By Rishi Srinivas Iyengar

In his excellent biography, Robert Gerwarth recounts how Reinhard Heydrich secured the job of creating the fearsome security apparatus, the SD, which eventually developed and implemented the Final Solution.‘…he began to develop an insatiable appetite for crime fiction and spy novels, many of them serialized in newspapers. Detective novels from Britain and the United States—from Sherlock Holmes to Nick Carter and Nat Pinkerton—were a huge success in Germany and they captured the imagination of the young Heydrich. Throughout the war and the 1920s, he maintained his keen interest in the genre and put his expertise to good use when he first met Himmler in 1931…


Editorial

In the 1970s, Uma, Chandra and myself had almost identical collections of detective fiction. Common to all three of us were those by Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh. We each had crammed bookshelves with our treasures and were extremely possessive about our editions.What is it about this genre of writing that inspires this loyalty to read and reread these books with pleasure every time? Today so many authors have joined my bookshelf and Kindle—PD James, Robert Galbraith (JK Rowling), Caroline Graham—but classic crime fiction for me is dominated by the magic of Christie and Marsh…


Reviewed by: Chitra Narayanan
Cheryl Rao. Illustrated by Suvidha Mistry. Edited by Navin

The Grumpy Man makes for a delightful reading experience. Illustrated by Suvidha Mistry, the scenes are set so beautifully that children are sure to have a blast reading this short story by Cheryl Rao.As the title suggests, the story is about a grumpy man and the kids in the neighbourhood who are wary of him. Their curiosity is aroused and they want to know about this grumpy man who is not moved even by their good deeds. Their childhood pranks are always met with disapproval. On holidays, they would leave sweets for him at his doorstep but even that gesture does not endear him to them…


Reviewed by: Neena Jaisingh
CG Salamander. Illustrated by Sahitya Ran

Yamini and the 7:00 pm Ghosts is a story by CG Salamander that revolves around 12-year-old Yamini and her friends discovering the mystery of ghosts in their neighbourhood. The story begins with Yamini hearing the rumours about ghosts in her neighbourhood that come around 7 in the evening. Everyone in the neighbourhood is scared of these ghosts, including Yamini’s friends. But Yamini doesn’t believe in the rumours. Therefore, she tries to solve the mystery…


Reviewed by: Ritika Gour
Adithi Rao. Illustrated by Sayan Mukherjee

Once cheerful and sunny, the village of Himmatnagar has changed in the past month since the mysterious deaths of three of its nativesRam Nayak, Chintamani, and Reddy. The natives of the village seem to have stopped smiling and are always tense; the police seem to have no leads to the cause of the deaths. Welcome to the village of ‘Himmatnagar: Land of the Brave’, formerly known as ‘Phattupur: Village of Cowards’.Adithi Rao in The Bhootbusters of Himmatnagar brings the village canvas alive—­the trees, the ponds, the local school, the expansive farmlands, and the village cemetery. Illustrated by Sayan Mukherjee…


Reviewed by: Anuradha Mathur
Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil. Illustrated by Rakhi Peswani

The Sackclothman has been developed for Different Tales: Stories from Marginal Cultures and Regional Languages, an initiative of the Anveshi Research Centre for Women’s Studies, Hyderabad. To be honest, I judged this book by its cover–in fact, I was totally intrigued by it. The illustrations by Rakhi Peswani are commendable. The story evokes the familiar imagery from Rabindranath Tagore’s famous story ‘Kabuliwala’. There is a young girl, an ‘outsider’, a social outcast; and the familiar attachment between the two of them. It even has the same gut-wrenching scene of the outsider being taken away from society after establishing a tender bond with the little girl…


Reviewed by: Madhurima Kahali