Smorgasbord Fantasia

With  Blake Crouch , there are a few things guaranteed. The staples or elements we have come to 'expect' as normal : Surefire thrill rides, high-tech science-fictional concepts and a very humane central character stuck in the middle of all this. He excels in taking mind-bending premises and setting it within believable circumstances, crafting out bleeding edge thrillers with enough heart and he is always questioning, questioning the choices our society can take. Or will take, rather.  With  Upgrade  his latest novel, he trains his guns on the rather esoteric topic of gene-mapping and how this concept can be twisted enough in the wrong hands to lead to a catastrophe for the human race. He claims it is his love-letter to our species, even quotes Yuval Noah on his views for Homo Deus, the next gen evolution of human beings, aka Homo sapiens.  As always - Blake strikes the perfect balance with exposition of "sciency" stuff - and there's a lot to unpack here, what wi...

Bullet Train written by bestselling author Kotaro Isaka released a while back in Japan (around 2010) and then, hit the rest of the world last year, dropping like a reverse-atom-bomb on our TBR list (Pardon the pun!) Because this book is perhaps, the most outrageous fun that I've had, in a long time with smart racy thrillers. Five assassins stuck in a bullet-train in Tokyo, who will reach the end of the line, reads the smart marketing by-line on this. Seductive enough for you, as a premise? I was taken in. And then to my pleasant surprise, the execution of the actual narrative does full justice to this explosive premise.  So the non-stop action is set on this high-speed bullet train, from Tokyo to the city of Morioka and funnily enough, on board among the rest of the passengers are five deadly assassins. Kimura, an alcoholic wants to wreck revenge on the teenage schoolboy who had pushed his own son from the rooftop of a departmental store building, hospitalising the kid now in a com...

 I have recently concluded that the best kind of audio-books are mysteries or thrillers. And psychological thrillers are definitely up there at the top. And so I stumbled onto Alice Feeney , hailed as the queen of the domestic twisty psychological thrillers ( "His & Hers" ) and her latest, Rock Paper Scissors is again a domestic puzzle-box of a story with unreliable narrators, harrowing shocking twists and fabulous storytelling that goes deep beneath the layers presented.  The story is about Mr and Mrs. Wright - Adam and Amelia, who have won a weekend getaway to the Scottish highlands, a stay at this romantic secluded church, known as the Black Loch Chapel. This is a last-ditch attempt by both of them to save their marriage, which is on the rocks. But once they get to this isolated church, they realize that the secluded chapel may not be the most romantic place on earth. While the views themselves are to kill for, the place is creepy, almost haunted, gothic. With a histo...

This was an unassuming little thriller that crept up on me, completely unannounced. and what a compulsive addictive thrill-ride it was - Passengers by John Marrs is my first book by the author and it certainly won't be the last. [ Indeed, another of his titles  The One apparently is being made into a ten-part Netflix series, I certainly want to check it out before it hits the screen!] Anyways - being closely linked to the whole AI phenomenon at work, the premise (And the delicious promise!) of this book got me hooked straight away. A world where driverless cars are norm on UK roads - and what can happen, if a Hacker gets access to the artificial intelligence servers to control the lives of the passengers within? All too plausible. With the whole debate around ethical AI gaining traction around the world, this was a very topical book, extremely cleverly executed as well.  John Marrs draws us in, reel by reel with the unexpected plot twists and cliffhanger chapter ...

If you've been reading my blog for a while now, then you know that I am an unabashed fan of Blake Crouch . If anyone knows how to write thrillers that will have you guaranteed reading up late into the night, feverishly turning the pages to find out what happens next, terrified beyond measure - then that is Mr. Crouch. Wayward Pines has been my favorite series of his till date [ And the most popular blogpost till date!] With Dark Matter , Blake blew my mind off. How do you top something like that, wondered I? And then along came  Recursion . Which by the record, is the buzziest release by the best-selling author who, by the looks of it, is spinning out enough and more material for the TV and Hollywood adaptation of grim alternate realities. If the  last time it was alternate universes, then this time Blake goes a step beyond and plays on memories and how intimate is it, to the human psyche and how we measure time through memories. I mean, wow! Recursion is your perfect ...

Cross Her Heart is the latest from Sarah Pinborough a taut psychological thriller with enough twists and turns to make your heart jump and keep you invested till the explosive climax. I am a big fan of her works - especially after the hauntingly evocative novella ' Language of dying ' and her stunning thriller ' Behind Her Eyes ' with that mind-blowing twist of an ending. So  Cross Her Heart  is sort of a spiritual sequel to Behind Her Eyes - with similar premise of an tangled up web of lies and deceit at the centre of it with an interesting experiment in the narrative that weaves between Now, Then and After. Truths be told, while yes I loved the book - I thought this was more a mainstream, straight forward psychological thriller examining the pedestrian life of a single mum, delving into the dysfunctional rut that defines her life which slowly devolves into unimaginable horrors when a secret from her past comes awake. It is minus the supernatural horrific el...

Sarah is fast becoming my go-to author for those twisted dark pretzel of a story that blurs the line between psychological thrillers and surreal fantasies. Of course, Behind Her Eyes was a runaway hit phenomenon last year after it came. A dark, real dark psychological thriller guaranteed to knock the socks off you with it's double-whammy twists that hits you at the end. The marketing materials came with specific instructions not to give away the mind blowing ending. And I agree that this definitely added to the hype and hoopla around the book making us intrigued, causing us to get to that end faster. I finished this in a week's time but I took my time purely because the premise and the story is really unsettling and caused me to stop several times and put this aside. So the story is about three characters in love. Yes - a doomed love-triangle involving a very successful psychiatrist, his rich and beautiful wife and his secretary in office, a single mum. So far so...

Robert Masello has risen up to the top tanks of my must-read authors, who can skillfully interweave historical fiction with mystery and intrigue. I admit to not having read this author before, but that is soon going to be rectified. An enticing mix of history, horror and literary, The Jekyll Revelation by the best-selling author of Einstein Prophecy caps off a good year of reading for me, 2016 and is definitely one of my favorite works this year. The Jekyll Revelation is a gripping thriller in which Masello takes one of the darkest chapters in the human history, namely the shocking and brutal murders by Jack the Ripper and deftly weaves his creative genius around it to create a riveting tale that imagines the dark evil depths the human mind can fall to. Split as two parallel narratives, one set in the late nineteenth century and the other in modern day, the story weaves these parallel threads together, subtly at first and then through this hair-raising revelation about ...

I have already been crooning about my die-hard love for Blake Crouch - His latest, Dark Matter - a twisted dark pretzel of a delightful science-fiction thriller was the icing on a noteworthy career full of glorious books. I first came across him before Wayward Pines became a TV Series. And now this - Good Behavior hit the small screens across America on TNT a month back and is raking up the TRP's, purportedly one of the best shows after Southland. I picked up the collection of three novellas after I came across this news but hey, it's a rule now! Anything Blake Crouch, sign me up for the ride baby! This man sure knows how to write a thriller, get your blood pressure roaring and ratcheting up the tension to levels often sharp enough to cut diamonds. So this one features Letty Dobesh , a thief, a meth-addict and a functioning alcoholic - fresh out of prison and looking to redeem herself. She has a young son, being taken care of by her own mother and probably wants to...

Been a long time since I saw a movie that I came away impressed and wanted to write about. One of the new movies that I have been wanting to watch, is this hindi action-thriller called Akira , starring Sonakshi Sinha. Hyped up as a high-octane action thriller from the makers of Ghajini, A R Murugadoss directed Akira promos looked pretty promising. But the initial reviews I read, really put me off. But good things are worth waiting for, huh. So I did find that this one's actually inspired by a 2011-Tamil thriller, called Mouna Guru . I had never heard of this movie but figured, I might as well watch the original. remakes never do justice, we know that by now right? First day of the long weekend, finding myself alone at home with the doggies for company, I did just that. Verify that the original beats the remake, by a far bigger margin that I had expected. Relatively low budget, this one doesn't have any 'stars' and is also the debut directorial by Santha Kumar....

Cheesy as it sounds, love is the central premise that makes up the core of Dark Matter , the latest by Blake Crouch . Blake shot up to be one of my most-awaited authors, after I had blown through the first two books of the Wayward Pines trilogy, and even pre-ordered The Last Town . The series was the fastest ever that I had read through – the same holds good for his latest, Dark Matter. I blasted through the book in one day! It’s a propulsive definitive thriller with a solid science-fictional conceit at its center, that of multi-dimensional realities and identity crisis. But hark, am getting ahead of myself. So here's the byte-sized version:  Jason Dessen is a mild-mannered local college professor in Chicago who gave up on what could have been a grandiose scientific career with breakthrough research and inventions, all for a happy marriage with his middling successful artist wife, Daniella and has a fifteen year old kid, Charlie. We peek into his almost ‘boring’ lif...

Perhaps 2016 is the year when I will be fully utilizing the worth of Kindle Unlimited and the treasure trove of great books I can unearth in there! So Brilliance by Markus Sakey was one of such finds. I have not read a good thriller book in ages - mired as I am by this need to plow through my Fantasy to-be-read pile that shows no sign of growing smaller. But this book in a lot many ways, was such a comfort read. Predictable at turns yes, but still a nail-biting thriller written in a grand Hollywood scale with the fate of the world to be decided by a few people kind of premise. This definitely was a winner for me! A good fun read. A mile-a-minute train-wreck of a thriller blending in sci-fi elements of 'gifted' people against the rest of the world ( X-men anyone? Bingo! Similar premise but well, the story runs away on a different track altogether with all stops pulled out and the pedal pressed firmly to the floor!) The first part of a trilogy in Brilliance, Markus known ...

Hostile Takeover - Shane Kuhn 's boisterous follow-up to the wildly popular The Intern's Handbook - apes the first book, a first class replica in every sense. Replete with Hollywood action movie cliches and snarky tongue-in-cheek references, our favorite intern John Lago is back to doing what he's best at. Shooting his way through any situation - this time though, he's blazing his way out from a matrimony. And he just might have met his match in his wife, Alice . Back from the dead after that hyper-violent climactic fallout at the climax of the last book ( and their last encounter!), she's a female Lago in every sense - out-thinking and outfoxing our hero in every Machiavellian schemes he draws up. So is Hostile Takeover any good? The concepts are the same old - ripening like pungent French cheese and smelling just as bad. Play the intern to get up close and personal to the top dog and then smoke him/her.  "Our specialty was our cover: the inte...

So I don't have a systematic manner of going about to find a new novel - I browse Netgalley, Amazon or the tonnes of blogs that I stalk for suggestions. Sometimes pick up a book on a whim. and it turns out to be pure spun gold. The pleasure in such cases is manifold. as you are not dragged down by the hype and expectations set by the world. Life or Death by Michael Robotham was one such. A tautly written spell binding thriller that starts off with a prison escape and then slowly unspools the backstory of the central protagonist through myriad of twists and harrowing suspense to finally reveal the truth - that would gut you and leave you spellbound at the author's craft and neatly spun plot. Life or Death is the story of Audie Palmer who escapes the day before he was supposed to be set free after ten years in a state prison - for having aided and abetted in a robbery with money worth seven million reportedly missing. The story is revealed through multiple POVs - inclu...

It's been a while since I've read a good thriller. a genuinely shivers-down-the-spine kinda book that delves into the psyche - belonging to the good old school of psychological suspense - and keeps me up way beyond my sleep-time. The Quality of Silence fits the bill perfectly. I got this book on NetGalley during an early promo-giveaway in exchange for an honest review. This is my first Rosamund Lupton book and definitely not the last ever. This chilling thriller that follows the travails of a mother-daughter duo in the icy barren expanses of Alaska as they try to track down their husband/father lost after a deadly accident in the wild reads like a tight-rope walk with no leeway for a single false step - the plot is interesting yes but it's the characterization of the mother-daughter duo that really won my heart. Especially Ruby, the deaf girl who's so brave, kind and retains her child-like purity in a world of evil. Despite all her problems. So Yasmin and her...

The Intern's Handbook by Shane Kuhn came to my notice after Mihir from FBC praised the book highly. His recommendations typically are spot-on and I didn't hesitate when I got a deal on this one. So yet another first-person narrative thriller that deals with white-collar assassinations using interns. Aha...After Boy Nobody  (reviewed here  ) I think I see a pattern here. Nevertheless, the cover ( Yo! Creative Genius You!) drew me in and the premise was the perfect hook. Use the non-paid persona non-grata interns - who by the way are worse than dead flies on the wall when it comes to a corporate cultures in NYC chockablock with Ivy league heavyweights fighting for a foot-space - to slowly interject into your corporate honcho targets' office and then finish them off in unsuspecting manners that smack of their most public enemies' signature kill. Yeah. That is what the book is about. The novel actually reads like a bible or a rough field guide for survival for t...

Boy Nobody or I am the Weapon was a book that caught my eye after Mihir from FBC and other fellow bloggers recommended it as a pretty addictive fast-paced thriller read. Mihir’s suggestions have been pretty spot-on and after having completed the excellent “ Wayward Pines ” trilogy – I was in the mood for something that’s light-duty and super-fast paced. Boy Nobody delivered and how! A compulsively readable YA thriller that reads like a runaway freight-train. Knocking you down with its intensity and emotionally jarring narrative. Featuring a teenage (late teens) soldier trained to be an assassin, the book runs straight as an arrow with a mission that goes a little awry and plugs the boy soldier’s world into chaos. And yes. It involves a girl.  Now if you get the impression from the above brief that this book is yet another YA – filled with angst-ridden teenagers with unbalanced hormones driving their decisions – then bam! Are you wrong, my friend. The boy nobody ...

The Detainee by Peter Liney was a book that came to my notice when I was reading the Kindle blog – I was extremely intrigued by this post and decided I had to read the book. Something about it set me off – thinking and wanting badly to read about this dystopian society. So the wonderful folks at Jo Fletcher books obliged me (you guys are simply the best! And not because you sent me the book but you always come up with such amazing books!) and sent me a copy when I landed in California. And I gobbled this book up in two days flat. So the word dystopian sets off a particular image in your brains. (For those of you who love Dystopia as a genre – here’s a 2014 list .) About a ruined landscape, rotting environment or the polar ice caps melted down and the most common, a nuclear holocaust. But with The Detainee, don’t expect a romp through a nuclear wasteland and a band of survivors tripping through the abandoned country-sides and empty yawning highway bridges of the world. No ...