MellowDrama

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...

Read it for a flawed heroine who is tormented by her past and is not allowed a moment of rest and peace- welcome to the world of Detective Inspector Helen Grace.  *********** Though I  personally want to read all the firsts of the various detectives that have been created in the world of fiction, MJ Arlidge's Eeny Meeny has not easily fallen into my lap. What instead I found was the fifth book featuring his heroine DI Helen Grace- Little Boy Blue. This is the book where Helen's professional and personal lives clash giving us some idea about what might have happened in her past. Helen has deep, dark secrets that begin to bubble up to the surface as a man is found murdered in the city's deepest and darkest corner. He was well-known to Grace and it could purely be an accident but then another man is found murdered grotesquely and he too was known to her. As leads and misplaced suspicions come to the fore, the murder investigations get sidetracked by her infightin...

Read it for the sketch that Rowling draws of her private investigator Cormoran Strike. If you don't want that or conversations between characters going around their business in the city of London then better leave it out. ************************** The Cuckoo's Calling is the first Cormoran Strike novel penned by JK Rowling of the Harry Potter fame under an alias Robert Galbraith. I must admit that I did not read this first, rather I read the last one in the series Lethal White first and found it to be good enough to read the other three in the Cormoran Strike series. But alas! I picked up The Cuckoo's Calling and never went back for the rest. The Cuckoo's Calling is an ordinary mystery wherein a model Lulu Landry, fondly called Cuckoo by family and friends, falls to her death and her brother John Bistrow refusing to believe the police's verdict that it was a suicide, comes to hire Strike. Strike is a wounded war veteran who lost one leg in Afghanistan and...

Even before I had gotten to the first and my first Jo Nesbo I was kind of sure in my bones that I am going to like it. I have heard people rave about this particular author and since Stieg Larsson we have been flooded by so may Scandinavian authors each better than the last one and Nordic noir achieving a special status in its own right. Some part of me was a bit apprehensive, and not just with  this particular series but with thrillers generally, because can't take gory stuff or too much psychological chill because I don't have the constitution for that, but am I glad I took this up! Anyway lets get back to the book in hand or in my case, the mobile phone, The Bat, the first Harry Hole (pronounced Holy) novel, by the Norwegian author Jo Nesbo. The Bat is set in Australia, Sydney to be specific, where we meet Harry Hole the Norwegian police officer who has been sent here to investigate the murder of a young Norwegian celebrity Inger Holter. Harry befriends one of the mem...