Book Review: The Gods of Gotham by Lyndsay Faye

Title: The Gods of Gotham
Author: Lyndsay Faye
Publisher: Amy Einhorn Books
ISBN: 978-0399158377
Genre: Thriller, Crime Fiction
Pages: 432
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4/5

It is not easy to write a good thriller and a crime novel. All the elements need to be in place – the setting, the place, the characters and the crime but of course. Everything to the finest detail – after all nothing can go amiss in such type of a genre. This is what Lyndsay Faye has effortlessly achieved in her book, “The Gods of Gotham”.

The book is set in mid-nineteenth-century New York. The city is in shambles. We are talking about 1845 New York. The Great Potato Famine had struck Ireland and thousands of Irish Catholics were surfacing in New York, adding religious turmoil to the already volatile city. There is political upheaval and radicalism. Everything seems to be changing in the city and the story is wrapped around the founding of New York City’s first police department (The Copper Stars) and the recruit and protagonist in question – Timothy Wilde.

Wilde is a luckless man. At 27, he is unlucky in love, works at a small Manhattan oyster bar, till the Great Fire (another important angle to the story) destroys his workplace, leaving him penniless and without a job. His politically connected brother gets him a job in the newly constituted police force and that’s where Timothy’s story starts off. He hopes for a career, till he stumbles on a blood-drenched child and only discovers that there is more to what meets the eye and sets out to solve the crime. With this he faces a lot of problems – both political and personal and of course solves the crimes of children being exploited by the end of the book.

The Gods of Gotham is a taut and nicely written book. To set a novel in the past is quite challenging, what is more so is to synchronize the story with the characters’ mindset and how they would behave in that culture.

The book is layered with several sub-plots: Timothy’s relationship with his brother Valentine, his devotion to his sweetheart Mercy Underhill, and more so his relationship with New York City, which Faye has done a fantastic job of describing. There were times while reading this book that I had to look up Google Images to see what New York would have looked like in those times and the descriptions could not be truer.

The mystery in the book keeps the reader going and thinking. Wilde is a likeable narrator and a competent detective for sure. Faye has managed to make him come into his own without overshadowing the other characters in the book – from the whorehouse madam to Mercy’s father to other policemen and the engaging child Bird. New York as a major part (or character) of the book, is always standing tall in the background adding the much-needed life and period-specific texture to the book.

The Gods of Gotham will keep you to the edge of your seat. It is feisty and also thrilling, describing life in 1845 at its grittiest best and paced excellently. There is a sequel in the offing and I cannot wait for it.

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Book Review: The Lost Story by Amit Goyal and Sudhanshu Gupta

Title: The Lost Story
Authors: Amit Goyal and Sudhanshu Gupta
Publisher: Grapevine India Publishers Pvt. Ltd.
ISBN: 978-9381841020
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 224
Source: Author
Rating: 3.5/5

When I was first told by Bookrack to review, “The Lost Story”, I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to. I mean, I hadn’t heard of the book at all and honestly I could not say much of it based on a synopsis. I needed to read a chapter at least to figure whether or not I wanted to review it. However, I agreed to review the book and from the time the book reached me, I could not put it down. So there went my theory of wanting to read a chapter at least. The book gripped me and took me in.

“The Lost Story” is a joint venture by Amit Goyal and Sudhanshu Gupta. It is a story of a Booker Prize Winning writer Saleem Afzal, who hasn’t written a book in the last 23 years. It is about Sandy, an aspiring young writer who gets a chance to work with him on a collection of short stories. The idea and entire premise of the book is that each of them has to write one half of a story, leaving it for the other to finish it. Together, they make their imaginations run wild, churning story after story – a tale of a haunted house, the apocalypse and its aftermath, a journey back home gone crazy, and of a young terrorist and his mentor.

As these stories are being churned, there is another story which remains unfinished – Saleem’s Lost Story. The last book he was working on. Sandy’s mind begins to question unrelentlessly, seeking answers: What is the Lost Story? What happened to Saleem while he was writing it? What is the secret behind his accident? Why won’t anyone tell Sandy anything about it?

This is the premise of the book. I liked the book. In fact, I liked it a lot. The writing was fast. The stories were crisp. The intermingling chapters of stories and the conversations and scenes of Saleem’s and Sandy’s lives were done tactfully. The authors must have pondered over the fact that how this should have worked out – and therefore the way they have written the book seems so familiar to the events that unfurl in the book (just referring to the writing style of two authors’ collaborating). Amit and Sudhanshu have kept the book simple – in terms of its language which does not require a lot from the reader and yet they do not serve all stories on a platter. The reader is often left wondering about the various possibilities at the end of each story.

At the same time, the ending was a big disappointment for me. I could not handle it. I did not like it. I wish there was more to it than the way it ended and that was the only drawback for me in the entire book. Nonetheless I enjoyed the book. It is everything that you need in a page-turner and I liked the structure and framework of the book. It is a quick flight read for sure.

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Book Review: Sister by Rosamund Lupton

Title: Sister
Author: Rosamund Lupton
Publisher: Piatkus, Hachette Book Group UK
Genre: Suspense, Thriller, Fiction
ISBN: 9780749942014
PP: 358 pages
Price: Rs. 295
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

Sister is an astounding accomplishment as a debut novel and is well worth reading. I was absorbed by Rosamund Lupton’s story of the truths we keep from our families and their desperate search for those truths once we leave them behind.

The bleak snowscape of the cover is fitting for the setting of the story, but on a deeper level it is indicative of the things before us that can remain hidden and the coldness of a search for answers. The young woman walking away from us into the wintry scene brings a splash of bright colour to the image with her read jacket. That vibrant red instinctively makes us think of blood and the chilling possibilities of what may have happened to Tess. My compliments to the design team at Piatkus for an effective cover design.

Sister is told simultaneously in the form of a letter from Beatrice to Tess and in Beatrice’s statement of events to a lawyer. Rather than being haphazard and confusing, this technique allows us to see the facts of Beatrice’s search for her sister while at the same time giving us an insight into their relationship and personalities. Lupton has managed to weave these two separate voices together to produce a coherent narrative that is thought-provoking and engaging.

Some reviewers have commented on the slower pace of Sister when compared to many thrillers. If you are looking for an action-packed thrill ride then Sister is probably not the book for you. But of you are interested in a book that will make you think and stay with you for days after you finish it, then don’t hesitate. While Sister is not your typical thriller it still fits quite comfortably into the genre, but the menace and threat is built up slowly – like an ominous shadow creeping into a bright sunny day. What I most loved about this story was that Lupton’s writing is crisp and intelligent and she has created real people in a situation that I could imagine myself into. Even now, a day after I finished the book, I find myself wondering what I would have done in Beatrice’s place. It’s this connection with the reader that I thing is especially amazing to find in a debut novel.

As Beatrice tells her story to the lawyer and her sister she undergoes a metamorphosis. Beatrice learns what is really important in her life and as her layers are stripped away the reader experiences this growth in her character firsthand. The snippets of memory shared with Tess from their childhood make the bond between them more real. And through these memories and Beatrice’s story Tess becomes as real a character as any of the others – despite the fact that we never meet her.

Sister is an accomplished debut that looks at how relationships affect us and it’s a book that will stay with you days after you finish it. I can’t wait to see what Lupton has in store for me next!

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Sister: A Novel

Book Review: The Burning Wire by Jeffery Deaver

Title: The Burning Wire
Author: Jeffery Deaver
Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton; Hachette Book Group
ISBN: 978-1-444-704280
Genre: Thriller, Crime Fiction
PP: 462 pages
Source: Publisher
Price: Rs. 295
Rating: 4/5

Jeffery Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme novels (I have read them all) have captivated me with their attention to forensic detail, interesting plots, and unerring ability to trick the reader into believing something that appears so obvious, but which really is an illusion.

Premise: One-tenth of one amp of electricity is enough to stop your heart and kill you. Your hairdryer pulls about ten amps. Scared now? I am.

Jeffery Deaver takes this simple bit of information and expands it into a thriller that you can’t put down. He’s writing at the top of his form in The Burning Wire and I loved this book. Non-stop thrills, plenty of things to be scared of, good guys and bad guys, and lots of things to learn about electricity.

Although he’s always a good writer, I’ve been disappointed with the recent Lincoln Rhyme novels and was beginning to wonder if Deaver had jumped the shark with this series, but this book may be one of the best in this series yet.

The only downside of this book is that I’m now highly aware of how much metal I touch every single day even when it’s raining and how easy it is to electrify things. This novel focuses primarily on Rhyme’s attempt to catch a villain who kills people using electricity, and secondarily on trying to catch a villain named the Watchmaker, who appeared in an earlier novel. If you did not read the earlier novel you will not really understand the Watchmaker, but doing so is not necessary for reading the current novel.

My main critique of this novel is that sometimes I felt as if I was reading a textbook on electricity. While Deaver wants the reader to understand the technical background of what the main villain is doing, he provides excessive descriptions of different aspects of electricity that serve only to interrupt the narrative and really are unnecessary. It would be like reading a novel containing a scene where a burglar alarm is disarmed, only to have the action interrupted by having one of the characters make a speech about how burglar alarms are constructed, the safeguards used to prevent their being disarmed, the different ways to overcome those safeguards, etc.

In addition, I just did not feel the same sense of excitement as in other Lincoln Rhyme novels until I was 80% through this novel. It was not until the last 20% that I recognized the trademark Deaver cleverness and misdirection, and felt that the novel’s pace had picked up–probably because by that point most of the electricity explanations were done.

Without spoiling anything, I thought that the ending was very clever, but wished that getting there could have been more interesting. All in all it was a good read.