Book Review: The Snowman

The Snowman

~Jo Nesbo

What makes a great crime-fiction thriller? A solid plot, mind-boggling twists, a spine-chilling narrative and an edge-of-the-seat climax. Jo Nesbo’s ‘The Snowman’ rates 7 on 10 on those parameters, and 9.5 if judged only on the first.

One fine morning 10-year-old Jason finds a snowman in his garden. While his mother compliments him for making the “big snowman”, he wonders why it is facing the house and not the road. The same night, his mother disappears, and her scarf is found tied around the snowman’s neck.

Inspector Harry Hole believes that there is more to the case than simply a missing person. As Harry looks deeper in the case, he discovers that a startling number of married women, who had kids, had gone missing without a trace over the last decade. The serial killer had taken one victim a year, each on the first day of the snow. And then, another woman disappears, except this time, her head is found atop a snowman built in the woods near her house. Why is the killer changing patterns now and killing more often? And, why has the snowman started leaving body parts behind? Are the victims random? What is that connects them?

The search for the snowman takes Harry and his colleague Katrine Bratt to Bergen, the scene of the first crime. Eleven years ago, Laila Aasen was murdered; her body cut in so many tiny pieces that it was difficult for the police to even determine the gender. The inspector in-charge then was Gert Rafto, who was, Harry thought, his “spiritual doppelganger”. Rafto had interrogated Laila’s friend Onny Hetland, right before she disappeared. Rafto, himself, was the next one to vanish. The Bergen police believe that Rafto murdered Laila and Onny, and then committed suicide. Is that true? What’s the connection between Rafto and the snowman?

As Harry untwines mangled clues, he feels that the killer has something personal against him, and is somehow keeping an eye on him. Another woman dies, and the snowman slips from Harry’s fingers yet again. If Harry doesn’t stop the snowman soon, he would strike again, and this time, the stakes may be much higher.

‘The Snowman’ is the seventh Harry Hole novel. There are some references to cases and characters of the previous books, but they are not integral to the plot. Nesbo’s narrative is racy and bound to keep you hooked right until the nail-biting climax. Ardent crime-fiction fans may be able to guess the killer in the first half of the book. However, the true mark of the book lies in its plot, which is well laid, to say the least.

While the story finds strength in its plot, it loses some with the apparent twists (SPOILER ALERT: for example, why would Nesbo try to show a woman as the snowman, when in two previous chapters he made it clear that the killer was a man). The book has a dash of macabre, several good action sequences, and a few memorable characters. All in all, it’s a great read.

Albatross 'n Phoenix

Troubles of a troubled time,
Questions queue up,
Answers unclear 'n without rhyme,
Nostalgia and guilt sup,
On dreams 'n emotions, morphing,
Can you hurt and sing?
More questions, accusing eyes,
Stares, pointed fingers, 'The lies!'
What do we answer? Answer!
Let me talk, help, please,
Don't talk, that helps, please!
Let me crumble and burn,
Life's lessons, I learn.
One day, everything will be fine,
I will rise anew, and,
Take back happiness, that's mine.

#100DisbalancedThoughts

Book Review: The Silkworm

The Silkworm
~Robert Galbraith (J K Rowling)

Owen Quine, an author with just one successful novel to his credit and a penchant for drama, disappears soon after writing a book – Bombyx Mori (Latin for silkworm). Written in his usual gothic and surreal style, the book contains insulting pen-portraits of all people acquainted with Quine, including who’s who of the publishing world. In the chaos that ensues, nobody, except his wife, seems to be bothered about the missing author.

Quine’s wife, Leonora, hires private detective Cormoran Strike (of the Lula Landry fame) to find her husband. She thinks he has gone to a writer’s retreat, as he often goes out by himself (“because he is a writer”), and she is reluctant to call police as the last time she had done that, Quine had been very angry (he had been found with “a friend” in a hotel).

As Strike starts investigating, the seemingly simple case of a missing man becomes murkier. A lot of people had motive to harm the writer: the head of his publishing house, Daniel Chard, his agent, Elizabeth Tassel, his editor, Jerry Waldergrave, his contemporary and much famous author, Michael Fancourt, his mistress and her friend Kathryn and Pippa.

And then, Strike finds Quine– his guts carved out, acid poured over the entire body and seven sets of plates and cutlery arranged around his corpse, like seven people had feasted on his intestines.

The case is taken over by cops and the person-in-charge is Anstis. He is convinced that Leonora is the murderer. It becomes a race against time for Strike to save his client and expose the cold-blooded murderer lurking around in the society.

Helping Strike is his very able and enthusiastic secretary Robin. She is eager to prove her competence, and at the same time she is dealing with a strenuous relationship with her fiancé. The Silkworm, a sequel to The Cuckoo’s Calling, also throws more light into Strike’s past and his relationship with his family. The narrative is not racy, but manages to hold your interest with the array of interesting and memorable characters, and plot twists. The plot is better than that of its prequel and this is a must-read for all mystery lovers and Rowling fans.

From a wanderer

Wave after wave washes ashore, 
Sea swells, the rising tide, 
I, a sojourner, stand on the side, 
Letting it wash over me, 
Sea breeze, time, life, the tide, 
Weather me, or take me adrift, 
But before oblivion swallows, 
Let me matter, just a little bit.

Tiny Tales #1

'What did the falling meteors say?'
'That some things in life are meant to last only for a few moments. Their beauty lies in brevity.'🌌

Train Of Thoughts

Under the bright afternoon sun, a train left Mumbai station, chugging on familiar tracks that led it to Delhi. Inside, snacks were served, tickets checked and a lull settled over the passengers. In one of the compartments, a young woman sat facing the window, lost in thoughts. At some point, instead of looking through the window, she started gazing at it. The train had moved past the city, suburbs, farms and was now crossing a river. Maybe it was when she had leaned to look at the river, trying to spot fishes, that she noticed a narrow brown strip stretched across the bottom of the window. 

At first glance, it seemed like an art work, a landscape captured against sepia backdrop, like the sun was setting on a forest. It was beautiful. She admired the patience of the artist who must have painstakingly painted minuscule trees, or maybe it was printed. Simultaneously, a voice in her head questioned if the Railways would ever actually paste strips of art on windows of a daily train. She leaned closer and realized that it was actually a strip of brown tape which had cracks that had appeared like trees, and at some places there were tiny patches of discolouration, leaving a tinge of blue.

'Ah! Silly me!' she thought. But the disappointment was short lived.

As she gazed at the pattern of cracks, a story appeared. It seemed like a view of a forest at a time when the sun has not quite set. At one place, there were a few diagonal cracks that looked like a man holding an axe above his head, leaning back, about to strike at a tree. Further ahead were two humans – a couple – holding hands, running away. A blue patch at the spot, made it look like they were walking into the sunset, having traversed through the forest. Perhaps, the man with the axe was not cutting trees but was chasing the couple to kill them and was striking the tree out of frustration as they had escaped. Or, he was helping them, cutting trees to block the way of their pursuers. Maybe the couple had eloped and the villagers, with misplaced sense of honour, were looking for them. But love had triumphed, they were walking into the sunset. They had escaped. At least for now.

And then, she glanced out of the window. The sun was setting, and the sky was more yellow than blue, very like the sepia background of the tape. She let out an inaudible gasp. The train was moving past a lush of trees, strikingly similar to the ones on the tape. How many times has this train crossed this route? It was a daily train to Delhi. Maybe it had witnessed something on one of its journeys which got imbibed on the tape as a memory, like it had clicked a picture, or painted one. Maybe there were other stories on other windows of the train. As it sped past the greenery, it would have mutely glimpsed parts of many stories. Did they all have happy endings? Or were there horrors too? Humans being human, or not-so-human? What did it see? Did it witness drudgery of everyday life, daily struggles of average humans, or were there extraordinary moments, too?

'Soup?'

Breaking out of the reverie, she looked about and saw an attendant offering her a tray. She looked back at the window. The sun had set, the pattern was no longer visible. She sighed, turned around and took the tray.

Play Review: Arth

Play: Arth
Director: Priyanka Pathak

I have not seen the 1982 critically acclaimed movie ‘Arth’, which was directed by Mahesh Bhatt. I did see its theatrical adaptation, directed by Priyanka Pathak, at SRC as part of Marasim festival on Sunday.

The play opens with Pooja (Padashree C R) sitting in the middle of the stage with a plate in front of her, apparently waiting. Enters Inder (Imran Zahid), her husband, making excuses for being late. As Inder, Imran seems awkward. It looked like he wanted to be somewhere else, but instead got stuck on the stage and forced to say the dialogues. Padashree seemed to have a sore throat and she, too, appeared to be just saying the dialogues she had rehearsed several times and moving as she had been told. The scene looked staged, unnatural and awkward. There was no chemistry between the two leads.

If I thought, the play would become any better as the story proceeded, I was sorely disappointed. While Padashree did get in the character and her performance picked up, it remained average. Imran was a disappointment throughout and made all the scenes he was in, seem unnatural. Unfortunately, being the male lead, he was in most of the scenes. However, the second female lead- Kavita (Moon Moon Singh) acted really well and all the supporting cast, particularly the bai (Rinki Singh) and Raj (Rahul Dhir) were also quite good. But they were in so few scenes that they failed to salvage the play. It wasn’t just the acting that made it one of the worst plays I have ever seen. It was everything – the set, props, music and, worst of all, the story.

The set looked pretty at first. There were three groups of lamps hanging low and with them were a set of white frames, which looked like photo frames. In the first and the last scene, the left side white frames played a clip of blinking eyes, the significance of which I failed to understand. The other frame was hardly used. There was also a scene in which Pooja moved to a hostel and her roommate was sitting on blocks of what looked like large gifts (or rather they were gift-wrapped blocks). Maybe there was deep intellectual or abstract meaning to all this that I failed to comprehend. But surely, there was no excuse for the absurd music which often missed cues, starting and ending abruptly. Some lyrics of the movie songs were used, but they miserably failed to add either to the scene or story.

As for the story, nothing gets established and the audience is left with a lot to assume. There is no flow to the story, like it was adaption of the unedited version of the movie, which left it with two-three good scenes and the rest of the rejected reel. In the original story, as per Wikipedia, Pooja, after being abandoned by her husband who chooses to stay with Kavita, is proposed by Raj but she rejects him. The bai kills her husband when he spends the money she was saving to educate her daughter on his mistress and she goes to jail. She leaves her daughter with Pooja who finds a new meaning – ‘Arth’ – to her life. In the play, Raj’s proposing and the bai’s story are left out. It ends with Inder returning to Pooja after Kavita ditches him and Pooja saying, “What if we were in each other’s shoes, what would you have done?” The light goes out, and for a moment I thought it was a technical glitch, but the actors go off stage and then suddenly the entire cast comes on stage for the role-call. It made no sense. If I were Mahesh Bhatt, I would probably sue them.

My friend, who had seen the movie, said the scenes were replicated from the movie, except the movie had much more depth and much better performance. The play was a waste of money and time.