When Everyone Wants to Kill the Bad Guy . . . Author: Vikas Swarup Vicky Rai, powerful playboy and son of a corrupt politician, is hosting a flamboyant party in honor of his acquittal for cold blooded murder. The press isn’t happy. The Indian people aren’t happy. Many of his smiling guests aren’t happy, so when the millionaire playboy ends the evening with a bullet in his brain, it’s anyone’s guess who the opportunistic killer is. Six guests, all vastly different, are found toting the potential killing weapon. But which one actually killed Vicky? The glamorous Bollywood star? The down and out bureaucrat with an inconvenient possession problem? The tribal looking for his people’s sacred phallic symbol? The idiotic American under witness protection? The mobile phone thief with the broken heart? The victim’s own power grabbing father? Gallivanting all over India, Six Suspects is the Indian version of Carl Hiaasen, with stereotypes and absurdity working together to craft an elegant and fun plot. The story isn’t your typical murder mystery and certainly not what you expect, yet it's ingenious all the same with lots of places for happy readers to get lost in the amusing, sardonic nature of Swarup’s writing. Six Suspects is a big book, weighing in at a dense 470 pages. The pacing is both fast and slow, setup by the unique structure. Swarup spends a lot of time developing each of the six characters (although, five of them have the real screen time with Vicky’s father a somewhat after thought between chapters on the complicated lives and schemes of the other characters). The book is divided into five sections – suspects, motives, evidence, solution, and confession. In each of these we spend a lot of time in the lives of the suspects (sans Vicky’s father), getting to know them and slowly watching as the more absurd nature of the story draws them together. Some of the suspects we like more than others, some of their stories are more compelling than others, but all are well drawn and mini-novels in their own rights. By the time we get to Vicky’s deadly party, we know these people. Each has a good motive, a scheme, and a will to do the deed. Even the readers can’t puzzle out at the late date who the actual killer is in this sea of would-be gun toting assassins. As the cover says, this is the Bollywood version of Clue. The ending, then, and its final revelation is a surprise, although honestly a bit of a cheap one, but more on that later. Many reviewers at this point break down in outrage about the character of Larry Page, the American gone to India for his mail order bride. The traditional Texan stereotype, Swarup has fun with Larry’s over-the-top colloquialisms, and yeah, it’s overdone and not entirely believable. But the book thrives on this type of absurdity. Larry is the most screwball of the characters, and as such he wasn’t always my favorite, but when his story tangles with a group of inept terrorists, it does become funny. His role in the conclusion is admittedly manufactured, and one of the weaker elements of his character, but Americans seriously need to stop being insulted and just have fun with the wacky side of the book. It was never meant to be real, despite the pointed morale about the corrupt state of Indian politics. The other characters are more toned down than the infamous and upsetting Page. Mohan Kumar, a corrupt bureaucrat with visions of grandeur, becomes possessed by the spirit of Ghandi after a séance-like performance gone bad. Ghandi wreaks havoc in Mohan’s life, from throwing out his liquor to forcing chastity (and loosing Mohan his favorite mistress). This story is one of the strongest for absurdism and comedy and has a lot of laugh-out-loud moments as Ghandi and the corrupt bureaucrat come together to hatch an oddly violent plan. Then there is the Bollywood star, Shabnam Saxena with her diary entry dialogue and worldly wit tempered by hubris. A little slice of her first entrance on the scene paints her picture: “It’s tough being a celluloid goddess. For one, you have to look gorgeous all the time. You cannot fart, you cannot spit, and you dare not yawn.” Enough said. Her story was actually one of my favorites, especially for its complicated moments of redemption tempered by horror (enter the conflicting stories of her protégé and her sister). Then the tribal, Eketi, used to a jungly island and now traversing the bustling cities of India with another bureaucrat in tow, looking for a sacred statue but also thinking of escape and a new life; he just hopes the curse of disappointing his gods won’t come to pass, but in this world of Swarup’s creation, if something bad can happen, it will. Eketi’s story is one of appropriation and culture shock, and also has a surprisingly sad ending, showing that the character’s in this world are hardly safe from corruption, of their own making or others. Finally, there is the phone thief, Munna Mobile, whose sudden windfall has terrible consequences and whose lying and romantic life get him tangled in something way bigger than he can handle. Admittedly, in his story his adoptive sister, Champi, is the truly empathetic character. All of these characters are rarely sympathetic, but they are always interesting and deeply complicated and what they collectively become involved in, and how their own motives turn on them, leads to a gripping story that is party tragedy, part comedy. Back to the ending, the only dissonant chord in an otherwise unique mystery. While the individual characters’ stories are fast paced, the overall “who-dunnit” for Vicky isn’t. We expect that after all this time the reveal will be slow and sweet, but instead it’s a complicated mishmash, confusing and hard to tell who the real killer is, until that person conveniently writes an epilogue that exposes all and, frankly, reveals the twist-turned-trick that cheapens the overall effort of a rather good novel. It’s not a jarring enough chord to leave readers angry or really dampen most of the enjoyment, but it is discordant enough to leave us slightly deflated after the long journey. Still, Six Suspects is more than worth the time and energy for everyone who likes mysteries, comedy, and ironic turns of play. I’ll return to this author and give his famous Slumdog Millionaire a try next. – Frances Carden Follow my reviews on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/xombie_mistress Follow my reviews on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/FrancesReviews [AMAZONPRODUCTS asin="0312630735"]

Circuses, Old Age, and Love Author: Sara Gruen Jacob Jankowski has lost everything – both in the present and in his past. His story begins in a nursing home. At the age of 90 (or 93) he has no joy left, surrounded by a family who sees him as a duty, not a person. He is not understood and worse, his body and his faculties are failing. He can feel them slipping, day by day. All that remains is the past, but even as he begins remembering, that story is filled with loss too. It’s the great depression era and Jacob – the young one coming alive in memories – is at school, studying to be a vet, one test away from his certification and blinded by both lust and shocking obliviousness. That all ends when the sudden death of both of his parents leaves him orphaned, and everything his parents have been hiding, have been sacrificing, comes to light. Overwhelmed, Jacob runs away and jumps onto the first train he sees. What he jumps into is a literal whirlwind – a life that is both wonderful and brutal. Jacob, it seems, will come of age in the circus. Enter the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth where Jacob inhabits a strange in-between world, vetting the animals and trying to stay on the good side of their moody, often violent master, August. Here, Jacob finds two loves: the animals and August’s wife. As the Benzini Brothers hurtle from one place to another Jacob fights the contradictions of his new life: so exotically enticing on the outside, so filled with barriers, violence, and separation on the inside. Sara Gruen’s story takes the improbable – a young man running off to join the circus and an old man grieving for his lost youth – and combines them together in a tantalizing, believable way. The story thrums with details and a certain grittiness that takes away from the showy side of entertainment. We see the big cats being fed putrid meat, the dirt and lack of water, the hidden tent away from the “family entertainment,” the brutal segregation between the workers and the performers, and above all the hurry as Uncle Al (the Benzini Brother’s avaricious owner) scuttles his troop from one location to another, descending like a carrion bird on other fallen circuses. On the other side, we come away, violently pulled back from pulsing memories of this vibrant world, to the sterility of a nursing home and its tastes, mushy food and imprisoning routine. It’s a unique juxtaposition and the story has a moral even while it’s delighting us with life on the road, elephants that can balance on balls, and the dangerousness of August and Uncle Al. Indeed, it’s really two separate stories, and in some ways the Jacob in the nursing home is the more real, the more palpable and empathetic. The characters that spice the story include a clown (Walter) who at first loathes Jacob and later becomes his companion, Watler’s dog Queenie, Rosie (an elephant), a working man named Camel, and (of course) August and his wife, Marlena. The story splits its focus between the disparity of social mores and Jacob’s forbidden romance. The working men are often not paid, are considered too low to eat in the same tents as the performers, and, when the show needs to lose a little excess baggage, get “red lighted” (i.e. hurled off the moving train). Here, the story pulls at our empathy and our anger, while making a lasting point about social mores and class systems. Walter, Queenie, and Camel are especially intriguing and their world vies (and overcomes) Marlena’s sequined appeal. The romance part of the tale, which functions as the centerpiece, is the element that I found least entrancing. Partly, this was due to Marlena. We see her through Jacob’s eyes, yet she is mostly a blob. Pretty, spineless in the way of all languishing female heroines, adoring of animals, torn between duty and love, and low grade weepy. Nothing stands out about her or makes us feel for her. Jacob seems to think her marriage is monstrous, but the horrors of August against Marlena are not well drawn and only appear later during a confrontation where he (sort of rightly) assumes his wife has been unfaithful. Indeed, our experience of August’s evils mostly comes from our time watching him with the animals, namely the exasperating new elephant, Rosie, who is seemingly untrainable. This is distancing though, in two ways: partly, the story is trying too hard to make August a monster and, in so doing, makes our hero weak. Despite Jacob’s hatred of August and his compassion for the animals, he routinely stands aside. This bad-guy (or more aptly weak-guy) behavior from our hero limits the reader’s capability to root for him. The convenience of the romance, from a plot prospective (i.e. there isn’t much interaction, or even chemistry, but these two characters getting together will really up the drama) further weakens our inherent desire to believe in the characters and want what they want. Maybe this is partly me. I dislike infidelity stories, especially the glamorized kind, and rarely root for the lovers. To overcome this, the characters must be compelling and their reasons sound. Marlena and Jacob were neither. *Spoiler Alert* This brings me to the second point: August’s mood swings. His Jekyll and Hyde behavior is later explained by a tearful Marlena as schizophrenia. So, we can now hate the man easily because he is mentally ill? It would have made more sense to mold him on Uncle Al – a control freak with more than a hint of Machiavelli, than to give him a mental instability that is rapidly delivered and feels anticlimactic. This is the answer to August? His actions don’t even seem schizophrenic, and the labeling is a weak substitute for exploring the depths of a character with the ability to be both incredibly good and ferociously, unforgivably evil. This character – the one who isn’t crazy but the one who is multifaceted and cunning – is the one that we want to explore. *End Spoiler * And so, I never really liked young Jacob, although old Jacob held my heart in his hands. But I still enjoyed the story through and through. It had verve and power, and while the main characters didn’t sing to me, the venues and the animals did. The circus comes alive and the story has its own distinctness, an atmosphere that is all its own, wound around an admittedly sappy ending (for both old and young Jacob) that was nevertheless satisfying in the way of all overly dramatic stories. I don’t consider this one the classic that everyone touts it to be, but it is darn good fiction in that it is fun, imaginative, and has no difficulty with building and sustaining two unique and contradictory worlds in parallel. – Frances Carden Follow my reviews on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/xombie_mistress Follow my reviews on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/FrancesReviews [AMAZONPRODUCTS asin="1565125606"]

Dinofalgellate Drama: When Pseudo-Science Thrillers and Horror Mixes Author: James Powlik What does a ghost ship of decomposing crew, a desiccated covey of sea-lions, a dead-zone in the ocean, nearly liquefied whales, and a few random, horrific hospital cases have in common? Dr. Ellie Bridges doesn’t have the full picture – she doesn’t know about the dead zone and the ship or about the dwindling marine life with the strange sores – but she does know about the little girl she couldn’t save, the cases in the Indian reservation, the swimmers who looked like they were dipped in acid. She does know that something bigger is coming to town. But no one will listen to her, and the seafarers go out every day for their catches, not knowing what they are bringing in with their hauls of clams and mussels. Meanwhile, Brock Garner, a lone oceanographer with a fancy new device named Medusa, is ruminating on his piece of the puzzle. He hasn’t met Ellie yet or heard of the hospital cases, but he found the abandoned ship and the dead crew, he has Medusa’s strange readings, and death is soon to come to his ex-brother-in-law who leaves just enough clues to reunite Brock and his ex-wife as they search for the source of terror riding the tidal waves and heading toward Seattle. As the story comes together, Ellie joins forces with Brock and his team out at sea. Brock’s ex-wife invites her new, wealthy husband, Bob Nolan, to use his high-flying crew to do a little research and get some much-needed press on the impending disaster. A storm off the coast, though, and a strange military presence threaten the operation as a viscous slick moves ever closer to land and its aerosol begins to kill long before it washes ashore. Despite Brock’s and Ellie’s best efforts, will greed and secrecy triumph over the sanctity of human life? Sea Change is an unexpected mixture – more thriller than horror with a Michael Crichton techno-science flair and echoes of the none-too-subtle “open the beaches and make the money” hubris of Jaws . It begins strong, with an eerie atmosphere, but soon turns from paranoia to a staggering amount of pseudoscience, introducing readers to Pfiesteria, which is a dangerous, naturally occurring dinoflagellate that seems to have had some human help in evolving to a new level of destruction. Ghost ships and stormy sea scenes give way to labs and hypothesis, and the book moves away from its Dracula -esque cover, taking itself very seriously in the process. The attraction to any book like this is namely the campy element. B-horror done right can have a forceful impact. It can make a statement and entertain. Think of Jaws , which took the none too original concept of big sharks eating people and made it classic through characterization and a powerful moral (the book even more so than the movie, although both are amazing). While Jaws got serious, we had plenty of terrifying beach scenes and shark attacks interspersed among the thoughtful elements. Here, though, Sea Change just wants to wallow in the lab and prove how smart it is. The characters spend a lot of time, using Ellie as the catalyst, to explain basic and more complex science, things that honestly scientists in this predicament wouldn’t spend their time doing. This leads to a lot of segments getting downright bogged down by elements and concepts that the layman still doesn’t understand. It channels Michael Crichton but doesn’t quite succeed with making the science interesting and relevant, as Crichton does. In the conclusion, the pseudo element of the science really glares in light of the solution and readers completely loose touch. We don’t understand all these giant heating plates towed by ships, what they are doing, and why this rigged solution appears to work (or does it…) It’s distancing and more than a little tedious, add in the stereotypical new romance and side-lined ex, and you hit every trope out there. In between the science though, Powlik does give us the thriller roller coaster ride. We have exploding helicopters, deep sea crashes, submarines, and a crazy dude looking to make money and willing to take the risks to do it (enter Nolan). Again, it’s more contrived than exciting, with readers sedately turning pages full of death, storms, and acid like slicks, looking for a break in the tedium of forced drama. It also breaks continuity quite a few times (sometimes you need the biohazard suit to get near the slick, and sometimes you totally don’t when it’s convenient for the plot not to need it.) In the end, Sea Change fails to inspire, despite its potential. It’s certainly not the worst book, indeed, it falls more into the category of ok than terrible, but it is ultimately forgettable and deeply, obviously over-contrived. – Frances Carden Follow my reviews on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/xombie_mistress Follow my reviews on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/FrancesReviews [AMAZONPRODUCTS asin="0440235081"]

book reviews | Readers Lane

Six Suspects

When Everyone Wants to Kill the Bad Guy . . . Author: Vikas Swarup Vicky Rai, powerful playboy and son of a corrupt politician, is hosting a flamboyant party in honor of his acquittal for cold blooded murder. The press isn’t happy. The Indian people aren’t happy. Many of his smiling guests aren’t happy, so when the millionaire playboy ends the evening with a bullet in his brain, it’s anyone’s guess who the opportunistic killer is. Six guests, all vastly different, are found toting the potential killing weapon. But which one actually killed Vicky? The glamorous Bollywood star? The down [...]

Frances Carden2020-05-23T11:56:21-07:00May 23rd, 2020|Tags: book reviews|

Water for Elephants

Circuses, Old Age, and Love Author: Sara Gruen Jacob Jankowski has lost everything – both in the present and in his past. His story begins in a nursing home. At the age of 90 (or 93) he has no joy left, surrounded by a family who sees him as a duty, not a person. He is not understood and worse, his body and his faculties are failing. He can feel them slipping, day by day. All that remains is the past, but even as he begins remembering, that story is filled with loss too. It’s the great depression era and Jacob [...]

Frances Carden2020-05-20T21:07:39-07:00May 20th, 2020|Tags: book reviews|

Sea Change

Dinofalgellate Drama: When Pseudo-Science Thrillers and Horror Mixes Author: James Powlik What does a ghost ship of decomposing crew, a desiccated covey of sea-lions, a dead-zone in the ocean, nearly liquefied whales, and a few random, horrific hospital cases have in common? Dr. Ellie Bridges doesn’t have the full picture – she doesn’t know about the dead zone and the ship or about the dwindling marine life with the strange sores – but she does know about the little girl she couldn’t save, the cases in the Indian reservation, the swimmers who looked like they were dipped in acid. She [...]

Frances Carden2020-05-19T20:49:54-07:00May 19th, 2020|Tags: book reviews|