Talwar’s thought-provoking mystery is set against the backdrop of war-torn Afghanistan.
Soon after Indian journalist Anzan arrives at Kabul’s Aram guesthouse, one of his fellow boarders, an American ostensibly working as a sports advisor to the Ministry of Youth, is killed by an explosion in his room. Anzan then uses his investigative skills to narrow down an international cast of suspects, including members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and learns exactly who this American is and why someone might want to kill him. Talwar is a superb storyteller who manages to conjure both the flavor of an expatriate community and the day-to-day life of Afghanis. He peoples his tale with a range of characters and shows the country’s array of spices, foods, clothing and expressions. Perhaps most impressive is the way the author twists the noir genre into a glorious multinational reflection of itself. Though a skillful and seasoned journalist, Anzan’s narration is politely cynical rather than hardball. His repartee is delivered, not in gritty wisecracks, but in an urbane but stilted English that doesn't exactly sound like Mickey Spillane: “I’ve done difficult assignments in dangerous places before, but when I thought of Afghanistan, I felt the secretions of fear line my stomach.” As with any good mystery, the plot thickens at every turn. While Anzan travels about Afghanistan speaking to various people, contradictory clues and hints arise. Initial suspects are discarded as new ones appear, until a sickening realization begins to dawn on him. In the end, his discoveries force him to make a decision that will define what type of man he is. More than murder set in a distant locale, the novel examines classic themes of love, loss, identity, friendship and the overarching effects of politics on the lives of ordinary people. This is self-publishing at its best, lending voice to a perspective that might otherwise be lost to more clichéd views of foreign culture. An intelligent thriller, perfect for readers who wish to immerse themselves in an exotic, dangerous land.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1466495463
Page Count: 234
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.
Four residents of Coopers Chase, a British retirement village, compete with the police to solve a murder in this debut novel.
The Thursday Murder Club started out with a group of septuagenarians working on old murder cases culled from the files of club founder Elizabeth Best’s friend Penny Gray, a former police officer who's now comatose in the village's nursing home. Elizabeth used to have an unspecified job, possibly as a spy, that has left her with a large network of helpful sources. Joyce Meadowcroft is a former nurse who chronicles their deeds. Psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif and well-known political firebrand Ron Ritchie complete the group. They charm Police Constable Donna De Freitas, who, visiting to give a talk on safety at Coopers Chase, finds the residents sharp as tacks. Built with drug money on the grounds of a convent, Coopers Chase is a high-end development conceived by loathsome Ian Ventham and maintained by dangerous crook Tony Curran, who’s about to be fired and replaced with wary but willing Bogdan Jankowski. Ventham has big plans for the future—as soon as he’s removed the nuns' bodies from the cemetery. When Curran is murdered, DCI Chris Hudson gets the case, but Elizabeth uses her influence to get the ambitious De Freitas included, giving the Thursday Club a police source. What follows is a fascinating primer in detection as British TV personality Osman allows the members to use their diverse skills to solve a series of interconnected crimes.
A top-class cozy infused with dry wit and charming characters who draw you in and leave you wanting more, please.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-98-488096-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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