It has been a long time indeed, since I last completed a novel. It’s just that I couldn’t get enough time to do so. Anyways I was seriously missing out the fun of critiquing a book for you, imaginary reader, so that I can impose my viewpoints down your gut and make you dance to my tune!!
Jokes apart, the book that I have recently read was indeed 100% pure and refined pleasure. I was taken to a helluva of a ride by Robert Ellis in his crime blockbuster ‘The Lost Witness’.
I think I might have told you back then, that I am a pesky reader, though I myself try to woo potential hosts with my ‘suckers-of-words’, I am not taken to new writers. In other words, I won’t put money on them. But if someone else had bought the book, and it was lying innocuously in their cupboard, it would hardly take me a nano second to pounce on it. Pounce on it, I did- that too in my cousin’s cupboard. She was more than happy to give me the book- we sort of had a book barter system, though I don’t allow her to come anywhere 10 feet near my Harry Potters and Isaac Asimovs.
So getting back to the point, I borrowed this book from her. Though of course, it laid there on my table for many days, unread- I finally found time to leaf through its pages and bask in the radiation of the black hole of a yarn that Mr. Ellis had woven.
Lena Gamble, a disgraced homicide detective is finally assigned a real case after putting in long hours on menial degrading tasks as she had fallen out of luck with her fellow patrolmen due to a controversial case in the past. So she of course smells a rotten fish, but decides to go along, as though inspite of the trap, she truly wants to do the job for which she had signed up for. Soon she gets sucked in the mystery surrounding the gruesome murder of 25 year old Jennifer McBride. As she delves deeper into the case, new evidence crop up every hour. Battling loose ends, elusive witnesses and a leash from the top of echelon of the police department, she teams up with Stan Rhodes to reach down to the bottom of it all. But the way down is murky and waylaid with all type of dangers. Soon enough, her world is turned upside down as the body count goes on increasing and she is nowhere near finding the murderer.
I think Robert Ellis firmly believes in ‘A twist per chapter’ as I found at the end of each and every chapter of the book boasting of a surprising turn that left me completely baffled by the sheer immensity of the intricacies involved.
As my sister told, ‘It’s all out in the end,’- I firmly advice you to beat down your desire to take a sneak-peek in those last fire cracking pages before you reach there. I assure you that you would enjoy the right.
You might say that I haven’t read many crime novels barring Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes. So this comes as a novel experience for me. This book indeed is a barnburner.
I seriously recommend this book for your happy reading in the weekend. Hope you enjoy it…
Alienman 