Rhinoceros – Colin Forbes – Book Review

Book Blurb : Colin Forbes’ perennially popular and energetic team of characters, Tweed, Paula Grey and Bob Newman, are on the trail of five heads of state who are conspiring to cause massive civil unrest throughout the Western world. Dictatorship and martial law will be the only acceptable form of government. Tweed knows the identity of four of the ringleaders – but who is the fifth? The riots are being carefully and strategically orchestrated on the Internet. One man is singlehandedly creating a weapon to destroy the conspiracy, but whose side is he on? Tweed and his team are racing against time, through London, Germany and Denmark…

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Colin Forbes’s “Rhinoceros” is quite an old book and frankly hasn’t aged all that well. To be fair to the author, it is set in the early 2000s and therefore the internet back then was not quite as ubiquitous as it is today, and given that the concept of global communications does form the crux of the story, the whole novel seems quite unbelievable today.

The attention the author has paid to staging the ‘action sequences’ and set pieces would have paid rich dividends if he had spent at least a proportionate amount of time in character building and plot building. Almost all the characters are undercooked, and to add fuel to the fire, there are too many of them. As a reader, at the end of the book, none of the characters stood out for me and neither did the overall plot itself.

To conclude, I repeat my earlier words, this book has aged well and can easily be avoided.

The Magicians of Mazda – Ashwin Sanghi – Book Review

“The Magicians of Mazda” by Ashwin Sanghi is conspiracy fiction (for lack of a better term to describe the genre) at his best. The author takes up Zarathustra, the Zend Avesta, Parsi history through the ages and deftly combines it with the most unlikeliest of portions of known history. Ashwin Sanghi’s strength lies in the fact that he brings together fact and fiction in a fairly deadly concoction which leaves readers unable to discern between the two. What’s more he also believes in incorporating enough ‘action sequences’ in all the chapters that the book ends up being quite the literal ‘page turner’.

Jim Dastoor, a scientist is on the verge of a breakthrough in his research which has the potential to upend the existing status quo as far as treatment of diseases is concerned and this puts him firmly on the radar of the biggest cartel of pharmaceutical companies and as if that wasn’t enough it also puts him in the crosshairs of various intelligence agencies around the world. What starts off with his wife being abducted by unknown assailants ends up being quite the Indiana Jonesesque adventure all over the Middle East starting off in Iran, Persia moving to Afghanistan and finally ending up in Kashmir.

The history of the Parsis, their religion, their gods, their belief systems, the journeys the earliest of them undertook, their origins even form the crux of the narrative and play an important part in understanding what Jim is working towards and why it is of such significance to multiple stakeholders across the world. The need to correct perceived historical wrongs, the fight-back of the oppressed, the struggles faced by Parsis through the ages, the destruction of the Parsi heritage by successive rulers in the Middle East, all of these are neatly woven into the narrative and as such were an eye-opener to me given that I personally didn’t have too much of an idea about the history of this part of the world.

Just like the rest of his books in the Bharat Series, this one too invariably operates at the intersection of religion, history, science and geopolitics. I have read quite a few of this series and after having finished this one, I am more than inclined to pick them up and read them again, as well as read the ones that I have not yet gotten around to reading.

Read my reviews of the below books in the Bharat Series

Chanakya’s Chant – https://mahabore.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/chanakyas-chant-book-review/
The Krishna Key – https://mahabore.wordpress.com/2012/10/03/the-krishna-key-book-review/

The Mysterious Affair at Styles – Agatha Christie – Book Review

Just finished re-reading “The Mysterious Affair at Styles” which not only marked the debut of Agatha Christie the author, but also of a fan favorite detective, Hercule Poirot. While I don’t remember reading the book the first time around (probably as a teenager around 30 yrs ago), this time around I thoroughly enjoyed the book from end to end, savoring each and every moment that Poirot explains his deductions.

The story itself is crafted in the now familiar style of whodunits by Agatha Christie, in terms of a myriad ensemble cast of characters, each of whom have equal reasons to have committed (or not committed) the crime in question, with each clue presenting itself and challenging readers to try and figure out who committed the crime and why.

The beauty in Christie’s writing is the sheer simplicity with which each character and each fact is presented and it is left for us readers to put together all the various pieces of information and arrange the various pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. This would go on to be the cornerstone of almost all her Hercule Poirot mysteries.

A must read (or re-read, like in my case) for all lovers of detective stories.

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A sampling of a few reviews from 1920 and 1921 when the book was published is given below.

The Times Literary Supplement (3 February 1921) gave the book an enthusiastic, if short, review, which stated: “The only fault this story has is that it is almost too ingenious.” It went on to describe the basic set-up of the plot and concluded: “It is said to be the author’s first book, and the result of a bet about the possibility of writing a detective story in which the reader would not be able to spot the criminal. Every reader must admit that the bet was won.“

The New York Times Book Review (26 December 1920), was also impressed:

Though this may be the first published book of Miss Agatha Christie, she betrays the cunning of an old hand… You must wait for the last-but-one chapter in the book for the last link in the chain of evidence that enabled Mr Poirot to unravel the whole complicated plot and lay the guilt where it really belonged. And you may safely make a wager with yourself that until you have heard M. Poirot’s final word on the mysterious affair at Styles, you will be kept guessing at its solution and will most certainly never lay down this most entertaining book.

Yama’s Lieutenant – Anuja Chandramouli – Book Review

Goodreads blurb: The inhabitants of the thousand hells of Yama have broken free from their prison and vowed to wreak havoc on the heavens, the earth and hell. With the fiendish Hatakas and Narakamayas teamed up with Naganara, a terrifying necromancer hungry for power, the universe is headed for war and destruction unless one human has something to do with it.

Agni Prakash, a debonair young man whose world has been turned upside down by the death of his twin sister, Varu, has been enlisted to stop these forces and be Yama s very own lieutenant. As the mythical world clashes with his own, Agni discovers a manuscript left behind by his sister. Hauntingly, it draws parallels to the treacherous path upon which he has been thrust. Equipped with an acerbic wit and winning charm, Agni undertakes a battle, where the odds seem tipped wildly against him, and finds unlikely companions along the way.

Will he be able to uncover the secret behind his sister’s writings? And more importantly, will he be able to avert the destruction that seems imminent?

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Most regular readers of my blog would know that I am a huge fan of mythology and Anuja Chandramouli remains one of my favorite authors in this particular genre. You can read my reviews of her books Kamadeva: The God of Desire here [Link to review] and Shakti: The Divine Feminine [Link to review] to know how much I like her style of writing and way of interpreting mythological tales with a modern and contemporary point of view. It therefore was a no-brainer that I would then pick up her latest mytho-fiction book Yama’s Lieutenant and read and review the same on this blog.

This book marks a distinct departure from the other books she has penned in terms of the genre itself. While all her earlier books were her take on tales from Indian mythology and their characters, this one falls squarely in the fiction genre, or the mytho-fiction genre as I’d like to call it, given that it straddles mythological themes with good old fashioned fantasy fiction. As the blurb states Agni Prakash is the only person who can prevent the imminent destruction of the world as we know it today. An unwitting recruit to be ‘Yama’s lieutenant’, Agni was looking for a way where he could productively channelize his anger against evil and thus overcome the tragic loss of his twin sister Varu, and this mission of his proves to be just what the doctor ordered for his anger management issues.

What starts off as a personal crusade for Agni soon ends up being a relatively more critical mission on the basis of which the fate of the entire world would rest upon. Whether Agni is able to deliver on the mission, does he manage to prevent large scale destruction, will he be able to hold the forces of evil at bay form the crux of the narrative.

What I really liked about the book was the fact that the character of Agni was fleshed out very well. His back story, his motivations, the justification for his anger and subsequent actions, all of these have been highlighted very well by the author in the course of his adventures. Why he does what he does, and how he does them, are quite well justified with nary a loose end in this aspect.

Another part of the narrative I quite liked was the use of a parallel manuscript penned by Agni’s twin Varu to keep the action moving forward. While I did find it somewhat irritating at times, the main reason behind its use comes to the fore only during the last few pages of the book. In fact its usage to delivery the final twist in the tale is something that I didn’t quite see coming despite the large red herring right at the beginning of the story.

What however was a little bit of a dampener for me was the excessive usage of promiscuity in some parts of the book. Some unnecessary references to bodily parts and their daily functions could easily have been avoided by the author and they don’t add anything either to the narrative or to character development. The book would have been no less nice for their exclusion. Apart from this minor irritant, the book itself was quite lively and a relatively fast read as well.

Click here to purchase the book from Flipkart [Link] or Amazon [Link].

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A review copy of this book was given to me by the author in return for an honest and unbiased review of the same.

Patang – Bhaskar Chattopadhyay – Book Review

Goodreads blurb: ‘I hate the rain…I hate it, hate it, hate it. But the rain can’t stop me. No one can…I’ll go out and play tonight. I will kill only four. No more, no less. Just four.’

In the midst of one of the worst monsoons in Mumbai, a man is found brutally murdered, his body posed like a kite on the tallest cell tower in the city. As one corpse after another turns up in the unlikeliest of places, each gruesomely killed and carefully arranged in a grotesque manner, the Mumbai Police realize they have more on their hands than they can deal with.

Enter Chandrakant Rathod, a maverick investigator the police turn to in times of need, who plays by his own rules and lives for the thrill of the chase. Pitting his sharp instincts against the machinations of the sadistic, ruthless killer, the detective succeeds in nabbing the psychopath and putting him behind bars. Then, three months later, the killings begin again. A deadly game is afoot – a game that will challenge Rathod to the utmost, for it is a game that he cannot hope to win…

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Very few books have the ability to hook you right from page one, line one, word one and keep you hooked till that last page, last line and last word. And believe me when I say this Patang by Bhaskar Chattopadhyay is one surprising candidate for such a book. Given that I was sent a review copy of this book by the publishers without even asking for it, the only reason I picked it up and read it almost immediately was the cover design, the back blurb and the relatively smallish size of the book. And man, did it turn out to be quite an enjoyable experience or what!

While most well written crime thrillers and more so murder mysteries are always a joy to read, the happiness is doubled when the setting is local and the characters Indian as the ability to relate to the narrative is that much more when compared to books by Western authors. And when the book is as well thought out, scripted and narrated in a crisp, cut-throat, and breathless manner like the author has with this one, then the joy is more than quadrupled.

Trying to write murder mysteries involving serial killers is always tricky as the author has to walk a thin rope balancing the development of the character of the antagonist with relatively credible motives while making the narrative interesting enough for readers to thoroughly enjoy the book. And to his credit the author has balanced both these disparate ends very well coming up with a crackerjack of a first half. And as if the first half was not good enough, the second half takes us readers on a dizzying roller-coaster of a ride with the lovely cat and mouse chase between the protagonist and the antagonist.

And the ending, well, that portion, to me, took the cake and the entire pastry shop with it. I didn’t see it coming the way it did at all. Full credit to the author for having made it so shocking while being entirely believable and credible as well. For sure any homicide thriller lover worth his name should surely read and enjoy this book.

Click here to purchase the book from Flipkart [Link] or Amazon [Link]

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A review copy of this book was given to me by the publisher in return for an honest and unbiased review.