[Book Review] Murder on The Orient Express - Agatha Christie

This is going to be one of my greatest regrets – why the hell haven’t I ever read an Agatha Christie’s before! For all the expectations I had about this book – it exceeded all and then some! Plain old murder mystery and some bloody brilliant story telling!

Goodreads Blurbs: Travelling on the Orient Express, Poirot is approached by a desperate American named Ratchett. Afraid that someone plans to kill him, Ratchett asks Poirot for help. Sadly the very next day Ratchett’s worst fears become reality, when he is found dead in his cabin, a victim of multiple stab wounds. With nothing but a scrap of paper to go on, Poirot must piece together Ratchett’s identity before he can establish which of his fellow passengers murdered him.

I picked this book after much debating with myself over her other book – And Then There Were None. I heard it’s equally as good as this one. I will find that out very soon.

I am sure, many of us who read thriller books – always try and guess the ending, or if it’s a murder mystery – the identity of the killer. This book, though – outwits you! With every twist and turn and every new evidence that surface, you would keep changing the killer’s identity or identities as you may assume. I don’t know about others, but I definitely did not guess the ending at all. In fact, my guess was utterly, utterly wrong!

The pace of the book is just too good. Too good, that I actually heaved a sigh of relief when a “Dinner Break” was announced in the novel towards the end. I had to compose myself, breathe regularly, drink some water and then start reading again. Once you enter Part III of this novel, there is no putting down.

Towards the end of the novel, despite the pace, one can actually laugh out loud when during the course of the investigation, the good doctor saying:

“This,” said Dr. Constantine, “is more wildly improbably than any roman policier [a police novel, portraying crime and its detection by police] I have ever read.”

Or, the train company owner – M. Bouc expresses his frustration:

“Nothing would surprise me now,” said M. Bouc. “Nothing!”

When you read it here, it might seem as a simple dialogue, but when you are really into the book, progressing the case along with H. Poirot, these two statements will surely kick your funny bones!

The book keeps us engaged with the facts, testimonials, and evidences. Although I did observe a couple of things that had a big revelation at the end, it was quite an impressive way to build the story. Of course, no one could observe as much as H. Poirot. Immediate fan sir, wherever you are in the fictitious world!

The only thing I found annoying was the intermittent French dialogues. Thankfully, I was able to translate them quickly. Other than that, this is a Must Read – for all the Murder, Mystery, Thriller and Detective Genre fans! :)

Image Courtesy: Google

[Book Review] The Devotion of Suspect X

It took me eight days to complete the book, I’d have done so much sooner had there been enough time for me. Some of them were asking me how I’m finding so much time to read so many books – I am just following the advice of one Mr. Jairam Mohan a senior blogger/reader at my organization. He had said to me one time that “Read whenever you get a chance”. I took that advice literally that I was reading in-between the water breaks and lunch breaks too! So, my success for completing the Goodreads reading challenge this year is only because of his advice. Thank you Jairam ji! :)

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Very few authors have this ability to leave you spellbound. Keigo Higashino is certainly one of those authors. The Devotion of Suspect X is a thriller novel written by him and has already been praised as one of the best thrillers written.

This is the first time I’m reading a translated novel (This is a Japanese novel translated to English). I had hard time placing the names with the correct sex! A couple of names were too similar that I almost mistook one for the other. I’m talking about Yukawa and Yasuko here. But as I progressed with the book it became easy to place the names.

Murder mystery thrillers are good because usually we were never told who the killer is, until the last page of that book. But, revealing who the killer is in the first few chapters of the book and still go on to make it interesting to read is definitely a challenging task. This book has exceeded my expectations – what I had formed after reading a blogger's review.

I’m a mathematics student so I naturally loved all the references and the mathematician Ishigami himself. What a character he is! Author had managed to show him the brilliant he is right from the beginning, slowed (hided) his progress in-between and then the big reveal! Surely no one could hate this Ishigami. Talk about a character development and you could practically refer Ishigami! What a transformation he goes through! I especially liked this conversation during a mathematics class (sorry, it’s a bit long):

“Hey, Teach, aren’t there universities that don’t require a math test to get in?” one of the students was saying. “Why should us guys who are going to those schools have to pass math?”

Ishigami looked in the direction of the student, a boy named Morioka. He was leaning back in his chair, scratching his head and looking around at the other students for support. He was a short kid, but he filled the role of class crime boss—even Ishigami, who didn’t have this bunch for homeroom, knew his reputation. The boy already had a long history of warnings for riding to school on a motorbike, which was strictly forbidden.

“Are you going to art school, Morioka?” Ishigami asked.

“Well, I mean … if I do go to university, it’ll be one without a math exam for sure. Not that I plan on going. Besides, I’m not taking the optional math class next year, so what’s my grade this year matter? Hey, don’t get me wrong, I’m thinking about you, too, Teach. Can’t be much fun teaching with idiots like me in the class. So, I was thinking, maybe we could kind of come to an understanding about this. An agreement between adults, like.”

That last line got a laugh from the class. Ishigami chuckled wryly. “If you’re so worried on my account, then pass your make-up exam. It’s only differential and integral calculus. That can’t be too hard.”

Morioka scoffed loudly. He crossed his legs off to the side of his chair. “What good’s differential and integral calculus gonna do me? It’s a waste of time.”

Ishigami had turned to the blackboard to begin an explanation of some of the trickier problems on the year-end exam, but Morioka’s comment made him stop and turn around. This wasn’t the kind of thing he could let slide. “I hear you like motorbikes, Morioka. Ever watched a race?”

Morioka nodded, clearly taken aback by the sudden question.

“Well, do racers drive their bikes at a set speed? No, they’re constantly adjusting their speed based on the terrain, the way the wind’s blowing, their race strategy, and so on. They need to know in an instant where to hold back and where to accelerate in order to win. Do you follow?”

“Yeah, sure, I follow. But what’s that got to do with math?”

“Well, exactly how much they accelerate at a given time is the derivative of their speed at that exact moment. Furthermore, the distance they travel is the integral of their changing speed. In a race, the bikes all have to run roughly the same distance, so in determining who wins and who loses, the speed differential becomes very important. So you see, differential and integral calculus is very important.”

“Yeah,” Morioka said after a confused pause, “but a racer doesn’t have to think about all that. What do they care about differentials and integrals? They win by experience and instinct.”

“I’m sure they do. But that isn’t true for the support team for those racers. They run detailed simulations over and over to find the best places to accelerate—that’s how they work out a strategy. And in order to do that, they use differential and integral calculus. Even if they don’t know it, the computer software they’re using does.”

“So why not leave the mathematics to whoever’s making the software?”

“We could do that, but what if it was you who had to make the software, Morioka?”

Morioka leaned further back in his chair. “Me? Write software? I don’t think so.”

“Even if you don’t become a software engineer, someone else in this class might. That’s why we study mathematics. That’s why we have this class. You should know that what I’m teaching here is only the tip of the iceberg—a doorway into the world of mathematics. If you don’t even know where the door is, how can you ever expect to be able to walk through it? Of course, you don’t have to walk through it unless you want to. All I’m testing here is whether or not you know where the doorway is. I’m giving you choices.”

Yukawa is an equivalent partner in this book for Ishigami and his logical deductions are too good. Detective Kusanagi wasn’t foreshadowed as well – he has his moments. Only thing that wasn’t making much sense is the character Misato (teen age daughter of Yasuko). I felt like she could have given some more pages as to what she does in the end and why.

At the end of the novel you can’t help but feel sad for Ishigami – his cry is just too haunting. A must read for all the thriller lovers.

[Book Review] The Protocol

I was hunting for a good free eBook – my recent fascination with it. I came across the author J Robert Kennedy and his willingness to give away not one, not two, but five of his books. All you have to do is just subscribe to his page (and I think you can unsubscribe as soon as you’re done with the download)!

The Protocol is his first “James Acton” thriller – as said in Goodreads. Looks like he went ahead and wrote sixteen James Actor thrillers! Wow, that was quite an achievement in about six years! James Acton is an archelogical professor – you can very well compare him to the Robert Langdon. But, even when I was reading the book (and after completing it), I found the “role” of one Professor James Acton to be very less than the “Bravo” team who were ordered to take him out. Let’s first read what Goodreads has to say about this book:

For two thousand years the Triarii have protected us, influencing history from the crusades to the discovery of America. Descendent from the Roman Empire, they pervade every level of society, and are now in a race with our own government to retrieve an ancient artifact thought to have been lost forever.

Caught in the middle is archaeology professor James Acton, relentlessly hunted by the elite Delta Force, under orders to stop at nothing to possess what he has found, and the Triarii, equally determined to prevent the discovery from falling into the wrong hands.

With his students and friends dying around him, Acton flees to find the one person who might be able to help him, but little does he know he may actually be racing directly into the hands of an organization he knows nothing about…

First read of the blurb and I was hooked. I was assuming a ‘DaVinci Code’ kinda thriller, but absolutely disappointed with the book. The author had done little research about the Triarii and the Crystal Skull both seems to be the important things in this book. And as I said, for a “James Acton” thriller, he had very little ‘paper time’ (well I don’t know how to say that for books, for movies they say screen time). The Delta Force and Triarii mentioned in the blurb took the cake in this book rather than James Acton.

The book starts slow, almost having no connectivity between the first eight or so chapters (all starts from a different place/situation) and it take sometime to get a clear picture of the story. Sometimes a character, last read in say 30th chapter, comes suddenly in 80th chapter, leaving you asking yourself “Who the hell is this guy?” There were a few loose ends that were not tied, probably left open for his future books.

The only upside of this book is the Delta Force. Scenes involving them were fascinating. The high end chases and bullet sounds keeps us hooked to the book. A lot of things could have been done differently and the backstory to 1212 were just for the sake of it. Nothing useful came out from those chapters other than a mere mention in the future dialogues. I rated this book 3 stars only because of the action scenes and the justification of the villain.

Image Courtesy: Goodreads

[Book Review] 3 A.M. - Nick Pirog

We have seen it all, watched it all - the man who loses his memory after every 5 minutes. The man who faints when he hears a loud noise/sudden actions. This one, in 3 A.M., is way beyond our imagination. I was hooked from the good read blurbs, and got interested in the book within 6 pages. Here's what the goodreads says:

Henry Bins has Henry Bins.
A sleeping disorder, named after him.
He is awake for one hour a day.
He wakes up at 3 a.m. then falls asleep at 4 a.m.
Life is simple.
Until he hears the woman scream.
And sees the man leave the house across the street.
But not just any man.
The President of the United States.

The condition in itself is very tricky - for instance, he'd never see the sunlight in his lifetime. For him to do a normal thing like watching an episode of Game of Thrones (yes, that comes in the novel) is a Himalayan task. What happens if he decides to involve himself in one of the biggest case in the history of United States of America? How would he pull that off when he can't do anything between 4 AM to 3 AM? I know you have a lot of questions formed inside your mind as soon as you read that he's awake for only one hour in a day. This book takes us into that very one hour of his life in a day and doesn't bore you at all.

A thriller is at it's best when you cannot expect a twist and this sure is one. I tried to pause in-between to guess the killer and couldn't find out at all. The suspense is high and the whole thing happens only between 3AM and 4AM. You get to know how precious a minute of this man's life is when we waste it just like that. The author has made several attempts to let us know about that for sure.

Since this is a short novella there's no room for character development, so to speak. We are provided with enough information on how Henry lives and a little bit about his history and some of the questions that we have as soon as we read that blurb. The conversations between Lassie and Henry are hilarious.

What did I miss? Well, this story certainly was fast paced for I finished this in two sittings, mostly at the wee hours. I even pinged in a WhatsApp group that "Me back to 3 A.M. until 3AM" and that raised several questions about my "steady state" :D I felt like that this story started and ended very quickly. There are some questions left unanswered, probably left for our own imagination. This kind of things happens when the novel is very short. There's a sequel to it - 3.10 A.M. and I believe it should have some more details that were missing in this short novella although it wouldn't impact your reading experience of 3 A.M. BTW, 3.10 A.M. starts where 3 A.M ends!


PS: This book is free in Kindle, Google Books (and you can even find a lot of ePub and PDF in the world wide web if you like that piracy thrill) etc. There's a teaser for his sequel 3.10 A.M. also present in that free copy. The paperback version of this book costs an unbelievable Rs. 464 in Amazon :shock:. 3.10 A.M as well as all his other eBooks are not free (Except Unforseen) :) And yes, I posted this blog at 3 A.M. :)

Beautiful Munnar Falls

[Book Review] The Old Man and the Sea

It took me ten days to complete this book although it's a short novel of about less than 100 pages only. To let you know that I read the last 40 ish pages on a single day (I read the book everyday) sums up the pace of the book :D For some of you who are unaware of the reason for me to pick this book - this book has won the Nobel Prize in the Literature work category. I must tell you I was really scared when I picked this book from my friend who borrowed it at the Cognizant Siruseri SEZ library!

Before you read the review, I'd like to confirm that I did enjoy reading this novel. But, I missed a lot because a lot of terms were unfamiliar to me - that is related to the fishing. If someone told me that I should have taken a Fishing 101 before reading this novel, I sure would have loved this! But, I just can't keep on googling for a lot of fishing terms were used in this novel. At one point, I stopped looking and with the flow, I could still enjoy the novel. So, if you'd like to really enjoy this, please lookup for the fishing terms like:

Harpoons
Skiff
Mast
Sardines etc. I don't remember most of the other technical terms.

As you have guess it correctly this book is about an old man and the sea. Protagonist is an old and experienced fisherman, Santiago his name. With age, his luck has also ran out as from the beginning of the novel, he'd been to the sea for 84 days and hadn't caught a single fish. Manolin, "the boy" is a good friend of him and used to go with the old man a few times for fishing until his parents decided to send him with different people considering the luck of Santiago. The novel takes us with him to his 85th day into the sea, alone, with him feeling luck on his side.

When my friend and I went to the Siruseri SEZ library, I picked "Carry on, Jeeves" and he "The Old man and the Sea" (He later told me that the reason from him to chose this was because the book was small and had less pages). He couldn't even read more than ten pages in the book as he felt unbelievably sleepy and was ready to return it then and there. I told him to give the book to me so that I could give it a try. I'm telling this to you because, this book is not for everyone. This is for those who have that patience.

Sure, I felt sleepy too on the first few pages, but once Santiago leaves for fishing on the 85th day, I felt as if I was travelling along with that old man. Before this "literature" book, the one other book that I read that fall under the same category is a Tamil book named "Thanneer". Now, I don't know the genre "Literature" nor I was interested in one before "Thanneer". I liked that book very much because, it was, as if, happening somewhere in Tamil Nadu for sure. I still haven't looked up at the Literature genre in google as to what it is, but from my understanding after reading these two books - to write something to be as classified as a literature, one should have a deep, deep knowledge of it. In the case of this book, it's the old man Santiago and the sea itself whereas in that Tamil book it's the water and humanity.

I'd like to think that the same thing that happens to this old man in this novel should be a thing with the fishermen. Because, when I read "Thanneer" (translates to "Water") I know the background - the scarcity of water in Chennai during the time of the novel. Just how I felt the "Water", and characters "Jamuna and Chaya" in the "Thanner" novel, I feel the "Sea", and characters "Santiago and Manolin" in this novel. The novel's ending left a definite impact on me and I sure hope it'll leave the same to you too. Highly recommended, if you are ofcourse, a patient reader :)

PS: There's even a movie with the same name released on 1958. I'm gonna watch it soon :)

[Book Review] The Invisible Man

Thanks to Amazon for giving this book for free – that’s the main reason for me to pick this book up :D Second reason is the author – H. G. Wells. I was told that he’s the father of the Sci-Fi genre, and for me to read the likes of “Contact” in the future, I definitely needed a start. GBK, a friend of mine, said that this book would be childish since it was written in 1897 – that’s exactly what I wanted since I’m zero in Science and would love to read a fiction.

The books that I’m reading from Kindle almost always have a little over 100 pages only, the reason I can wrap ‘em up quickly :D The Invisible Man from H. G. Wells is also just a little over 100 pages only and doesn’t deal mostly with the “Science” stuff of the invisible-ness. Probably one of the reason why I like this book very much. To summarize this book, it’s the life of an Invisible man. You might think that it’ll be very cool and you may kinda think of all the naughtiness that you can expect, courtesy of that “Hollow Man” movie, but you’re in for a big surprise here!

The first question I asked when I was about to pick this book was “Is this the book that inspired Hollow Man movie?” as most of H. G. Wells’ books have been made into a movie. Thankfully, people said no. So if you are also the hater of Hollow Man, please go ahead and order this copy in Amazon for free. What made me like this book is the fact that, there are a lot of downsides to the invisibility. And, this book captures everyone of them.

The book starts with a “stranger” who’s actually invisible, but disguises himself so that he can blend with people, arrives into a town. Since this was written way before our time, I guess the author might have wanted the readers to give a proper “visual” so-to-speak, before we confirm our suspicion – so the initial chapters were a little drag. But once the Invisible Man and Dr. Kemp meet, it shifts into a higher gear!

The book captures the mindset of a normal man when he becomes invisible. How the invisibility changes his character, attitude, even his temper is very well portrayed. More importantly, what I learnt from this book is that when you tamper with what the nature has given you, you always tend to go in the destructive path. I guess the ending of such stories are always predictable, so I wasn’t disappointed to have expected it.

I would recommend this book to any Sci-Fi lovers who won’t expect too much of technicality. Also, for any Sci-Fi beginners like me :)  :D

Image Courtesy: Wiki