What more can I say about the most saleable English novel author in India. Afterall everyone loves to hate him but never misses a chance to read his books. It is like those trash movies, that are so bad that, everyone bad mouths about it and out of curiosity to see how bad it is, everyone eventually watches it and makes the movie a blockbuster!! Ditto goes for his books as well. The example is as crude as it gets, for his books are not that bad. He has a select set of audience and he caters to them. Whether the majority of the population agrees or not has never been his problem. This time, truth be told, he has tried something quite different from his previous novels – a murder mystery. His last one was “Girl in room number 105” which again dealt with exactly same premise of a lover girl calling her lover boy to her room, only for him to get framed for her murder. This time, the fiancée calls for her fiancé only for him to see her fall to her death. But considerably better treatment than the previous attempt. The twist in the end was decent enough to merit a movie script or at least a short film. Biggest plus of CB is that his language is so simple and relatable, anyone with a reasonable knowledge of English can feel connected to the plot and story line, that is mostly rooted in India. He does cater to his audience by indulging in fat shaming, name calling, mix of Punjabi, hindi dialogues, relatable characterization and blog style language where the story is driven mostly via conversation. He sticks dutifully to the template that has worked well for him all this while and what I felt was this book was a much better attempt as compared to any of his last several ones. The investigation sections are quite juvenile and would put Hardy boys or Famous Five to shame. But the twist at the end was quite decent. Quite racy as well. Would definitely recommend for CB fans, who would’ve anyway lapped it up by now 😊
Michael Crichton along with Arthur Hailey is my favorite author. It gives immense thrill to read their books and their storylines are full of insights on the industry or genre or the institution about which the premise may be based, almost like reading a subject matter book but interestingly written in simple language which can be followed by laymen. I remember reading this book sometime around my college first year or may be bit earlier around that time. It was obviously a hard copy and was shared with me by a school mate of mine, who was also the one who introduced me to Asimov. He gave me "Prelude to Foundation" that i read for almost an year. "Timeline" was intriguing and kept me interested sheerly by its concept of time travel and i was smitten by the thought process when i read it first. This time, co-incidentally, i was also watching the movie based on the same story in parallel and somehow both the book and the adaptation were disappointing! I can understand...
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