The Lost Symbol

Starting with excitement and thrill the novel is about symbols that is threatened to be revealed to the unworthy. Promising enigma as each chapter unfolds the finale is not so worthy of the entire adventure. Though pertaining to the central theme of philosophical revelations but it has lost the realistic touch. A happy ending was not what this novel deserved and thus it remains incomplete though the story completes. A note of mourn would have correctly resonated in the final pages but curiously Brown tried to philosophize rather than keeping the hope alive. Robert Langdon is more an audience in his new adventure that uses him as a pawn used by a madman for his quest of the absolute. CIA gets involved as do a scientist and certain particular Masons trying to save a nation and a brotherhood while all keeping a vow of non-cooperation amo

ng themselves. Unrealistic yet exciting the novel takes Langdon to a journey that will be remembered only for how close he came near death.  With some novel revelations the gripping adventure failed to make its mark as lengthy philosophical debates were incorrectly placed. Personal relations seemed lesser in more than one occasions, while science that was promised remained unexplained. Destruction galore as did coincidences foiling the evil at each step. Infact Langdon seemed only required for a single instance as several Masons proved to be more qualified symbologists. Thus the novel is a good adventure but clearly not one of the best.

The Twelfth Card

This had been the first Lincoln Rhyme novel that I read. I'd watched Bone Collector a long way back but not until (not so) recently I got to know that the character is recurrent and appears in a series. Well after that I didn't delay in getting one of the novels, chosen arbitrarily in the form of what came in my hand first, as Bone Collector had made a lasting impression on me. There is a statment for the author made by People on the cover of the book describing him as the master of ticking-bomb suspebse. Well I didn't understand its meaning fully till I got through some of the real edge-of-the-seat sequences depicted in the book and after that I couldn't agree more with the phrase for Deavers, a real master of suspense.

After Thorndyke and some of the medical thrillers of Robin Cook I can't find anybody close to this forensic investigator and Amelia Sachs.
The curious way in which a school goer becomes the target of a master killer starts Lincoln in the track of an age old crime and as the mastermind does all to mislead the investigators, Sachs and Rhyme gets back to him in style along with the NYPD. With several plots and twists, the novel gets more and more exciting as it proceeds. It seems Lincoln's scientific bend of mind with proper reasoning profiles the criminals accurately and it remains for the force to nab him. But the foe becomes increasingly shrewder and thus Rhyme is challenged more than ever. The readers will thus enjoy the book to the fullest that promises slight sentiments for the comleteness that it is due.

Miss Marple The Complete Short Stories

•   From The Thirteen Problems
• The Tuesday Night club
• The Idol House of Astarte
• Ingots of Gold
• The Bloodstained Pavement
• Motive v Opportunity
• The Thumb Mark of St Peter
• The Blue Germanium
• The Companion
• The Four Suspects
• A Christmas Tragedy
• The Herb of Death
• The Affair at the Bungalow
• Death by Drowning

• From Miss Marple's Final Cases
• Miss Marple Tells a Story
• Strange Jest
• Tape-Measure Murder
• The Case of the Caretaker
• The Case of the Perfect Maid
• Sanctuary
• From The Adventures of the Christmas Pudding
• Greenshaw's Folly

Harper Collins' effort for the complete short story collection of Christie's Miss Marple along with the auhtoress' introduction of the character, had been a jewel of my collection as the aged spinster had gradually become a favourite as I grew up. Initially her stories seemed boring to me but with maturity I found them interesting in the sense of the unique utilization of analogy in solving problems. This is not only very true but the tend to generalize on the human nature and amplifying or attenuating the supposed effects according to the ambient conditions indicates the scientific or more correctly the statistical way of dealing with problems. This aspect had been the most appealing in Miss Marple's adventures. The surrounding may be a village but her  hypothesis applied to more apparently bizzare activities in the cities as well.

Thus whether it was a complicated murder mystery or a nonchalant remark or some unusual theft, everybody who knew Miss Marple also knew that she had the solution that stumped others. Her simple way of approaching the problem and comparing it with the parallel that happened in St. Mary Mead where she spent the most of her life almost always resulted in the truth that lay hidden from the worldly folks. Her enthralling art of deduction and her firm belief in punishing the evil made her a nemesis to all evil near her. In many ways she remains the average kind hearted village elder - fussy, an infrequent babbler, shrewd but good at heart, all ears to the village scandals. But underneath her apparent older self, the energetic analyst remains dormant to the public. Thus when the others see her busy with her sewing - her only established hobby - underneath she may be deducing knowledge from the facts strewn here and there. Thus the chief constables and the seekers of justice takes the help from this grand old lady - their surer hope for the truth - whenever a baffling mystery challenges the limit of their wisdom.