A Rule Against Murder (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #4)

Author – Louise Penny
Genre – Detective, Mystery, 
Source - Kindle
Rating - 4
Read - February 2016

As you would have figured, I am binge-reading Louise Penny's Three Pines series. 
About this one - I liked it. Liked it a lot. Very detailed insights into the characters - and one gets to see a lot more of Reine-Marie, who and Gamache are perhaps one of the nicest couples in literature. You cannot help but contrast Gamache and Reine-Marie with the other couples in the book, including the one we have already got to know very well.
Very observant portrait of a dysfunctional family. The writer understands. And is a very, very good writer. Some of the family feud scenes are bloody excellent!

So, 4/5? Why not 5? Well, the murder, and the murderer, are a bit meh. That's why. You'd have figured out by now that the murder is perhaps NOT THE MOST important part of the series. But that's all right by me.

Previously:
Still Life ;
A Fatal Grace ;
The Cruelest Month .

The Cruelest Month (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #3)

Author – Louise Penny
Genre – Detective, Mystery, 
Source - Kindle
Rating - 5
Read - February 2016

And this is what we have been waiting for. Perfect. 

Previous Armand Gamache mysteries:
Still Life ;
A Fatal Grace .

A Fatal Grace (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #2)

Author – Louise Penny
Genre – Detective, Crime, Quebec, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache
Source - Kindle
Rating - 4
Read - January 2016

Love you, Louise Penny, And you, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. But.. but..... Cool down. Deep breaths. Be Calm, even, if you insist.
Could you have done without that final, final twist, maybe? It took the story from being a bona fide masterpiece of detective fiction, to ... eh, how do I put it across as gently as I could .... the realm of 'that's-a-little-impossible'...
Okay, on to #3 of the series then.

Knots and Crosses (Inspector Rebus #1)

Author – Ian Rankin
Genre – Detective, Crime, Scotland
Source - Kindle
Rating - 3
Read - January 2016

I call myself a regular reader of detective fiction. It's what I read most often. Somehow though, I hadn't yet read Ian Rankin, who is one of the most well-known detective writers of the day and age. 

So yesterday, I was laid low by a bug - and since I had a couple of books of Rankin with me, I finished this, his first with the famous Inspector Rebus.

Great writing. Flawed, doomed characters - the chief protagonist, DS John Rebus, is a bloody brilliant creation. Great scenes. Pretty close to perfect as a starter to a series. 

However, as a detective mystery, standalone, this isn't exactly top-notch. 

Test 1: The mystery could not have been solved by anyone apart from Rebus. 

Test 2: Are there many things that the reader didn't know that were revealed to him/her late in the novel? Yes. 

Test 3: Was it (either) too easy (or) too vague? Yes. The latter. 

But here's the point. This wasn't a successful novel. It wasn't meant to be. It was the first novel in a series, and any reader who reads this book will be intrigued enough to read DS Rebus #2. This is the novel which builds up the character and the setting. 

And that's job well done. 

The Daughter of Time (Alan Grant #5)

Author – Josephine Tey

Genre – Detective, Crime, History

Source - Kindle

Rating - 5

Read - January 2016

What do you do when you find that a book you have not heard about at all is in the top (or nearabouts) in all of the lists of greatest detective / mystery books of all-time? You read it, of course.

So I did. 

The basic premise is fairly straightforward - Alan Grant, of the Scotland Yard, has had a broken leg. While recuperating, he is bored with the same old people, the same old food, the same old books et al. So he immerses himself in a historical mystery, of the 'Princes in the Tower' - and Richard III. Grant is not a historian by any stretch of the imagination - but he educated himself of the case, progressing from school books to quasi-historical tales, to proper historic tomes - and in the meantime, becomes friendly with a researcher, who does a good bit of the heavy lifting in terms of fact-checking. And the mystery unfolds.

It's nothing like anything I have read earlier. Thoroughly loved it. Completely worthy of all the adulation. 

And thank God for those best-of lists.

From Doon With Death (Chief Inspector Wexford #1)

Author – Ruth Rendell

Genre – Detective, Crime, fiction

Source - Kindle

Rating - 4

Read - December 2015

Some of you would know that I am doing a series with a newspaper on detective fiction. I am glad, therefore, that I am getting to revisit writers that I am fond of, or read ones that I had not earlier. Ruth Rendell was a master of the detective fiction genre, and I am familiar with her work, as I am with Chief Inspector Wexford, the main protagonist of many of her books. This, the first in the series, I had not read earlier. 
And I am glad to have done so now. An expert police procedural, this is a must-read for fans of the sub-genre. I am fond of these village-green police procedurals as I call them - they have in them both the comfort of the cozies, and the rootedness of the hardboiled (although little of the grit and the grime). This is excellent - solid plot, crisp storytelling, no pretension or unnecessary flourish, precise character development, a main protagonist you can root for, and a finish that's gentle but not without surprises. 
Dated? Well, it does indeed read like it was written in 1964 (its year of publication). But that does not hamper the story at all. Has aged quite well.

Will review in greater detail sometime in the future.

Career Of Evil (Cormoran Strike #3)

Author – Robert Galbraith (J K Rowling)

Genre – Detective, Mystery, Thriller

Source - Audiobook

Rating - 4

Read - November 2015

So... interesting book, this. Very deeply researched, and it shows. Perhaps the most bloody and disturbing of all Cormoran Strike stories, and the violence does not seem out of place, there is a serial killer on the loose. So then, why do I reserve judgment? 
Look, there are a lot of good things in this book. First, Robin is excellent! This is the first strike book where Strike is not the lead protagonist, Robin is. And Robin is an excellent protagonist. Better, at a stretch, than Cormoran. Second, about the relationships. This is a seven-book series, and the narrative is held together by the chemistry between Strike and Robin, and this book is where JKR is pushing the envelop a little bit on the relationship front. Very interesting to see what happens. Perhaps she would want to rectify the Harry-Hermione mistake, as she calls it? We shall see. But let's say that this book has a better Robin, and in most parts a better Cormoran than the two previous ones. Third. the detection, the plot. Does it hold up? Is it innovative enough? Simple answer, yes. 
Then what doesn't work here? The ensemble. One of JKR's best traits has been creating excellent ensemble characters - something that's completely absent in this book. None of the other characters stay on in the reader's mind after the end. Even the serial killer seems like a prop. 
You do remember that both Cuckoo and Silkworm had excellent ensembles. As of course did Harry Potter, and Casual Vacancy was an ensemble piece anyway.
And so there you go. The first-ever less-than-perfect rating for a JKR book by a fanboy. 4/5.

My reviews of previous Robert Galbraith books:
The Silkworm;
The Cuckoo's Calling;

My review of other JKR Books:
The Casual Vacancy;

Still Life (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #1)

Author – Louise Penny

Genre – Detective, Police Procedural, Mystery, Village Mystery

Source - Audiobook

Rating - 4

Read - October 2015

This is my first Louise Penny, and the first of the Armand Gamache series. It's an excellent book, comparable with (and in some ways similar to) Val McDermid. But while I read McDermid after the best of Flynn and Higashino, I read this after (excellent) non-fiction. And loved it more. Armand Gamache is just what a superb fictional detective should be, but often isn't. He is more a Byomkesh than a Holmes. More a Miss Marple than a Poirot. He is not quirky, but is sage and calm. and dignified. And a detective does not have to be quirky to be compelling. Gamache is proof. Superb insight into Francophone Quebec too. Complaint? The ending would read better than it sounds, I think. Good, satisfactory, but I have read better.

The Long Goodbye

Author - Raymond Chandler
Genre - Detective, Hardboiled, Philip Marlowe, Crime, Murder
Source - Audiobook
Rating - 4
Read - July 2015

The Long Goodbye finds Marlowe at his most devil-may-care, at his most pungent, at his hardest, and at his most tender. He is going the extra mile, nay, the extra light-year for his friend, he is getting beaten to an inch of his life by the police, he is playing Steinitz in chess, and Chandler is, at one point almost sounding like literature (however much he might have detested me saying this). But he was supposed to give back murder to the people who commit it, wasn't he?
I am happy with the sequence in which I read the three Chandlers. The Big Sleep is the big one- with big characters, big plotlines, even big holes in the plot. Then, The Lady in the Lake is clean as a whistle - there's a master at his peak - it's not as powerful as The Big Sleep, but with its ducks very much in order. And then this - Ray Chandler is a world-weary man now, pouring his vitriol at the readers. It is a magnificent experience.
Raymond Chandler is a magnificent experience.

The Lady in the Lake

Author - Raymond Chandler
Genre - Detective, Hardboiled, Philip Marlowe, Crime, Murder
Source - Audiobook
Rating - 4
Read - July 2015

Philip Marlowe is a private eye, it is his job, he is doing a job, he can do this job - and he is also seeing the world for what it is. Dreary. Bitter. Futile. He is making us look at our world. 
As a murder mystery, this is better, more intricate, more intelligent, more complete than 'The Big Sleep' (my impressions of that book are here), but that is a better, more compelling book. This isn't much worse though.
Read both. Read Chandler. Our world hasn't changed much in the last 70 years. One of the other books I have started is 'The Dark Knight Returns', and that one smells the same as this.
Ray Chandler is the Poet Laureate of Sleaze Street. Indeed, was the poet laureate of Sleaze Street, a position now taken up by Frank Miller. Here's to them both.

Malice : A Mystery

Author - Keigo Higashino
Genre - Detective, Mystery, Kyoichiro Kaga, Japan, Crime
Source - Audiobook
Rating - 4
Read - June 2015

Kyoichiro Kaga is a police detective. Kyoichiro Kaga is a very smart man, but that smartness never threatens the realms of genius or even spectacular brilliance. Kaga practices kendo. Kaga is not quirky, arrogant or pompous. Kaga is, as Frederick Forsyth will put it, a 'jagdhund', the African Sniffer dog - ungainly, neither super fast or super strong, but once he catches the trail of his target, he will not let go. In this first story of his that I read, the protagonists steal the show with their ingenuity and their ruthlessness, and lead Kaga down the wrong path more than once - but Kaga doesn't let go. Doggedness and perseverance, great traits though they are for a detective, do not translate well to literature. With Kaga though, I am impressed. Kyoichiro Kaga is no Manabu Yukawa, and that is just fine by me.

Salvation of a Saint

Author - Keigo Higashino
Genre - Detective, Mystery, Crime, Japan.
Source - Audiobook
Rating - 4
Read - June 2015

So then, to our second encounter with our (second) favorite pompous git of all time, Manabu Yukawa aka Detective Galileo. And to that excellent, bowfully-yours, 'let's have a round of badminton','you have gained weight I see' banter between him and Inspector Kusanagi. Remember 'The Devotion of Suspect X'? Remember the giddy excitement of reading this, 'Gone Girl' and 'A Place of Execution' one after the other? Our Manabu-man is back!
And a fine return it is! Not quite the equal of 'Suspect X' in ingenuity, this book nonetheless spins a dexterous web of its own, And what characters - a two-timing husband who treats his WAGs as baby-making factories, a wife who creates artwork worth millions, a pregnant protege, an enfant-terrible of a junior detective, and even a lovesick Kusanagi - a cast worthy of attention for any detective fiction aficionado. 
As usual, I would not reveal much in this review, but I will tell you this. There are only a handful of detective writers in history who compare with Higashino in the how-dunit. And this book is that master plotter in his elements. Read it.

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

Author - Alexander McCall Smith
Genre - Detective, Africa, Humour, Mystery
Source - Audiobook
Rating - 5
Read - June 2015

So this is an absolutely excellent book. I'd stand on a rooftop, but you have all read it anyway. You haven't? What are you waiting for, then? 
There are three books that I recommend, interchangeably, to the intelligent occasional-reader or non-fiction-reader, who wants to start reading fiction. They are 'The curious incident of the dog in the night time', 'High fidelity', and 'The Guernsey literary and potato peel pie society'. This, then, shall be my fourth.

Kaanta'y Kaanta'y #1

কাঁটায় - কাঁটায় ১

Author - Narayan Sanyal

Genre - Detective, Legal

Source - Print

Rating - 4

Read - June 2015

Copied full plotlines at times I hear, from James Hadley Chase (whom I have only sporadically read); but acknowledged the copy. And well written. Very well written. Unputdownable. High 3, almost 4.

Red Harvest

Author - Dashiell Hammett
Genre - Detective, Thriller, Hardboiled, Classic
Source: Audiobook
Rated: 5/5
Read: March-April 2015

Hammett is a very different kind of brilliant than Chandler. Not for him the plebian godliness of Chandler and his stark, perfect prose. Hammett is made for action, and for action scenes. And the man-with-no-name protagonist, oftentimes referred to as the Continental Op, is rough-hewn, brutal and just keeps to business. And business is good. Very good. 
You are missing out on a lot of brilliance if you are not reading hardboiled.

Jar City

Author: Arnaldur Indriðason
Genre: Detective, Thriller
Source: Audiobook
Rating: NR - Dropped Midway

My first 'Dropped Midway' of the year. 
Attempted: Jan-Feb '15 (Gave up in March '15)
Summary: What do I say? Did not work for me. Too gloomy, soggy, wet and cold. Too alien. Icelandic Mystery is left for maybe another time, okay?

The Big Sleep

Author: Raymond Chandler

Genre: Detective, Thriller, Hardboiled, Classic

Source: Audiobook

Rated: 5/5

Read: Jan-March 2015

Chandler’s writing is like a slap of crisp, hot breeze on the face, late on a tiring summer’s day – clean, brutal, uncompromising, and unforgettable. Clean, more than anything else. Sparse. Hard. And enough.

You know that this is genre fiction. And while reading it (and I have read only one Chandler earlier), you know that this is literature that is defeating the genre it is part of. You know that this is a classic. You are mesmerized. You are pulled. You carry on. You are carried on.

Raymond Chandler is the writer I want to write like.

The Silkworm

Author - Robert Galbraith (J K Rowling)

Genre - Fiction, Thriller, Detective, Cormoran Strike #2

Source - Audiobook

Rating - 5

September 2014

Dated review:
JKR is a genius. That's all.
If you are a lover of detective fiction, you would not miss this.Go on, what are you waiting for?

A Place Of Execution

Author : Val McDermid

Genre: Thriller, Mystery, Detection

Source - Audiobook

Rating - 4

April 14

The problem with reading two detective novels that are absolute all-time greats by masters of their games (namely 'The devotion of Suspect X' by Keigo Higashino and 'Gone Girl' by Gillian Flynn), is that a perfectly good, rather well-written detective novel such as this, would still leave you with a feeling of 'that's all?' after you are done with it. This is a fine example of a detective/police-procedural novel, really. Finished it in one go, and wasn't disappointed really. Just felt that it's not ... ah... how do you put it .... not in the league of the other two. Not saying that this one is bad, not at all. .... in fact, I would gladly read other stories by McDermid. Just cognitive bias, I guess.
 A high 3, this one. Almost 4. So, round off to 4.

The Cuckoo's Calling

Author - Robert Galbraith

Genre - Detective, Mystery, Thriller

Source - Audiobook

Rating - 5

August 2013

I am a fanboy, so let me get done with the gushing first. JKR is such a legend! Love her! 
Ok, let's talk about the book now. Ms. Rowling has an incredible ability of putting word after word, and making you look forward to the next word. A natural-born story-teller to compare with the very best. Even while reading the Potter novels, I had always thought that mystery would be her natural habitat, she is so brilliant and ingenuous at plot and storytelling. And this here is a proof. Does it hurtle through like, say, a Lee Child novel? Nope, the story builds up gradually -- this is a classic detection novel, the thrill is secondary to the detection -- but it is still effective, you can still not put the book down. I couldn't. 
Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott are both such interesting characters, that I'd very much like this book to be Cormoran Strike #1. And okay then, let's have the acid test for all private-eye books --- Could I guess the killer? Nope. Not till the very end I couldn't.