MellowDrama

So I follow Cara Hunter on Twitter. It happened so that her latest book was up on NetGalley for review and. the blurb sounded so wonderful that I applied and got rejected. But I discovered DI Adam Fawley in the meantime, so I had to pick up the first in the series na, keeping with my personal agenda- reading the first book in a series where a DI makes her/ his first appearance. So here I am with the review of Close To Home the first book in the DI Adam Fawley series that was released in 2018. An 8 year old girl Daisy Mason goes missing, apparently from her house where a huge party is going on. Gradually it is found that no one can confirm seeing the child at the party. Then it comes to the knowledge of the Detective Inspector Adam Fawley who is heading the investigation that neither of the parent can say for sure if they had seen their child since the time she left for school in the morning. Things began to get shadier as it is discovered that the father has a roving eye and the mot...

You Are Mine by Miranda Rijks is a spell binding thriller which I managed to read in a span of two days. I doubt if it would have taken me even that much time, had I not been a mother of two and a little unwell. This is a story about obsessive love. Rupert, rather Sir Rupert has spent a long time, looking for a perfect woman to marry and eventually manages to find one. Now all that remains is to make her see how alike they are and make her realise that she has to love him completely with her heart, body and soul. And he will not let anything stand in the way of fulfilling his.... their destiny. You Are Mine is gripping and engaging as you really don't know what to expect rom the next few pages. I had recently seen the very brilliant series "You" on Netflix and that kind of made my imagination even more proactive in conceiving the scenes as the story progressed, though both- this book and the series (also based on a psychological thriller) are very different from each...

A fast paced thriller that is going to make your week or weekend (depending on the choice of the day you pick it up on)! So, it is well established by now that I am a thriller's fan. I have also managed to ascertain that sometimes it is destiny which leads me to read some books. This past month has been quite a thing for me. First, both my kids fell ill, taking turns at keeping me on my toes 24X7 and then a day before Diwali my husband came down with an infection which looked like a common cold but ended up being as troublesome as Pneumonia. So there I was before and through this, going from book to book and singing 'Kahin lagta nahi dil, main kya karoon'. Let me explain- I had started no less than 5 books from varying genres and wasn't feeling happy or satisfied (if you know what I mean then a virtual high-five) with any one of them. And, I had also started to spend more time than was usual on social media (hospital waiting rooms do that to you, no?) Wel...

A complex ad intricate book, that will need your complete devotion to be able to solve the crime with the little hints that the author keeps throwing your way via the characters and their observations, some tangible others not so tangible. And no it is not a police procedural. ***************************** Drishyam may have been inspired by the book but is very different from the novel I became a Keigo Higashino fan in an instant. Via some friends in a Facebook group on reading I came to know about the fact that the film Drishyam starring Ajay Devgan is based on a book by the Japanese author. I had seen the film and had found it immensely good. Surprisingly the book was also not difficult to acquire and so I read it soon after this FB intervention.  Devotion of Suspect X was such a mind-blowing read which I had not come across till that time ( I have since then read No Time for Goodbye by Canadian author Linwood Barclay which was a brilliant mystery and It Ends wi...

I am a thrillers fan.  Alistair MacLean This obsession sort of started in my early teens when I would devour The Hardy Boys and the Nanacy Drews in the school library and went back asking for more. My father and mother, both avid readers, had the entire Sherlock Holmes' collection at home. Someone gave me a Sidney Sheldon as a birthday present and a few years later my uncle opened the doors of his home library to me (which washout of bounds till I was a certain age) and I was almost drowning in the worlds created by James Hadley Chase, Alistair MacLean, Leon Uris and the likes. If you have been a regular reader of my blog then you would know Hercule Poirot how after my daughter was born I completely lost touch with reading till a friend gifted me a Poirot ( It was the first one that Sophie Hannah had written resurrecting the little detective with an egg shaped head).  As I got more and more involved in the business of thrillers, mysteries and crime novels, I...

Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear is a historical mystery novel set in London. But don't just head out and get it if you prefer your mysteries or crimes a bit on the stronger, harder, more depraved side. This novel is set after the World War 1 and is a peek into the realities and harshness of a war. Maisie Dobbs starts as a househelpat the Belgravia Mansion which belongs to the Comptons. But thats not where the book starts. The book opens in the year 1929, with Maisie setting up her detective agency and a man approaching her to investigate if his wife is having an affair. Soon after solving the crime, the book takes us back to the beginnings of Dobbs as a private investigator. We learn about her dexterity at the Belgravia mansion and how the lady of the house Mrs Compton and her friend Maurie Blanche, discover her to be an intelligent girl and decide to mentor her. She goes as far as getting admission in the university but the war breaks out and she enlists as a nurse. Sent to ...

There has been a sort of a break in the momentum in my reading of thrillers where a DI (Detective Inspector) a PI (Police /Private Investigator) makes his/her first appearance. But like they say you can keep me away from my those firsts but you can't keep me away from thrillers, and so I am back with the review of the debut novel, a crime thriller, Your Truth or Mine? by Trisha Saklecha published by Pan Macmillan this year. I won this book in a giveaway contest held on twitter. Without much ado lets dive into why or why not should you read this novel. Your Truth or Mine? is the story of an Indian couple Roy and Mia who live in London. The narrative goes back and forth between Roy and Mia as a tale of infidelity, anxiety, depression, drug use and murder unfolds in roughly 500 pages. The book opens with  a couple of detectives visiting their home for asking some questions to Roy related  to the disappearance of a girl names Emily.  Roy and Mia are a happily married c...

Some major drinking is happening in the titles that I have read recently. I am though no drinker. Salted buttermilk is more up my alley than any other hard drinks. Getting back to the book at hand, or rather the book on the mobile device that I finished about a month ago but was too disheartened by lack of engagement on this amazing project of mine to write the review of. So Liliana Hart's Whiskey Rebellion happened at a good time to me when I was so down in the dumps that a murder mystery with M&B feels was the only thing that could have pulled me out. Well, this is the book review for you in a nut shell. This book like the ones that I am reading under #yearofthethriller project is the first in a series where Private Investigator Addison Holmes makes her first appearance. It would not be wrong to say that this is the book in which she, a History school teacher desperately in need to make money for buying an apartment gives a shot to being stripper, fails at the auditio...

Read it for a spunky, hardworking and hard hitting female protagonist and a villain who will send chills down your spine. ------------------- I have to say at the outset that I thoroughly enjoyed this mystery as I have seen being the case with everyone of them where a female cop who is good at her job. Credit must be given to the author JA Konrath for writing a plot that has the twists and turns of a good, gripping thriller and still has the scope for character development, more like fleshing out the character, in this book. So our heroine is named Jack Daniels, short for Jacquline Daniels is an insomniac, her boyfriend has left her for his personal trainer and in generals having a difficult time coping with life when a serial killer who calls himself the Gingerbread Man starts to leave mutilated bodies of women in dumpsters in her district. A binge eating partner, an old gangster she had busted years ago and a couple of (moronic looking and sounding) guys from the FBI form...

Read this medical thriller for a superbly knit plot, leave it aside if you can't deal with gory descriptions. ------------------------------------ I have not been so scared after reading a thriller as I have been after reading The Surgeon byTess Gerristen. It had a very deep impact on me and It is I guess a good one month after I read it that I could bring myself to write a not so long review of this medical mystery where Detective inspector Jane Rizzoli makes her first appearance. The Surgeon begins with the story of a successful doctor Catherine Cordell handling an emergency wherein an old man who has met with an accident is brought in a critical condition. Next we are told that she had escaped a murder attempt by a former student in a different city two years back and had shot her assailant dead. A new set of murders comes to light and Detective Thomas Moore realises that the MO of these murders have something in common with the attack on Cordell. The police is befud...

Still Life is lovely in so many ways. Though a murder mystery there is hardly anything dark (beyond the obvious) that clings to you on reading about murders and killings. The book is the first where Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surete du Quebec makes his appearance. He is compassionate and cerebral and this fact alone makes him worthy of being followed into every book that Penny has written with him as the central character. It must have been indeed a stellar debut by Louise Penny for it to have fetched her the Anthony Award for the Best First Novel in 2007. *************** Three Pines is a small quaint village, a heaven for its residents, which wakes up to the murder of an old beloved school teacher Ms Jane Neal one morning. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surete du Quebec and his team are sent to investigate this death which looks like a hunting accident, after all who would want Jane Neal dead. Gamache, who sees and observes everything (A certain Mr. Holmes wou...

Precious Ramotswe- Botswana's only and finest female private detective makes her debut with this book which is divided into short stories like chapters, full of warmth, wit and intuitive charm, taking our detective to solve a case in strange locations amongst still stranger people. ************* The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith is everything that you might expect from a thriller novel and then some more. The book perhaps might seem like the life story of Precious Ramotswe, Botswana's only and finest female private detective, from her birth till the time she sets up her agency and you might be tempted to give up, (if you are in search of blood and gore) but I would suggest against it. The book not only gives you the entire history of the now thirty-five years old and large (but the traditional way) Precious Ramotswe and some of Botswana as to what this place and its people are like, but I believe that the very skilled Mr Smith is just...

A spine chilling novel where Detective Inspector Helen Grace makes her first appearance. Read it for a prose that doesn't meander or wastes time in getting to the point. ************************** I have bee postponing writing about Eeny Meeny because I wanted to be in a certain mood to write this review. There has only been one other book besides this one that has given me a sleepless night. That book was Agatha Christie's 'And Then There Were None'. There is nothing graphic or gory in either of these books over which I might have lost sleep but the sheer reason for which people were being murdered, shook me up. Of course And Then There Were None is very atmospheric, that whole abandoned island, the morose weather, crashing sea waves- is enough to spook you. It is the woman herself- Agatha Christies- who is a master storyteller, you might just say. Getting back to Eeny Meeny, credit should be given to Arlidge for creating a spell binding narrative doled out in...

If you have been following me for sometime, you might know that I am on a personal mission to read as many first thrillers where a Detective or a Detective Inspector makes an appearance, from world over. So far, I have read some awesome Detectives etched by writers from the Nordic countries ( Jo Nesbo , Helen Tursten , Kristina Ohlsson ),  the US ( JK Rowling aka Robert Galbraith ) and this one that I am going to review next, from England ( MJ Arlidge , this though is his fifth on the link). I have also read some remarkable stand alone thrillers like No time for Goodbye and the Japanese masterpiece Devotion Suspect X (which I think kicked my obsession with finding the first ones of the series and which was so mind-blowing that its review isn't even comprehensible slink to another one of his works that is also so so good. Must rectify that one someday though when I can get over the awesomeness). You might wonder why am I doing it. Even I think what is this going to achiev...

This is the first book in the Vish Puri series and I unfortunately read it after I had read The Case of the Love Commandos. Had I read it before I would have been even more favourably inclined towards the author. To cut a long story short, this is a much more lovable book then the previous one and something gives me a feeling that all the other ones after this, as wel.. So without much ado, here is what I thought of the plot, characters and the writing in the book, "The Case of the Missing Servant". A servant goes amiss and the employer- an upright lawyer in Rajasthan- is charged with her murder. When our hero, 'the' Vish Puri of Most Private Investigators starts on the job, he has nothing to go on with. The lawyer's wife and others in the household can't help him beyond the missing servant's name. They did not know where she came from and of course where had she mysteriously disappeared to. The only thing he finds in the servant quarter that she occu...