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The Blood Divide by AA Dhand is an unconventional detective thriller as it traverses the length of the book only to arrive at a Sisyphean point at the narrative’s start—the prologue. The book is divided into two parts with a Prologue; part one plays out in Britain and in part two the story progresses in India. It has a constant pace and keeps up with the quest for more as multiple interesting and functional characters enter the drama and die or disappear leaving the plot more layered which renders the narration of intense suspense and intrigue…

If the rave reviews this book has garnered globally on Amazon are any indication this is an instant buy. Two qualities appear to be commonly appreciated by most readers: the readability of the book, and the insights that readers—especially those who have never been to India and know little about its people and culture—glean about India (and Mumbai) from the book. The Baby Ganesh series with Inspector Chopra as the detective, and his elephant, Ganesha, appears to have captured the attention and adulation of a global audience…

Anuja Chauhan’s Club You to Death is set around a seemingly simple murder that takes place in the Delhi Turf Club, a space for a certain set of people with privileges who believe that they are the glamourous last standing piece that will protect Delhi from falling at the hands of what they term to be the ‘ills of modernity’. The Club has an intricate system of rules set in an even more intricately mapped area that is populated by members who subscribe to the power and luxury that comes along with having a membership card…

Raagam Taanam Pallavi is a recent addition to Kalpana Swaminathan’s books of detective fiction which includes other works such as Cryptic Death and Other Stories (1997), Pa (2003), The Page 3 Murders (2006), Greenlight (2017) and Murder in Seven Acts (2018). As the cover page suggests, the present novel is ‘A Lalli Mystery’; the lead character of this novel is Lalli, a sexagenarian detective who has been a recurring figure in seven of Kalpana Swaminathan’s previous works since 1997…

Andrea Camilleri’s 28th and final murder mystery in the Inspector Montalbano series, Riccardino is a befitting ending to this extremely popular crime series with over 65 million copies sold across the world. Adapted for Italian TV and screened on BBC 4, the series has been translated into 32 languages. Camilleri started writing the series in 1994 when he was about 70 years old and wrote the final book in 2004, deposited it with his publisher on the condition that it be published only after his death. Surprised to find himself alive at 91 in November 2016, he revisited the story and found it ‘good and unfortunately still relevant’…

Quiet in Her Bones is a thriller by Nalini Singh, set in Auckland, New Zealand, depicting an immaculate and unapologetic insider’s view to the culture and class of New Zealand’s rich and powerful through the incident of a disappearance of a woman from an exclusive cul-de-sac. Using this incident, Nalini Singh carves out an entire world that a missing person can leave behind or open up after their disappearance. The story begins with a turn of events when Nina Rai, wife to a very powerful Ishaan Rai and mother to Aarav Rai, re-appears many years after she went missing, in her decomposed and skeletal self. Although long gone, Nina was never presumed to be dead, most of all, by her husband and son…