Detective Noire, Extraordinaire

Half-Moon Investigations by Eoin Colfer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was looking for some light-hearted stuff to read after a huge dose of books with lots of serial killers and blood. From Eoin Colfer’s other books I have read (love the Artemis Fowl series), I knew I wasn’t going to get disappointed. And boy, did this book deliver or what.

This is a story of 12-year old detective, who thinks he has seen all the cases a school playground can throw at him. But then, his own boasts about being a detective get him involved in a case against the biggest criminals in the school. And before he knows it, the case has developed into something huge, and he is a fugitive from the law he has helped uphold so many times before. And soon, he is not the only person who is getting injured.

Femme fatale, a huge conspiracy, a scary criminal family and a hardboiled, world-weary protagonist… what more does a detective story need?

If you want a one line review: Why exactly hasn’t this been made into a crime noire film yet? I mean, you can almost hear the saxophone in the background while reading, and it’s not that hard to imagine all the characters wearing hats either.

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Dear Hollywood, Please do the needful

The idea of this post came from this article (which I recommend you read, I’ll wait) which lists “the [10] series that could occupy the Hollywood throne that King Harry [Potter] just vacated”. While I agree wholeheartedly with nos. 2, 5 and 7 on the list (haven’t read the rest), there are a few more book series I would love to see in movie or TV series format.

To start with, here are few of my picks:

RIP Major Richard Winters!

When I was planning to restart writing the blog in the new year after a long break, I had no idea this would be the kind of post I was forced to write first.

One of the books which have made the strongest impression on me, given my love for history, is Stephen Ambrose’s Band of Brothers. The book, and the stellar HBO series based on it, are a masterpiece of historical writing, a startling representation of the realities of war, and bravery people from even the most common walks of life are capable of. Although each man in E company is a hero of the narrative in his own right, Maj. Winters, a true leader of men, leads his soldiers even in this respect.

Maj. Richard Winters, winner of Distinguished Service Cross for his actions on D-Day, died on Januray 2^nd, 2011.  Although the word is commonly overused now, in this case we can truly say – The world has lost one more Hero!

Quote of the day:

Every one of us, we’d follow him to hell. That’s the type of guy he was.

– Private Joe Lesniewski, Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division

A slice through space-time

Now that “Flashforward” is finished (and on such an interesting note, too), most fans will probably turn to the book if they miss the series. And for those who don’t know, yes, the series was based on the book by the same name by Robert J. Sawyer.

Best of F&SF

I recently realised that I haven’t been reading my quota of science fiction for quite some time now. That’s why I picked up “The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction”, anthology of best stories in 60 years of F&SF magazine, edited by Gordon Van Gelder.

How the magical half lives

When I friends asked me what “The Magicians ” by Lev Grossman is about, the very inadequate explanation I came up about was, it’s a mix of Harry Potter and Narnia, if those had typical college-going teenagers in it. Of course, this one sentence doesn’t do any justice to the book.

The Poet Detectives

While I haven’t read Dante’s Divine Comedy, I have read a few books (e.g. The Last Cato) which are based on the Inferno. But being a mystery makes “The Dante Club ” by Matthew Pearl quite a different book from the others which take inspiration from Dante’s version of Hell.

Ask Turing

On the surface, “Genesis” by Bernard Beckett is an unassuming, almost novella-sized book. But a few pages through the book, you realise that you have jumped into something much more complex, and captivating.

It’s raining men

We have seen TV series based on books (too many to list), books based on TV series (Doctor Who, Monk etc.). But “Heat Wave ” by “Richard Castle” has a curious story – it is probably the first real-life book written by a character in a TV series.

The mysteries of Barcelona

I read about “The Angel’s Game ” by Carlos Ruiz Zafón while I was talking of his earlier book, “The Shadow of the Wind”. But then, I forgot about it until I came across the book in our library.