MellowDrama

Wow!! If you love a good murder mystery then this  classic Japanese mystery from Pushkin Vertigo is definitely a must read for you. The story is a little eerie, the crime heinous, the sleuth scruffy-looking and the other elements present in just the right proportions to make it a great read even today years after it was first published in  1946.  The book is a locked room mystery told by a writer of Detective stories who is visiting the scene of crime years after it was committed and solved to, what else, write about it. We meet the host of characters in the wealthy Ichiyanagi family which is getting ready to celebrate the marriage of the eldest son. The setting is the year 1937 and a small Japanese village and Yokomizo gives us a glimpse of the social and cultural norms of the rural life of that era. A rumour is also fast gaining weight while the village gossips about the wedding and family. It seems a dangerous  man has been asking questions about the family, And t...

I Could Be You by Sheila Bugler is a taut thriller that is not only good because of the storyline but is different than many others because of the heroine- an investigative journalist. The book opens with her, Dee Doran, finding a dead woman who has been hit by a car, lying on the road outside her home. The dead woman is her tenant Katie but her two-year-old son Jake can't be found though his upturned buggy is also lying around twisted and bent near to Katie. Fearing the worst, Dee being her search for the child. After the matter is taken up by the local police, Dee realises that the woman that she had identified as her tenant Katie is someone else and Katie had been living under someone else's identify. Gradually Dee's journalistic instincts that have been lying dormant for a while since she quit active journalism to come back to her childhood home to look after her ailing mother, kick in ferociously. She begins to look at various leads in an attempt to find out the w...

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...

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...

Another book by Keigo Higashio that is simple yet complex in terms of plot development, Salvation of a Saint might have strained my nerves because of its length but was in no way a disappointment. I started the year 2018 with the Devotion of Suspect X by the acclaimed Japanese author and was blown away, and so when nothing seemed to work in terms of my reading in 2019, I went back to him, knowing whatever I might pick I will enjoy it and break the jinx that the year seemed to have started on. As soon as the book begins we know that a murder has been plotted. We are introduced to the killer and the victim in almost a single breath. You might wonder then what remains to be revealed. And this is where Higashino's expertise lies. The HOW- How was the murder committed? He presents you the settings for a perfect crime. No one seems to be able to figure out how was the deed done even if the detective at times might already know who did it. This seemingly impossible thing to figure ou...

The title of the book is enough to let you know that this is not a book belonging to the romantic genre.  It is not even a murder mystery per se because by the end of Chapter 1 the stage is set for murder and in the very beginning of Chapter 2 the deed is done right infront of your eyes and you, the reader, for sure knows who did it. But then I don't think it is right to not label The Devotion of Suspect X as "not" a thriller or a mystery. So where do we put this part suspense and part philosophy novel by the Japanese writer Keigo Higashino? The story revolves around a single mother,  Yasuko Hanaoka, an ex-night hostess now working in a  shop selling boxed lunches,  and her next door neighbour Ishigami, a high school maths teacher. The book begins with him leaving house to go to the shop to buy lunch. Here we are introduced to the city they live in and quietly to an other important character in the book- the surroundings. This is also where the author's immense t...