Lately, I have been having marvelous luck with my Crime Classic picks! I loved Michael Gilbert’s Death in Captivity, which I read a couple of weeks back. Set in a POW camp during WWII, it is one of the most unusual whodunits I’ve read. And now with Maigret and the Saturday Caller, I have a new […]
In Cari Mora, Thomas Harris’s first novel in thirteen years, two rival gangs have been after drug kingpin Pablo Escobar’s gold stash for a while. With cartel gold worth of twenty-five million dollars at stake, the stage is all set for a murderous race between sadist Hans-Peter Schneider’s crew and Latino desperadoes to beat each […]
This time around, the Women’s Prize for Fiction judges surprised readers by advancing both Circe and The Silence of the Girls into the shortlist. This decision disappointed many Women’s Prize for Fiction enthusiasts who didn’t expect to see two Greek mythology retellings among the final six novels. However, while I’m at peace with both their […]
Wendy Walker’s Emma in the Night was one of my favorite thriller-reads last year. I read thrillers to keep things light, as there’s usually no takeaway for me when I read them, but Emma in the Night was an exception. It brilliantly explored the effect narcissist parents can have on their offspring, and gave me […]
Michael Gilbert’s Death in Captivity is the twelveth British Library Crime Classic I read, and let me tell you it’s not their usual murder mystery offering. Set in 1943 after the Sicilian Campaign when Allies had started gaining momentum in the war-front, this vintage crime novel takes place in Campo 127, a prisoner-of-war camp in […]
Willa Drake has always been a passive participant in her own life – she has let others call shots for her, and watch her life pass her by. But now at the age of 61, Willa has a chance to change all that – when Willa receives a call from a total stranger giving her […]
My Sister, the Serial Killer, set in Lagos, Nigeria, is one of the most compelling and fast-paced reads among the Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlisted novels in 2019. I managed to devour it in a single setting, and it has a simple premise. Ayoola, Korede’s little sister, is everything Korede is not. She is a […]
So I have decided that I’m going to try and read all the Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlisted books before the winner announcement on 5 June. Even though the Women’s Prize for Fiction is one of the awards I follow, I usually take my sweet time reading the shortlist. But this year, since the only […]
Miriam Macy, the protagonist of They All Fall Down, has been down on her luck lately – her husband has left her for another woman and Morgan, Miriam’s teenage daughter, seems to love her new stepmom more. So Miriam is thrilled to hear that she has been selected to be part of a new reality […]
I’ve been fond of reading for as long as I can remember, but I only started reading translated fiction roughly a decade ago. Not a lot of books get translated to Sinhala, my native tongue, so I wasn’t able to access most of the translated works until I improved my English reading fluency. And now, […]
I really do appreciate British Library for taking the pains to rediscover and reprint some of the forgotten crime classics of the golden age! Before I started following this series, Dame Agatha and Georges Simenon were the only crime classics writers on my radar. While I like to believe I would have come across great […]
Warlight begins in 1945, after WWII had ended, as Nathaniel’s parents are getting ready to move across the world for work. The fourteen-year-old Nathaniel and his elder sister, Rachel, aren’t invited to accompany them on this voyage – instead, they are expected to stay behind in England and continue their education under the watchful eyes […]
The stories in Good Evening, Mrs. Craven are definitely taking a sombre tone now. War Among Strangers had been published on 17 January 1942, so Mollie must have written it right after the Pearl Harbor attack. In it, Mrs. Bristowe is the wife of a British civil servant. When WWII broke, she and her husband […]
Before I begin my review, let me take a moment to say how much I love this cover! While I agree with the age old saying that one mustn’t judge a book by its cover, nothing can explain the excitement I feel when I see aesthetically pleasing designs. I suppose we have the advent of […]
In Goodbye, My Love (published on 13 December 1941), Adrian Vyner is a young man who has just been called to serve in WWII. Adrian is to leave London in four days, so he and his wife Ruth have a lot to do before that, and on the top of that list is to pay […]
