Book Review: ONE FATAL MISTAKE

Title: One Fatal Mistake

Author: Tom Hunt
Publisher: Berkley Books
Pages: 310

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Involved in a hit-and-run accident, honours student Joshua Mayo and an unnamed friend decide to run away and burn the tell-tale signs of their guilt, rather than come clean and face the consequences. They abandon the dead man in the Hawkeye Wildlife Management Area (HWMA). But Joshua is consumed by his guilt and reveals the truth to his mother, Karen, who is a single mother. 

Karen has worked hard to raise her son after her divorce, and the effort had nearly paid off. Joshua was about to start college. Until the crime threatens to unravel their lives.

Karen decides that there is too much at stake, that she cannot jeopardise her son’s future, and she should therefore help him cover his tracks. Joshua heads off to the woods where he has dropped a glove that could be traced to him, and jeopardise the future that is awaiting him. Karen follows him.

There they encounter Ross and Amber, who along with Ross’ brother, Shane, have just robbed a bank. Ross and Amber ditch Shane at the bank and escape in the car with the money. Then the car breaks down and they are forced to walk through the HWMA.

All four encounter one another and the situation gets worse. One fatal mistake snowballs into another, and it seems as if all the characters, Joshua, Karen, Teddy, Ross, Amber and Shane, make that one fatal mistake which dooms them. 

From then on, the action continues to blow up furiously, as all the characters make questionable choices in their quest to escape retribution. The best thing about this book was that the story began well, starting with a breathtaking pace and not letting go of it. Before long, all the characters are pulled into the main conflict.

It's hard to say anything more without giving away spoilers. This is a classic case of getting mixed up in somebody else's nightmarish drama.

All the characters are caught up in explosive solutions.  Unlikely alliances are formed as characters seek to escape from the sordid mess they find themselves in. 

Despite the violence in this book, and there was a lot of it, there was also a lot of love in this book, between Ross and Amber, between Joshua and Karen, and between Joshua and Teddy, his father. 

There are only a few characters but they are all important ones, pushing the story forward.

The conversations were a tad repetitive at times as when Teddy or Joshua tried to explain the rationale for their actions to Karen, on multiple occasions too.

The lengths to which Karen was willing to go to save her son were unbelievable. Of course, there were times when I wished she and Joshua would just come clean to the police but that was not to be.

Amber's flashbacks were awkward. The shift from present to past were not handled well, but the shift from the past to the present were smoother.

Despite Amber’s belief in Ross’ goodness, there wasn’t much evidence of it. And those who took wrong actions paid for it.

A hundred pages before the end, it didn’t seem like any happy ending was in sight.

This was a solid thriller, a little unbelievable, but I enjoyed it. But I appreciated the theme of the novel which was about the inevitability of retribution.

Book Review: THE OTHER AMERICANS

Title: The Other Americans

Author: Laila Lalami
Publisher: Pantheon
Pages: 320

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

In these times of heated debate about migration policies, about the rights of those seeking refuge or the right to build their lives in America, this book takes us into the lives of some other Americans. They are first- or second-generation immigrants, all wanting a piece of the American Dream for themselves.

The book is presented to us from multiple viewpoints. We have here the first-person point of view of Nora, her father Driss Guerraoul, her mother Maryam, childhood friend Jeremy Gorecki who is now a police officer, investigating officer Erica Coleman, and Efrain, an undocumented person who witnessed the accident. We also read of the first-person account of Anderson Baker, who runs the bowling alley next to Driss’ diner.

Driss Guerraoul is killed in a hit-and-run accident while returning home from the diner he owns. The police don’t treat the investigation with the seriousness it deserves, reserving the tough questions (did he drink, gamble or do drugs, have enemies, owe money?) for the dead man’s widow instead of pursuing the driver of the car.

Nora, a jazz composer born to immigrant parents, is upset about her father’s death. He was the only one to believe in her, unlike her mother, who was only proud of her older daughter’s achievements. Nora’s father had rejected the theory that his younger daughter was slow and that there was something wrong with her. Affected by a syndrome called synesthesia, Nora used to hear music in colours, a phenomenon not unheard of among those who show a talent for music.

Nora’s sister, Salma, is not happy about the fact that their father named Nora the beneficiary of his insurance policy.

Then Nora learns of her father’s affair with a much younger woman, and of how he planned to leave her mother, and it makes her feel differently towards him.

Her POV also gives us a peek into the world of music, with compositions and festivals that she struggles to make a mark in.

Jeremy is an insomnia suffering part time police officer who is pursuing his education. His account tells us about his friend Fierro, who he met in the War, and Fierro’s ex-wife Mary, and his boss, Vasco, and at first we don’t see why we are being told about these people.

Efrain is the first to witness the accident that claims the life of Driss. He flees the scene of the crime, afraid of calling attention to his undocumented status and losing the life that he and his wife Marisela have been able to build for their two little kids.

Maryam’s account tells us of her struggle to get her idealist husband to move from Morocco to California with three-year-old Salma and of the struggles they faced in their new country.

Driss’ account takes us on a ride into the past, back in Morocco, and the unrest they sought to escape.

Erica’s account shows us her own personal struggle with a workaholic husband and a son who isn’t doing well at school at all, and her professional struggle in trying to solve the crime. All she has are particles of the paint from the car to work with.

Each account tells us something more about the people. They are all facing their own troubles, living their own lives, while being connected with the dead man somehow.

The tragedy of a sudden death lies in how many things are left undone, the things that can never be again.

I found it odd that the author seemed so reluctant to give us the last names of the characters.

Nora, cheated on by all the men she has had relationships with, feels used and discarded. Jeremy has fought in the War, and is broken by his mother’s death and his father’s alcoholism. I longed to have these two broken people come together.

Along the way, the author makes interesting observations about the nature of memory:

Perhaps memory is not merely the preservation of a moment in the mind, but the process of repeatedly returning to it, carefully breaking it up in parts, and assembling them again until we can make sense of what we remember.

How strange the work of memory… What some people remembered and others forgot.

She also talks about the struggles that immigrants, particularly Muslims, face:

Growing up in this town, I had long ago learned that the savagery of a man named Mohammed was rarely questioned, but his humanity always had to be proven.

In the end, Nora does get the answer to her father’s death, but how she reacts to it is a different story.

Book Review: THE KILLER IN ME

Title: The Killer In Me

Author: Olivia Kiernan
Publisher: riverrun
Pages: 352

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Killer in Me by Olivia Kiernan is a solid thriller about a series of murders that rock a small town in Ireland at a critical time when a convict has been released after serving time for the brutal murders of his own parents and the attempted murder of his younger sister.

Detective Chief Superintendent Frankie Sheehan is roped by her sister-in-law Tanya West, a defense lawyer, into a meeting with Sean Hennessy, who has been released after serving a sentence of 17 years in prison. A mere 15-year-old then, Sean was arrested for the murder of his parents, John and Brid, and the attempted murder of his younger sister, Cara. Following the release of a documentary, Tanya wants to create a case for Sean’s innocence on behalf of her charity which reopens cases of miscarriage of justice.

Frankie agrees to review the footage and see if Sean has a case, even if she doesn’t believe him and her sympathies lie firmly with the victims of his crimes, his parents and his sister, who is now living in isolation under an assumed name as part of the witness protection program.

When the bodies of a husband and wife, Alan and Geraldine Shine, are found in the local church, with the words, Murderer and Victim, written on their bodies. Frankie can’t help but wonder if Sean has anything to do with these murders. The case stirs up media frenzy and Frankie faces administrative pressures to find the killer, while staying a step ahead of the Hennessy investigation to learn if the state was wrong in convicting Sean. Things get complicated further when a local journalist, Connor Sheridan, is found dead with the word, Weapon, written next to him.

Frankie feels compelled to drive into the Hennessy case to see if there are any loose ends there that might explain the multiple murders. Her realization that both Brid and Geraldine were victims of domestic violence helps her to see a link between the two cases. She also remembers that her own life has intersected with that of the Hennessys when Brid walked up to Frankie’s parents’ home to seek help from Frankie’s mother, a social worker, on how she and her children could escape the abusive environment of her home.

As she delves deeper into the investigation, it becomes clear that her boss, Clancy, is hiding something and that her own family is being targeted and that there will be consequences to continuing the investigation. Will she be able to tie up the loose ends before her own family is caught in the crossfire?

Set in Ireland, this is the second book in the Frankie Sheehan series and is written in her first person present tense point of view. I enjoyed reading this one. I found the investigation very real and interesting.

There are similarities that strike us about the Hennessys and the Sheehans. Both families face their own troubles, both fathers are dysfunctional, albeit in different ways. The only difference is that one family recovered and gained strength, while the other didn’t.

We come to understand the scourge of domestic violence and how it destroys lives and families. We also learn of the dangers that police personnel encounter everyday as they come face to face with the worst of human evil and depravity. Sometimes when you look into the mouth of that kind of evil, it’s hard to look away. You think, give it another few moments, your eyes will adjust, you’ll see the bottom of that darkness, understand it. It’s alluring. Addictive. And whilst you’re standing there rooted to the spot, you’re not noticing that the…shadow is closing over you and you’re disappearing.

The book also discusses the theme of memories, repressed and tortured, and about the toll that domestic violence takes on victims, especially children, as can be seen in the two quotes below.

The mind is a fragile being, a vulnerable mesh of soft cells. Malleable. The hard shell of the skull unable to shield it from memory or nightmare, loops both together in the brain’s primitive pool for survival making memory unreliable.

I learned about the terror that reigned over our lives, infused by the mundaneness of domesticity, having breakfast together while nursing bruises. Ironing school uniforms, polishing shoes among the mayhem. All the small events that told us that we were normal. But we weren’t.

There’s a mild degree of offensive language in the form of F-bombs, which show up when the team is frustrated about the slow investigation and the dead ends they face.

At 352 pages, the book is a long read, but it doesn’t feel slow or unnecessary at any point. The author builds up the atmosphere so well that I almost felt as if I were walking the streets of the seaside town of Clontarf in spite of never having been to Ireland.

The title refers to the bitter truth about how circumstances might so easily drive a good person to make a bad decision. Could there be a killer in us that can rise, given sufficient provocation?

I hope we never find out.

(I received an ARC from First to Read).

Book Review: TOMORROW THERE WILL BE SUN

Title: Tomorrow There Will Be Sun

Author: Dana Reinhardt
Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books
Pages: 288

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐

Tomorrow There Will Be Sun represents the hope of the protagonist, Jenna Carson, that no matter how rainy and dreary the situation may be today, it could all change for the better on the morrow.

Jenna books her own family and that of her husband Peter’s best friend Solly into a villa in Mexico. It is supposed to be a week-long dream vacation with breathtaking ocean views and unlimited margaritas. Solly’s family consists of his wife, Ingrid, their 5-year-old son Ivan, and 17-year-old Malcolm, Solly’s son from his first wife, Maureen.

They are here to celebrate Peter’s 50^th birthday, three days later, and Solly’s too, some months hence.

As expected, the dream vacation quickly unravels. Jenna’s daughter, 17-year-old Clem, spends most of her time online, distant from her parents, or in the company of Malcolm, who has been in trouble with the authorities and has been expelled from his school. On the very first day, Peter gets a call from Gavriella, his gorgeous assistant and lies to Jenna about the nature of the call. Could he be having an affair?

To complicate matters further, Jenna is dissatisfied about a number of things. Having published three successful YA books, she is unhappy at facing writer’s block while she works on her fourth, already two months overdue for submission to her publisher. On the other hand, Ingrid, at work on her first book, is breezing ahead with inspiration at 1000 words a day and has turned out a fabulous book.

Also, Jenna has recovered from cancer, a fact that Peter doesn’t seem to take seriously.

She is also displeased with how much Solly seems to take Peter for granted. They are business partners, but Peter works longer hours while Solly earns more.

No matter how hard she tries, it seems as if all that Jenna touches turns bad: her relationship with her daughter, with her husband, even her writing. Will this dream vacation tighten the bonds that hold families and couples together or will it undo everything that Jenna has worked hard to build?

The week of the dream vacation coincides with the culmination of the Christian period of Lent, the Holy Week. But since the characters were either Jewish or atheist, the symbolism that might have been utilized to good effect was not capitalized on.

I felt sorry for Malcolm, who feels out of place in his father’s new family, and whose efforts are snubbed.

I liked the fact that Jenna was a writer, worried about characters and plot, voices and narratives and story arcs.

The action, however, isn’t all that interesting, and the dynamic between the couples doesn’t hold more than a passing interest.

(I received an ARC from First to Read).

Book Review: THE LAST TIME I LIED

Title: The Last Time I Lied

Author: Riley Sager
Publisher: Dutton Books
Pages: 370

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The title of the book, The Last Time I Lied, is a blend of guilt and contrition, the recurrent themes of one of my favourite reads this year.

The Prologue is in the second person present tense point of view of 13-year-old Emma Davis when she wakes up early in the morning at Camp Nightingale and, after a fruitless search, realizes that Allison, Natalie and Vivian, her roommates in Dogwood, the lodge she is assigned to at the camp, who walked out of the camp the previous night, have not returned.

Subsequently there is a furore in the media, and a great scandal, and the camp is closed down. The bodies of the three girls are never found, even though the entire area is searched. The tragedy alters all their lives irrevocably.

Emma misses Vivian. As the only child of parents who never showed affection, Emma got something approximating that from Vivian. But Vivian could also be a bitch, catty and manipulative in her desire to have her own way.

Fifteen years later at the first gallery showing of her paintings, Emma has an unexpected visitor, Francesca Harris-White, rich heiress in her 70s, the owner and manager of Camp Nightingale, better known as Franny.

Franny has an interesting proposition for Emma. Return to Camp Nightingale for six weeks as a painting coach. Anxious to get closure, Emma agrees to go back to the camp, which is being reopened after 15 years. The return dredges up memories and flashbacks, at once happy and painful and guilt-ridden.

This time too, she is reassigned to stay at Dogwood with three teenagers, Sasha, Krystal and Miranda. Now Emma has a chance to find out what happened to the three girls. Will she succeed in finding out the truth about what happened in the past? Or will tragedy strike again?

By the end of Part One comes a stunning shocker that turns the story on its head. Will Emma get the closure she desperately needs? Or will her guilt be finally revealed?

Part One is called Two Truths, while Part Two is called And a Lie, after the game that Vivian introduces to Emma at camp, the game which not only helps the four roommates reveal truths about themselves but also helps them understand how and what somebody might choose to lie about. It is a game that Vivian excels in, one that Emma learns to use to her advantage. I found this game most intriguing for its possibilities for invoking truth as much as for exhibiting willful deceit.

The writing is dark, evoking mystery and curiosity on our part. The narrative shifts between now in the present tense and 15 years ago in the past tense.

The memories help us to piece things together, and we learn a lot of things, not all in Emma’s favour. But the whole truth can be hard to grasp when it is being dished out by someone who knows how to trick with it.

The mood that the author evokes at Camp Nightingale is that of mystery, intrigue and dread, complete with the adventure and fun of camp life.

Following each memory in the present, Emma takes us back to the actual memory in the past.

Most of the characters in this book stood out for the right reasons.

There is Emma, who has her own secrets. She comes across as a totally unreliable narrator. She’s been institutionalized for mental instability, her mother is an alcoholic, and she herself has a tendency to lose control after a few drinks. There were many aspects relating to Emma that I found uncomfortable. She admits that she is responsible for the disappearance of the girls; she just won’t tell us how. She is haunted by the girls. Surely that is admission of guilt enough?

Franny has the money to buy her way out of complicated situations, but can she be trusted? Taking our cues from Emma, we aren’t sure. And yet Franny is genuinely sincere about her love for the outdoors, and her desire to give the city girls a taste of life and adventure in the open.

For all her heightened drama, Vivian grew on me. She made things happen. Nothing stayed stagnant around her. Even though she was the sort of person who could go to any lengths to ensure that she remained in control, she was also capable of showering attention on a younger girl, bereft of affection.

In contrast, the other two girls, Natalie and Allison are bland. We hardly notice them. Like Emma, we are swept away by the lure of Vivian. Fifteen years later, it is as if Sasha, Krystal and Miranda have stepped into the shoes of the older girls, with Miranda trying hard, but not quite succeeding, to be a queen bee.

The chemistry between Theo and Emma grows slowly. Emma is never sure of Theo. Though she considers him her friend, his loyalty to his mother is undeniable. And she wonders how far he would go to protect his mother and hide her secrets.

There were several lines that are worth quoting. Here’s a sample:

a sight that reminds me of air hissing from a punctured tire.

The descriptions: It’s a greenhouse in the same way Grand Central is a train station.

Mrs Harris-White doesn’t like messes.

Every woman is crazy.

Mindy, the fiancee, of Franny’s younger son, is the kind of girl who wields a smile like a scythe. I didn’t like her either.

The Last Time I Lied is a tightly plotted delicious blend of crime thriller, psychological thriller and ghost story, with mental instability thrown in for good measure. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

(I received an ARC from First to Read).

Book Review: JUST PLAIN MURDER (An Amish Mystery #6)

Title: Just Plain Murder (An Amish Mystery #6)

Author: Laura Bradford
Publisher: Berkley Books
Pages: 304

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Set in Heavenly, Pennsylvania, the book takes us into the lives of an Amish community. Jakob Fisher, a detective, has been expelled from the Amish community for becoming a police officer. It is a subject that causes him grave distress, even years later. 

When his mentor, retired cop Russ Granger, is killed, Jakob and his fiancée Claire Weatherly can’t begin to understand who would have wanted him dead.

Jakob is so stricken with grief that he has to get his reminiscences about Russ out of his system before he can even begin to investigate.

That is the crux of this book, but there are other people and their lives that are just as important. After all, it is a small community and it is natural for people to be connected with each other.

Eli and Esther Miller have had a baby, Sarah. Eli’s brother, Benjamin, who was Jakob’s childhood best friend may have found the right match at last. Claire’s 62-year-old Aunt Diane, who is sweet and always seeing the good in people, has a love interest in Bill Brockman. Amos Bontrager, who is on a Rumspringa, a period when Amish youngsters decide if they want to live as Amish or assume the English way of life, is a delinquent who thinks nothing of vandalising property and stalking women. His actions are upsetting the community, as is his father’s unwillingness to hold him accountable.

There are far too many characters here, and I was irritated by that until I realized that this was Book 6 of a series, and I was pretty clueless about the five books that had preceded it.

Honestly, I found myself losing patience pretty quickly. I didn’t mind the other bits actually, but the investigation was oh-so-painfully slow. I’ve read books on the Amish way of life before, but those were romances. Here since the theme was murder, I expected a little more excitement and action.

Here, the murder investigation is just a part of everyday life in a small community. So we end up learning about the Amish people through the characters. We have Esther who enjoys baking bread, Aunt Diane who enjoys cooking, and Annie, Claire’s employee, who enjoys baking cookies just like Ruth Miller, Benjamin’s sister. Claire’s shop features heavily.

There’s an election for the position of the minister at the church, and Elmer Mast, newcomer to the community, pips John Bontrager and Benjamin to the post. We also get insights into the Amish way of practicing the Christian faith.

My knowledge of the Amish lifestyle needed an urgent update. I was surprised to read that Esther had a fridge. I had thought that the Amish had no use for modern technology, since they eschew the use of cars, and prefer horse-driven buggies.

The investigation goes on so slowly, it’s like watching paint dry. Leads emerge from the most long-winded conversations. There is endless information about the colour of people’s eyes and their hair, which is the romance factor at play.

At its heart, the book is a romance. Celebrating the love that several people have for each other, and also the love and faith that the community puts into its beliefs.

I couldn’t get drawn into the book.

Jakob was far too emotional to do his job properly. He was always sharing his story with anyone he met. As a cop, he should have been scouring footage at the pub almost immediately to trace Russ’ last few moments. But it is not until Claire says that she would like to have been a fly on the wall that he remembers that he could ask the pub owner for the camera footage. It was only towards the end of the book that I realized that the book was more about Claire than Jakob. Perhaps that is why she seemed to get more leads.

Some of the words used made me cringe. There was one line, “Eli inhaled himself to his full height.” It was an annoying sentence, but not the only one of its kind. There were several times when I encountered the use of inhale, exhale, swallow, sag and lean as nouns. It was annoying.

It wasn’t that this mystery wasn’t good. It is just that the resolution took too long.

(I received an ARC from First to Read).

Book Review: THE BOY AT THE DOOR

Title: The Boy at the Door

Author: Alex Dahl
Publisher: Berkley
Pages: 357

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Eight-year-old Tobias is not picked up at the swimming pool by his parents. Cecilia Wilborg, married to rich banker Johan Wilborg, and mother of two lovely daughters, Nicoline and Hermine, ends up taking the boy home. But when she finds his home uninhabited, she has no option but to take him home, as the kid pleads with her not to involve the police.

The boy, it seems, has some secrets. For one, drug addict Annika Lucasson and drug dealer Krysztof Mazur, the couple he was living with, may not be his real parents. But Cecilia too has her secrets, and the mere presence of the boy makes her uncomfortable. When the body of Annika is found, with Krysztof absconding, the police begin to wonder if Cecilia had anything to do with it.

Meanwhile, Social Services ask her and her husband, Johan, to take Tobias in until a permanent foster home is found for him. While Johan and the girls take to Tobias, Cecilia holds herself back. What are the secrets that they are hiding? And why is Cecilia afraid of Tobias?

The story is written in the first person present tense points of view of Cecilia and Tobias. Every third chapter is from Tobias’ PoV. Somewhere at the intersection of both accounts, things become clearer.

The aura of menace and dread is felt quite early. The weather plays a great part in adding to the tedium and the sense of strain that Cecilia labours under. The rain, the cold and the ice permeate everything, and lend it a dreary air.

Very quickly we learn that Cecilia is hiding something, and I had my suspicions about the nature of those secrets, even though it was hard to tell when she was lying and when she was speaking the truth.

But then things became a little more muddied with Anni’s intensely personal accounts in Part 2 and 3, before and after she became clean. They were heartrending and offered us a peek into the spiral that addicts find themselves in and how powerless they are in overcoming their situation. Anni says in her account that she felt so empty because nobody misses me or wants me to come home.

There was something so dreary about that line. It reminded me of Margaret Mead’s quote about our greatest need as being that of someone wondering where we are when we don’t get home at night.

I couldn’t understand why Annika gave in to such self-destructive tendencies, but there it was. She was ill-treated and made to sleep for money by Krysz, and yet she returned to him. She seemed to be caught up in a spiral of self-destruction and there was nothing to hold her back from going berserk, once the baby was given up for adoption.

She says in her journal, Some ideas are good and some are bad, and the problem is, of course, to be able to distinguish between them, something which hasn’t come easily to me.

  

Cecilia admits that she is far from an ideal mother. She is far more likely to want to sit with her feet up than attend to her motherly duties. She says, The thing about men, I find, is to treat them with a carefully honed combination of casual aloofness, sharp reproach and unadulterated adoration. It throws them, keeps them on their feet – you can’t be nice all the time.

This woman is very vapid, too interested in appearances. In being the object of others’ envy and jealousy. She’s neither reliable nor likeable. When Tobias asks Cecilia if Luelle, the maid, is her sister, Cecilia feels very offended.

I could not reconcile her selfishness with her concern for Tobias. She herself admits that she is empty inside. She refers to her own children as unnoticeable, but necessary, like good bacteria in the gut.

She wants to be perfect so her husband won’t leave her. She has a tendency to overthink, constructing elaborate stories inside her head. As when she convinces herself that Johan is gay. Or when Tobias is hurt, she wonders if he has had a paper cut or has been decapitated.

Tobias is an old soul in the body of a little boy. He hears the things that people don’t say; he is extremely sensitive. You find your heart going out to him. Through his accounts, we learn of how he came to live with Anni and Krysz who were not his parents, ever since the death of Moffa, who he loved.

Tobias refers to Johan and Cecilia as the father in the house and mother in the house. We get a sense of his sense of deprivation when he describes them: They’re very strange, but at the same time, I think it must be how normal families are.

He tells us a big truth about the complicated nature of our emotions when he says, I’m afraid and I think maybe I’m angry, but they feel quite alike so I can’t be sure.

Ultimately, this book was all about Tobias. The big secret that Cecilia was hiding wasn’t so earth shattering. I wish there was more of Tobias and Anni in the book. 

(I received an ARC from First to Read).

Book Review: DRACUL

Title: Dracul (Stoker's Dracula #1)
Authors: Dacre Stoker and JD Barker
Publisher: GP Putnam's Sons
Pages: 497
My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Dracul by Dacre Stoker, great-grandnephew of Bram Stoker, and JD Barker will overturn everything you read and imagined about the fictional story of Count Dracula. The most shocking conclusion that this book will ask you to draw is that Dracula was not entirely unreal. Isn’t it logical to assume that even the wildest of fables found life in a buried truth?

This book is written as the truth behind Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Bram is one of the protagonists in this story. Dacre Stoker and JD Barker have written a creepy, taut supernatural thriller that is high on atmosphere. The book is written in the Now, when Bram is 21 years old, and Then, when he was 7, and 22 years into the future, when he is 43 years of age.

The Now, which is in Bram’s 3^rd person present tense, shows a 21-year-old Bram trapped in a room, while a hideous monster tries to gain entrance in order to destroy his humanity. The room has been made secure with crucifixes and other icons of Christian belief, but it seems as if the evil is winning. How Bram comes to be trapped in such grave danger is something we learn only at the end, as the truth of the past and that night is revealed through the journals that Bram writes.

While in the room, Bram writes his journal in the first person past tense. The journal tells us of how he was a sickly child from birth, unable to venture out of bed, prone to fevers that are almost fatal. And that it is his cure that is in many ways his undoing.

At the age of seven, Bram is nearly at death’s door when he is amazingly cured completely. Everyone thinks that it is a result of the leech treatment prescribed by Dr Edward Stoker. Only Bram and Matilda know that Nanna Ellen has something to do with it.

The two children begin investigating, following Nanna to an old abandoned tower, where she disappears, never to return.

In the present time, Emily, Thornley’s wife, exhibits odd behaviour. Thornley, Bram and Matilda consult Arminius Vambery, who helps the three siblings in their investigation. Arminius is like Abraham of the Dracula tale.

The household then consists of his parents, and siblings, 9-year-old Thornley, 8-year-old Matilda, Bram himself, aged 7, Thomas aged 5, and Baby Richard, a 2-year-old. Nanna Ellen Crone is also a part of this household, having joined just before Bram’s birth. Although a servant, she is treated well. But she has strange ways, that Matilda and Bram begin to worry about.

Meanwhile, there are a spate of killings happening in the village; the O’Cuiv family is killed by the father, who then kills himself. Matilda and Bram begin to wonder if Nanna Crone has anything to do with them. Her absence at their family home coincides with the killings. Also, her behaviour and habits are rather odd.

Part III takes us to the 3^rd person point of view of Arminius, Matilda, Bram and Thornley, all in the present tense, each taking us to the place where Ellen’s beloved’s heart has been hidden and inching closer to nightfall when the vampires will be at their strongest.

The last part brings us to Bram’s first-person point of view 22 years later.

The atmosphere created by the authors is suffused with tension. The setting is the historical fact of an Ireland struggling against famine and devastation. It is a time of increasing unrest in Ireland, with families being unable to sustain themselves. The number of crimes is rising.

The story comes to us in bits and pieces from the journals of Bram, Thornley and Arminius. Matilda’s viewpoint comes through in the letters she writes to Nanna Crone, informing her of all that is happening. Despite knowing that she is a vampire, the siblings feel affectionate towards her.

Of all the characters, Matilda was the one I liked the most. She was feisty, unafraid to dig in a burial ground for suicides for the body of Patrick O’Cuiv. Nor does she flinch from getting her hands and shoes dirty, stomping on roaches and even touching a corpse.

I couldn’t feel the same for Bram, even though his memories dominate the book. Like Arminius, our feelings towards him are tainted by the fact that he is not unlike the undead, and that he has somehow managed to evade the undead fate.

The thing about this book that causes you to sit up and take notice is the note at the end which tells us that Bram Stoker never intended his book to be a work of fiction. He had written it as fact, and his journals provide ample evidence of that. 

When publishers in the UK demanded that he re-write the manuscript in order not to spark panic among the public at large, Bram cut out the first 101 pages of the book and significantly altered the rest to make it appear to be a work of fiction. It was something he did not like to do but did anyway just so his message would find an audience, even if that audience were to consider his message as fiction.

However, the manuscripts that he sent to publishers outside the UK, notably to Iceland etc, were markedly different and point to the veracity of this story which has been created on the basis of the journals that Bram left behind.

I liked the book. It maintained a steady note of menace which was broken only by the knowledge of the different types of vampires, good and bad. Also, the feelings of unrequited love that Dracul bore towards Ellen took away from his cold-blooded menace. Towards the end, it became a little too melodramatic.

(I received an ARC from First to Read).

Book Review: THE COLORS OF ALL THE CATTLE

Title: The Colors of All the Cattle

Author: Alexander McCall Smith
Publisher: Pantheon Books
Pages: 240

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Precious Ramotswe, the great lady detective of Botswana, has always been one of my favourites, even though I have read only one book in the series so far, and that too a decade ago. Still, like her husband Mr JLB Matekoni, who also happens to be one of the finest mechanics in Botswana, I too think very highly of her.

In this book, we see Precious being talked by her friend, Sylvia Potokwane, into standing for election to the local council. Sylvia’s contention is that if good people like her don’t contest, then bad people like Violet Sephotho will win uncontested. If Precious wins, she can prevent certain vested interests from building the Great Fun Hotel right next to a cemetery.

Meanwhile, Dr Marang, a respected doctor from Precious’ hometown, and his daughter, Constance, want Precious to take up their case. It seems that the good doctor had been knocked down by a blue car in a hit-and-run accident. The police have failed to discover the identity of the culprit, and Dr Marang wants closure.

Charlie, apprentice mechanic at Mr Maketoni’s garage, who also works as a part-time detective, faces real danger when he asks too many questions about Dr Marang’s accident.

Will the No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency solve the mystery? Will Precious win or lose the election? And would that spell the end of the agency? Read the book to find out.

On the face of it, there isn’t one tight plot; more like a string of subplots involving a silent seven-year-old boy living on Sylvia’s Orphan Farm who steals birds’ eggs to Dr Marang who suffers terribly in a hit-and-run accident, from the election to a seat on the local council to the wooing of Queenie-Queenie, a pretty girl, by Charlie, and how Hercules, her bodybuilder of a brother does a fine job of keeping overeager suitors at bay.

There are digressions into Grace Makutsi’s domestic circumstances, her husband and the business he runs, their son and even how well they treat their domestic help.

Despite the plethora of subplots, we have the satisfaction of seeing every one of them gently and resolutely tied up.

The style of writing is such that before long we find ourselves warming to all the characters, even the minor ones. The author even draws our attention to colloquialisms like “late,” which is how the characters refer to deceased people.

It was great to renew my acquaintance with Precious. A traditionally built woman, she has many qualities to recommend her. I was pleased to discover that she had modern views on the importance of boys learning to cook because, of course, they eat. What a simple yet potent argument!

The cases she solves may be simple, but there is nothing simple about Precious. She has a sense of tactfulness that she employs when handling Grace, who certainly tries Precious’ patience even as she sees herself as the person whose patience is being rigorously tested.

Grace is an interesting character. Her stories go off on a tangent. It is amusing to see Grace’s conscientiousness in preventing Fanwell from taking liberties with designations when she was even quicker to promote herself to the position of Joint MD with Precious. She also stood out for her belief in the superior advantages bestowed on her by her education from the Botswana Secretarial College.

We come to know both these women better through their marital relationships and their conversations with their respective husbands.

Fanwell, the only minor character who had no subplot in this book, proved to be endearing even in the bit role he was afforded.

There are some simple truths hidden in the pages. Never, never think that you are justified in doing something wrong just because you are trying to do something right, Precious insists, and hence she refuses to make any promises during her campaigning.

One of her observations is There are some people who smile on the outside when they are not smiling on the inside.

We learn of other homespun wisdom. There are some guests who do not knock.

Strong men do not need to throw their weight around.

Even Grace gets a chance to display her wisdom when she says, There are people who want more than their fair share of tea. This is Botswana and no matter what the complication, tea can make it better.

The omniscient narrator has a faint, very British, and affectionately patronizing attitude towards the characters. It is an attitude that is one-part annoyed, and three-part indulgent. There is an undeniable affection that we sense and imbibe.

It makes Botswana come alive to those of us who’ve never been there and know nothing about it. A smattering of its history come alive, and we become aware, through Precious and the other characters, of the simplicity of its people.

(I received an ARC from First to Read).