030. Rasputin’s Revenge (2003).

Rasputin’s Revenge by John Lescroart (2003).

         

 2^nd adventure of Auguste Lupa, a son of God himself Sherlock Holmes!!

THE SHERLOCK HOLMES!!

And 

He is as interesting and almost as good as his dad.

What more can you possibly ask for?

P

layers. – Auguste Lupa.   Not just a great detective (like his dad), but also he is the best spy in Europe (like his uncle, Mycroft).

And, get this, one of the most respected chefs in the world!! Who would ever though that Holmes DNA can generate a great chef? Just Brilliant! 

This guy has an appetite of a giant elephant and drains dark beers like they are the bubbled water. Naturally, he has the size of his uncle (big in every direction) and of course attitude/brain of his dad.

Sherlock’s mainline is “Elementary”, Lupa has “Satisfactory”. 

Guess who his mom is? 

THE WOMAN!! Who else?

He is the living proof of the fact that Sherlock DID have a personal life. I guess even God needs a break. 

Jules Giraud.   Holms has Watson. Lupa, Giraud.

They, Watson and Giraud, are almost identical, except Giraud has a daughter and he is not a doctor but an ambassador/and a teacher. 

                                             

Rasputin. A charismatic monk who has a firm handle on a lot of royals, especially Queen, the wife of Czar.

He talks with staccato rumbling which sounds insane but very effective for convincing people that he is a son of God for real.

It is not clear what he intended to do with his power up until very end, but he is the most powerful and feared figure in Russia and he acts and speaks like one.

Others. There are whole bunch of characters based on real history figures.

Russian Czar, Nicolas Romanov, and his wife, Alexandra and their kids, Olga, Tatiana, Marie, Anastasia, Alexis and Alyosha. And then several generals and husbands and cousins of Czar’s daughters who all have long unpronounceable names. In fact, I think other than Lupa and his company, all the rest are based on real characters.

Then, of course, when things going south, Lupa has the best help any human can possibly find: Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

P

lace. –A truly magnificent city of St. Petersburg which was and still is called “Venice of Russia” for its beautiful buildings and lovely canals. Except that its street is wider than Venice and as modern as Paris. 

Almost all events has taken place in Winter Palace which is according to Geraud, so vast it takes him 20 mins to just cross the hall and has more than 20 wings. The place is also stacked with luxuries like piles of Oriental rugs and tons of flowers which were imported from the other side of Russia with train just please the Queen and royals. No wonder they all taken down by mobs at the end.

However, the outside of the palace has totally different story. It’s winter time and the war is going on forever. People are angry, hungry and desperately want the change. You can practically smell the revolution in the air.

P

lot. – Year is 1916. The war is raging on in the every frontline of Europe.  And the Western Allies need Russia to keep fighting until US decides to join the war. However, Czar is contemplating the peace agreement with German because he is sick of fighting. Out of desperation, France which is about to lose everything sends money and weapons to Russia trying desperately to persuade Czar to continue his campaign against Germany. This incredibly important job is handed to Geraud the ambassador and he is on his way to the winter garden at St. Petersburg.

In the winter garden, someone is killing people close to Czar to mentally put pressure on him. It somehow works and Czar is getting really tired of all the conflict. In order to persuade czar to continue fighting Germans, Geraud has to find the killer before Czar put a stop to the war. And Lupa is there to solve the mystery and help Geraud fulfill his desperate mission.

V

erdict. –This book is ultimate tribute to the Sherlock Holmes fan. I’ve read quite a few Holmes books written not by Dolye, but this ranks at one of the top spots simply because Lescroart comes up with something I never ever expected: his son.

I mean, in order to have a kid, you have to have a girl friend or wife and have to spend sometime with her and that means relationship and the relationship is the absolutely the last thing any Sherlock Holmes fans with right mind would expect from the master. I mean, Sherlock is a logical monster/machine!! And machine is not supposed to have a pet or write a love letter or get involved with woman!! But then here you go. John Lescroart is apparently much better man than I am.

The interaction between Lupa and Sherlock is one for the ages, for Sherlock Holmes fans, anyway.

Really entertaining book with Russian history back ground 

and 

simply MUST for Holmes fan.

029. The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy(1979).

The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979).

          

 This is one of these book that makes you keep chuckling from page one to the very last sentence.

Funny, gentle, enormously creative

And

thoroughly entertaining,

this is a pure MASTERPIECE!!

P

layers. – Arthur Dent.   Our hero. Sort of. One of only two remaining members of the planet Earth.

He is a really unique character in this book. He is not only an extremely ordinary guy but also possibly the only normal living creature in entire Galaxy created by Douglas Adams.

Not just that, even if he is the only human being from this planet (other than Trillian) and is supposed to be the main guy, he is actually NOT!! He just disappeared from the story line around the middle part and in the second book, "The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe", he is even more obscure!!

One thing right about him is that even if he is ordinary or maybe because of that,  he is HIRARIOUS!! he is just outrageously funny. You see, being normal is not right in this book. He just doesn't fit in. Cool.

Ford Perfect.   His cover is an out of work actor on Earth, but he is actually an alien. 

Arthur’s best friend and also from galaxy far far away called Betelgeuse.

He confesses his identity, an alien and hitchhiker, to Arthur in the beginning of the book right after when the Earth was blown away by Bogons.

He is a galactic traveler and a part time researcher for the electrical book-a-like device called “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” which he carries with him everywhere.

Also for an alien, he is relatively sane. 

       

Trillian. The other surviving member of the planet Earth. She actually left Earth about 6 month ago with Zaphod just for the heck of it.

A vaguely Arabic looking , slim, darkish girl with long black hair. She has no reason to be in this book because she does nothing. But then what do I know…..

Zaphod Beeblebrox.   The famous ZAPHOD BEEBLEBROX!!

He is 200 yrs old and an adventurer and ex-hippy and crook..etc.

Also, the president of the one and only all mighty Imperial Galactic Government, whose job does hold no power at all and is actually meant to attract all the attention away from it. And being an unpredictable crazy alien, he is amazingly good at his job!!

He intentionally freezes part of his brain so that he can act and think with no coherence. He makes all his judgments with either instinct or impulse and even if he is actually incredibly smart, stays unpredictable and crazy. 

He has one smaller head attached to his shoulder and now has one more extra arm under his right one to help improve his ski-boxing, whatever that is.

One of the best characters ever created in 20^th century.

Marvin.   The first really high quality ( personality prototype, they called) robot with exceptionally large mind (50000 times smarter then humans). And that naturally makes him a philosopher who keeps wondering the meaning of life (as a super intelligent robot).

All of above make Marvin manically depressed and he is completely aware of it.

Not just that, he, in return, depresses every kind of species(including robots) he happens to chat with. Kind of like anti-psychologist. He is without a choice, so spectacularly funny. 

He calls himself “PARANOID ANDROID”.

The best character in this book

and

One of the best characters ever created in 20^th century.

Vogons.   Barbaric, powerful, bad-tempered, dumb, stubborn, bureaucratic and extremely ugly aliens from planet Vogsphere.

They somehow evolved out of the planet and migrated to Megabrantic Cluster, the political hub of the galaxy and took over the galactic civil service.

They are the one who wipe out Earth for some stupid bureaucratic reason.

They are run by “Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz” the king of them all.

Heart Of Gold.   A spaceship powered by “The Infinite improbability Drive (?) ” which is discovered not by the committees of top physicians of entire universe, but by the student who was ordered to sweep the floor after the party by accident.

It has its own mind and tries really hard to please everyone!!

And for “The Infinite improbability Drive ”, just read the book. I still couldn’t figure it out yet.

P

lace. –Earth for the first 10 pages till Vogons blow it away. Then from there, to the unlimited space called Galaxy!!

In this book, the crews go to long forgotten treasure planet called Magrathea which once build the custom designed planet for the outrageously rich aliens and meet its only functioning resident Slartibartfast who is also one of the prized designers of the planet.

And he reveals all the background knowledge of how the earth was built and who own it.

Then at the end of the book, the crew head to the “The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe” for a bite.

P

lot. – On ordinary Thursday (no specific date is given), Arthur’s home is about to bulldozed for the interstate bypass. Two minutes later, the earth follows the same path (demolition!) for a hyperspace express route by space alien Vogons of the Galactic hyperspace planning council.

From there, Arthur’s epic quest (?) to bring back his beloved home and home planet begins, I think. At least I hope that’s the story for the rest of the series because so far with first two books (this one and the next one called “The Restaurant at the end of universe”), nothing really happens for the story wise. Other than, of course, tons of jokes and incredibly funny aliens.

V

erdict. –This is not your regular Si-Fi book. For one, nobody would read this book for the story ‘cause entire storyline could fit into one paragraph as you can see above. Neither for the characters ‘cause other than Marvin and maybe Zaphod, there is not much here.

However what this book has is everything else. Flood of concepts, ideas, everything!!

You see, because Douglas Adams spent years creating the entire universe with all kinds of rules, planets and creatures, all he had to do after inventing the space was just place a few characters in it and see what developed. And since he was Monty Phyton kind of funny guy, he based everything he created on JOKES!! 

Also, it just happened that Douglas Adams was a writer with a tremendous talent, he not just pulled out this amazing task of creating Galaxy with nothing but JOKES, he thrived on it and made his entire comfortable-living out of this ONE SERIES ( actually, a trilogy with five books and nobody is sure why he called it trilogy since there are five books all together and he was working on the sixth volume when he passed away.). 

From top to bottom, this book is filled with brilliant but absolutely stupid imaginations.

One of a kind masterpiece that everyone should read and re-read.

Also

 the best entertainment money can buy!! Ever!!

028. City of Tiny Lights (2005).

City of Tiny Lights by Patrick Neate (2005).

         

 London’s best and only Ugandan-Indian private eye,

Tommy Akhtar’s first book.

He is a handsome, tough, smart and hard-drinking war-veteran

Who believes in karma. 

And

even after all these years of troubles and near death experiences,

still don’t know how to  draw the line.

P

layers. – Tommy Akhtar.   The private eye.

Ex-soldier. When he was young, he for no apparent reason just joined the army and went to Afghan civil war shooting down Russians with CIA which earned him certain amount of respect in his neighbor.

After the war, he had suffered with war-related trauma for couple of years staying at home and doing nothing. 

Now, he is making decent living by doing all the stuffs that private eye is supposed to be doing, up until a prostitute named Melody walks into his tiny office.

As a narrator of this book, Tommy gives his opinion of everything (from prostitutes, Mid East politic to immigration and terrorists) from immigrant’s point of view. His voice, which is accurate, sharp, cynical yet funny as hell, gives us a lot of insight 

knowledge of what is London street made of and how the world is working.

If only you can get past his heavy London slang…

Farzad.   Tommy’s father. One of these old, drunken, grumpy wise man.

He used to be a lot of things but now, he settle down to become a relatively famous painter who keeps painting nothing but his late-wife with different styles and colors.

A very toght man who made lots of enemies when he was young, but now he just drinks and paints all day.

Others. There are a few interesting characters here. Tommy’s brother, Gundappa, who owns small Taxi company, is an total ass. Couple of his employees, Swiss Chris and Big John, are both crazy and hilarious. Swiss Chris has a dig the size of big banana and enormously proud of it, of course. And Big John literally shits like an elephant and constantly plugging his washroom, driving his wife crazy!!

Then there is Melody, 22 yrs hooker with huge boob job, Av who is his neighbour’s son and wannabe gangster, Carl Donnelly who is his cop friend. 

Also notable is an inspiring terrorist Al-Dubayan who after years of doing nothing essential but talking funny, finally decides to live up to his reputation as a world’s most notorious terrorist.

P

lace. –London, England, the city of tiny lights, where cops, gangs, prostitutes, politicians and terrorists all co-exist in the same pot called multiculturalism. 

The city street portrayed here is gritty, grimy and totally unfair to regular citizens.

But good for the readers because it is filled with wild peoples with all sort of different background which of course makes a great reading meterial.

P

lot. – You can read this book as a regular mystery but there is more than that in here. It is kind of book where the story is just there to supply the platform to write something other than the actual plot line.

As a sharp Ugandan-Indian detective, Tommy has a lot in his mind and never hesitates to express his feeling for everything surrounds him: from big things like culture, history, war, politics, immigration to tiny stuffs like the best way to get rid of hangover or how to spot pimp and things like that. He also have things for the street girls and passionately talks about the origin of popular prostitute names and where they come from. This book is half essay, one quarter history lesson and mystery the rest.

OK. Here is the basic storyline.

1.      A prostitute, Melody, is looking for her roommate, also a prostitute name Natasha, who is missing after the last gig.

2.      A former MP who paid for her roommate’s service got brutally murdered with a broody HAMMER!!

3.      From there, slowly but surely, it reaches outrageous but quite realistic climax.

4.      And then, as if that is not shocking enough, there is one more matter to tie up before the final “peaceful” ending. The ending is absolutely fantastic!!

                    

V

erdict. –This book is more about social study than mystery it claims to be. Over half of the book is filled with information that has nothing to do with the story but THAT is the reason why this book notched Critics Award in 2004, I think. 

The information contained here is quite unique. If you like to know about immigrants’ life story in London or how to manage successful terrorist units in Britain, just pick up this book. Of course, this book is much more than that: it actually finishes with crazy ending at the end which is shocking and hilarious at the same time. Exactly my kind of book.

The only problem I had was that British has tendency to give away literary award to the writers who use lots of street language. Which is OK except that for non British guy like me, it takes while to get use to the language they are speaking. It takes me about 30 pages to get the feel for Tommy’s dialogue and after that, it was smooth ride.

 

This book is not for everyone but if you are tired of just plain good old mystery and looking for little more feed for your intelligent side, this book will help you understand little better on what is going on in the world inside out. 

And don’t forget. It has nice ending and the spectacular climax!! before that.

Overall, very good book to spend a few days.

027. Dearly Devoted Dexter (2005).

Dearly Devoted Dexter by Jeff Lindsay (2005).

          

 The weirdest detective of entire world.

The true justice who turns villains into victims, 

literally chops them off into pieces,

sending them to what he called “Dreamland”. 

Very very Cool.

P

layers. – Dexter Morgan.   The world’s only known serial killer.

Since all the serial killers try really hard to hide their activities, it requires true Sherlock-like ability to track them down and that's what our man Dexter has: uncanny sense to identify the fellow serial killers.

He has a day job working as a forensic in Miami Police Dept. Being a serial killer himself, he excels at his job as a blood analyst. At night, he turns into his other self, Dark Passenger.

Due to an unbelievable insanity in his early age (bloody murder tragedy), he is completely devoid of emotion/empathy and is well aware of it. Therefore, whatever expression he wears on his face is carefully prepared acting, a complete fake!!

Because of this, Dexter is constantly debating in his head what kind of FACE he has to flash on his face or what to say depending on the situations.

He collects a drop of blood from his “PLAYMATES (victims)” to small glass panels, and the collection reaches 42 at the end of this book. For our delights, Miami is flourishing with psychopaths!!

Harry Morgan.   Dexter’s step father. He adopted Dexter at 7 and being a great cop, immediately found out Dexter’s need. Once he realized there was no way to deter Dexter’s taste, he trained Dexter to channel his urge toward only certain kind of people,  people who could not be reached by the law. Dexter calls it Harry’s Law and follows it religiously no matter what.

He loved Dexter and truly cared for him and is the only reason why Dexter is surviving in this world. 

Dexter only puts on a human face because he wants to be like Harry.

Debora. Dexter’s sister. The only living human being who knows what Dexter is made out of.

Like her father, Harry, she is good/tough cop.

Rita. Dexter’s girl friend and a future wife. A mother of two: Cody(6) and Astor(8). 

At some point in his “fake” human life, Dexter realized that in order to look normal, he needed a girl friend for cover and he found a perfect answer in Rita who was as much damaged inside as Dexter.

Sergeant Doakes. Every superhero needs archenemy and he is Dexter’s. A cop, but a cold killer inside.

P

lace. – Miami, the land where everyone comes to die, according to Dexter.

Hot and humid air and party-every-night atmosphere is just perfect for Dexter and his Night-Dance.

Also, being a center for drug trafficking business in East-coast helps Dexter find his next playmates relatively easy because there are unlimited supply of weirdoes and monsters and pedophiles and on and on….

P

lot. – There is a new and brilliant serial killer in town whose technique makes even mighty Dexter jealous.

All Dexter wants to do is track down the killer and “play” with him, but the story gets complicated when a hot shot FBI agent who is here to take care of the killer starts dating with his sister and his archenemy Sergeant Doakes is on his trail 24/7. 

So Dexter has to suppress his urge and learn to work with Debora’s boy friend(FBI) and also acts like normal human in front of Doakes’ surveillance. On top of this, Dexter has to catch the killer before FBI’s so that he can have true fun with him. This book is so good.

                    

V

erdict. –A truly remarkable work of art.

A reverse Sherlock Holmes who locates and kills his client before he/she inflicts more damages to the society. Sherlock tracks down the bad guys and put them away in jail, whereas Dexter makes takeout menus out of bad guys and put them away in his secret burying ground under the sea. And they are both awesome.

Much funnier and darker than TV series.

Dexter’s view of society and human behavior is so completely off the mark, yet accurate, in spite of all the gore, this could be the funniest mystery I’ve ever read. Serious.