Review #718: Sidney Sheldon’s The Silent Widow by Tilly Bagshawe

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


“Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.”

----Mark Twain

Tilly Bagshawe, the New York Times bestselling author, is back with a bang with another gripping Sidney Sheldon mystery called, The Silent Widow. This story revolves around a top shot psychiatrist, whose husband died in a car crash a year ago, and is still in grief, but soon her patients and acquaintances are dropping dead like flies, and the local police mark the poor widow as the prime suspect, even though her life too is in danger. Eventually forcing her to take help of a local PI, who uncovers a lot of dirt about a missing girl case 10 years ago to her husband's tragic death to the serial killings of her patients, which might even make him a victim out of it.

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Review #686: East of Hounslow by Khurrum Rahman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


“Everyone’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s really an easy way: Stop participating in it.”

----Noam Chomsky

Khurrum Rahman, a Pakistan-born, British author, has penned a pot-boiling thriller, East of Hounslow that revolves around a low-key 30-something Muslim drug dealer, who still lives with his mum in the British town, Hounslow, who is not very religious, yet for the sake of religion, he attends the Friday prayers at a local mosque, but little did he knew that he has been on the radar of MI5 for a very long time, so when he loses the deadly supplier's money, this drug dealer gets caught up as a pawn in the war between religious extremists who wants the world to teach a lesson in the name of Allah and the MI5's one-man team who wants to stop the jihadists at any cost.

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Review #571: Sirens by Joseph Knox

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


“After all, it's one thing to run away when someone's chasing you. It's entirely another to be running all alone.”

----Jennifer E. Smith

Joseph Knox, an English author, pens his debut crime fiction, Sirens in which the author weaves a bone-chilling and terribly horrifying yet honest tale set against the ugliest and grimy backdrop of Manchester where a disgraced police detective is blackmailed to bring back a reputed MP's teenage runaway daughter safely and discreetly from the clutches of a notorious drug seller, but within few days of investigation, the detective finds some ugly clues about another missing girl's whereabouts.

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Review #537: Dead is Dead (Jack Bertolino #3) by John Lansing

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


“The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.”

----Anaïs Nin

John Lansing, an American author, pens a gripping and page turning thriller, Dead is Dead which is the third book in the series, Jack Bertolino that is centered around a retired cop and his new job to protect a popular rising star from her cyber stalker, but things get bit out of hand when a little child is left murdered few blocks away from the studio where the actress is shooting for her film.

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Review #473: Maya's Notebook by Isabel Allende Llona

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”

----Aristotle

Isabel Allende Llona, a Chilean-American novelist, has penned an intriguing yet edgy novel, Maya's Notebook that unfolds the story of a teenage girl who after the death of her grandfather, the only supporting figure of her life, she surrounds herself with negative influences like drugs, alcohol and selling her body, which makes her lose herself as she escapes from the authorities as well as from hit man and lands into a quiet and secluded island off the coast of Chile, where she learns a lot not only about her roots but also rinses her soul with the purity that the community of the island has to offer all the while learning about the deadly family secrets.

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Review #439: Dark Horse (Eddy Harkness #2) by Rory Flynn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


“The trouble with conspiracies is that they rot internally.”

----Robert A. Heinlein

Rory Flynn, a Boston-based mystery writer, is back with yet another edgy and twisted thriller in his new book, Dark Horse that is the second book in the Eddy Harkness series where the stories are revolving around a Boston-based cop, Eddy Harkness, the local hero, commonly known as the "Harvard Cop" and his adventures while serving the Narco-Intel department of his city. This book unfolds the story of a deadly drug wiping clean of any lives, those are found alive despite of a deadly hurricane, of a fictional town in Boston and the few lucky ones are wandering into Eddy's hometown, thus creating more trouble that Eddy can sniff from the very comfort of his own home.

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Review #319: Taking on Water by David Rawding

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


“Some of your childhood traumas may be remembered with incredible clarity, while others are so frightening or incomprehensible that your conscious mind buries the memory in your unconscious.”

----Renee Fredrickson

David Rawding, an American author, pens his new psychological thriller called Taking on Water that portrays the story of a happily married couple- a social worker and a local cop, set in a small American fishing town, who tries hard to protect the young teens from abuse and drug addiction and use, all the while trying hard to fight with their own past issues as well as present. In the process, they get to meet a lobsterman and his wife and teenage son, who then become very close friends. This is a story about friendship, betrayal, drug trafficking and child abuse.

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Review #181: All Fall Down by Jennifer Weiner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


“When you can stop you don't want to, and when you want to stop, you can't...”

----Luke Davies, an Australian writer of novels and poetry

Jennifer Weiner, the #1 New York Times bestselling author, pens her new novel, called All Fall Down which is about a woman's fight over addiction.

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Review #54: Elixir by Ted Galdi

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


They say, "Intelligent Men are dangerous". Or is it? Ted Galdi, a 29-year old debut author has portrayed otherwise in his new novel, Elixir. He has not followed the traditional way of making super intelligent man as the most dangerous species, instead he has presented him as the life-savior, a genius on whom nature might have given some extra brownie points to make living of other less fortunate human beings better. This may be Ted Galdi's debut novel, but it feels like he is really a pro and quite a natural while penning down his story. With all the right amount of twists in the right places, right amount of mystery and suspense, right amount of actions and bloodshed, the book proves to be a real page-turner right from the very beginning.

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Review #52: Third Rail: An Eddy Harkness Novel by Rory Flynn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Frank Vincent Zappa, an American composer, musician, and film director, has mentioned about "drugs" as:
“A drug is not bad. A drug is a chemical compound. The problem comes in when people who take drugs treat them like a license to behave like an asshole.”

That's true, a simple chemical compound having so much power to turn people into impulsive zombies with no brain. Rory Flynn, a Boston-based mystery writer, explores the lucid world of a new drug found in the dark dingy alleys of Boston, in his debut of the Eddy Harkness series, Third Rail: An Eddy Harkness Novel .

Synopsis:
At crime scenes, Eddy Harkness, the "Harvard Cop," is a human Ouija board, a brilliant young detective with a knack for finding the hidden something—cash, drugs, guns, bodies. Harkness's swift rise in an elite narcotics unit is derailed by the death of a young Red Sox fan in the chaos after a World Series win, a death some camera-phone-wielding witnesses believe he could have prevented. Scapegoated, Eddy is exiled to his hometown, Nagog, just outside Boston, where he empties parking meters and struggles to redeem his disgraced family name.
But one night Harkness’s police-issued Glock disappears. Harkness starts a search—just as a string of fatal accidents in Nagog lead him to uncover a dangerous new smart drug, Third Rail. With only a plastic gun to protect him, Harkness begins a high-stakes investigation that sends him into the darkest corners of the city.

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Review #33: Incitement by David Graham

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The American Nobel Laureate economist, Milton Friedman, has quoted about Drug War as:

“See, if you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That's literally true.”

According to Wikipedia, A drug cartel is a criminal organization developed with the primary purpose of promoting and controlling drug trafficking operations. They range from loosely managed agreements among various drug traffickers to formalized commercial enterprises.

David Graham, an English modern-day author, has brain-stormed his readers with his new thriller book, Incitement , which puts the spotlight on drug wars, drug cartels and illegal drug trading.

And reading this book, I come to this notion that I can easily agree with Milton Friedman's true words that basically it is the government who are trying to protect their drug cartels, and also to create panic among drug addicts by creating the tiff between the ruling drug lords, and to hike up the prices of drug by dethroning the drug lords.

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Review #23: The Affair by Gill Paul

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Quoting F. Scott Fitzgerald's remarkable words:

“A love affair is like a short story--it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning was easy, the middle might drag, invaded by commonplace, but the end, instead of being decisive and well knit with that element of revelatory surprise as a well-written story should be, it usually dissipated in a succession of messy and humiliating anticlimaxes.”

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton's affair was one of the world’s most notorious and most talked about affair in its history. We fell with them, we cried with them, we resented with them, we hated with them, we envied with them, we burned with jealousy with them, we felt everything whatever La Taylor and Richard was feeling, because their affair was strikingly caught behind every paparazzi’s lenses to present to the world and theirs was the affair which shake each and everyone in this planet.

Gill Paul, an English historical fiction writer, has penned her new novel, The Affair based on real-life incidents and events during the year 1963 on the very sets of Cleopatra movie, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rex Harrison and Richard Burton, in Rome. It's not only a love story, but also involves around a dark-mystery and the underworld of Italian drug-mafias.

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