter, well researched. The science part of the time-hop is explained brilliantly, giving you the crux of the things without intimidating you into oblivion.

The beginning is a bit slow and the end is way too predictable. However the action starts soon, and once it begins it stays till the very end. Crichton had me sitting at the edge of my seat in the second half of the book. He made the fourteenth century medieval world not only exciting but nail-biting horrifying, making Timeline a true page turner.

The Maltese Falcon by Dasheill Hammett: A review

Author: Dasheill Hammett

Rating: 5/5

Pages: 217

Link: The Maltese Falcon

 

 

“A gripping, riveting, criss-cross tale of changing loyalties and detective genius.”

Maltese Falcon is not just a crime novel; it is a work of art rightly crowned among the top ten crime novels by CWA (crime writer’s association). A vintage of sorts, the story even after being adapted number of times, is still fresh off the stove.

Sam Spade is a hardboiled detective. A tough chap with a long and bony jaw, a characteristic v shaped chin, thick brows and a stoic look in his eyes who sets precedent for detectives that would follow. In the words of Dasheill Hammett, “He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan.”

Sam Spade and his partner, Miles Archer are hired by Miss Wonderley to track down her sister who eloped with a man named Floyd Thursby. They didn’t trust Miss Wonderley’s story but they trust her money. Things go awry when both Flyod Thursby and Sam’s partner are found murdered. Miss Wonderley turned out to be Brigid O’Shaughnessy and the thing that she’s really after, is a jewel encrusted bird.

The best part of the novel is the way Hammett unveils the plot, chapter by chapter, like a morning sun clearing the fog. The book is divided into chapters with intriguing titles where characters change loyalties with changing state of affairs. Every single character is a suspect with his/her own agenda and secrets.

The novel is very verbose, like there is a need to explain every action with dialogues and conversations. At times it reads like a movie script. But the dialogues and quotes are a piece of literary marvel, so much so that at times, I stopped myself and read the quotes again and again.

The reason why I find this novel a gem of a detective story can best be explained with a small example from the novel itself, “She said she has been asleep but she hadn’t. She had wrinkled up the bed but the wrinkles weren’t mashed down.” Only a writer with a firsthand experience in deduction can write something so ingeniously good.

The Maltese Falcon has all the qualities of a noir crime classic; a story that deals with disorder, disaffection and dissatisfaction, a protagonist with a queer sense of justice and the crime that is reflective of the times in which it is written.

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn: A review

“Sometimes when you let people do things to you, you’re really doing it to them.”

 

Author: Gillian Flynn

Link: Sharp Objects

Rating: 5/5

Pages: 254

 

 

Fugu is the Japanese word for putter fish; it can be lethally poisonous due to tetrodoxotin and thus, must be carefully prepared before cooking, to avoid poisoning the meat. Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects is a toxic fugu dish; one must tread carefully through the sinful toxicity of its story.

True to its name, Flynn’s novel is a razor-sharp gripping tale of Camille Preaker’s troubled past and the ominous present that brings her back to her hometown to report on two murders. Back under the shade of her hypochondriac mother and an estranged step-sister with an uncanny control over the town of Wind Gap, Camille, must uncover the truth to the violent crimes as the key to the present lies in her past.

It is a dark tale of a town with a morbid fascination for sex, drinking, guns and secrets, where teenage girls are sinisterly mean, and adults are a mixed bag of grainy disposition. The characters in the novel, with their imperfections, fetishes, sexual and non sexual fixation, draw you deep in their twisted lives.

The morbid charm of the story is such that it is hard to put down once you have picked it up. Flynn’s portrayal of grief, loneliness and jealousy speaks volume in this novel. It is a no-holds-barred writing; the author did not shy away from the grimness of the human characters, and laid them bare open like a wound infected with vices.

I find this book not only entertaining but a salacious read. Camille Preaker is one hell of a character. The intricate network of complexities runs throughout her body; cut deep into words on her skin. Struggling with that old habit of self-harm, she got pushed right into the middle of the same circumstances that started it all.

The effect of what is being written and how it is written, lasts long after you have read it. Even with all the grimness, the unspeakable horrors and the appalling reality that unfolds in the end, this book is a sinful treat.

You will not get over this book so easily, it will infect you, shock you, make you lose sleep, but you will love it for everything it will do to you.

Something is bugging me about Divergent.

So, I guess you all have read the Divergent series by Veronica Roth or have seen the movie Divergent.

I just picked up the series. In the first book there is a scene where all the 16 year olds choose their faction. One question has been bugging me for a while regarding the choosing ceremony.

In the ceremony, whenever a student’s name is called out, he or she walks to the podium, pick up the ceremonial knife and draw blood from his/her hand and let it drip in the the faction bowl that he/she wishes to choose.

But isn’t the ceremony making the students susceptible to AIDS, HEPATITIS, STDs or other blood borne diseases? Hundreds of students use the same knife to draw blood, it’s like sharing the same syringe or blade.

I was drawn to it because in the second novel, Insurgent, there is a scene where Tris, while at the factionless warehouse thinks that the way factionless are eating food (passing a can of food with spoon and eating one by one) is unhygienic. Ya, sure tris, sharing a spoon is unhygienic but sharing a knife to draw your blood isn’t!

Would love to hear your thoughts, feel free to comment.

One for the money by Janet Evanovich: A review.

  My rating: 2/5
Pages: 320
Author: Janet Evanovich

I would have never stumbled upon a Janet evanovich novel if it was not for Katherine Heigl. Random browsing on the Internet got me to the movie starring Katherine Heigl. The trailer looked interesting enough for me to pick up the book, the movie was based on. I have never been so disappointed.

One for the money is the story of Stephanie plum, who lost her job, sold her furniture, appliances and is now living hand-to-mouth with her pet hamster, in dire need of a job. Luckily, her cousin Vinnie has a fondness for girls with pointed breasts, young lads and there was an odd incident of him sodomising a duck. Not that Stephanie has pointed breasts but she blackmails Vinnie into giving her a job. So our soft, plum Stephanie starts as a bounty hunter and her first case is apprehending the town’s bad boy Joe Morelli. The same morelli she lost her virginity to. 

The novel is very ‘chick’. I have no problem with that, but the fact  that it is so poorly written bugs me. Unnecessary information is roped in to fill the sentences. The author tried everything in her power to pen strong characters. A modern grandma, an overbearing mother, an unconcerned father, damsel-in-distress heroine trying to face the world. But each and every one of them lacked a good seasoning. 

The only sensible thing in this novel was the chemistry between Stephanie and Morelli and it might persuade me to pick the second novel in the series.

The writing style is very crass. The narration is horrible. The narration reads more like a series of events bereft of any literary techniques. I was expecting so much from this novel. The jokes are not funny enough, the mystery not thrilling enough, the plot thin and dry, the ending predictable. Not a good read at all.