Island of Lost Maps and Detective.

The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime. by Miles Harvey.

I leased this book from Ashish - a colleague of mine for a week-end. At first I thought, that it would be very difficult to finish reading such a bulky book in just 2 days... given my levels of concentration. As chapters after chapters rolled by, I found myself admiring the debutante’s way of narration. It was very similar to what I do when I write... the things that are told seem unrelated and vague until, the author himself connects all the dots for you... Some times even after the author connects the dots the picture is somewhat hazy... I guess Miles Harvey knows this and repeats himself where ever the reader may feel lost. That’s so much like me... I liked the book partly because of that. Apart from the gripping story, the book is filled with cartographic trivia.

Al in all, the book is an excellent pass time to read on a lonely journey.

Detective - by Arthur Hailey.

I borrowed this book from Mayank Singh. There was no dead line to finish the book... The story is about a serial killer and one another killing that does not fit in the pattern... I was reminded of all those episodes of Law and Order that I had seen when I was in US (and here too...) But after all that, I found this book lacking the excitement. It was very easy to expect the unexpected... I may be feeling so because of those serials or the expectations I had about the author himself. If I don’t like a book, i better justify it... In this book I feel, the author has gone too far to complicate a crime... and the methods used to do so are also not highly imaginative... how many stories have we not seen where a highly placed government officials have dark episodes (of sexual nature) in their childhood... In most of them, the perpetrator is usually the father... Americans have been obsessed with the Bible... I can remember at least 2 famous movies ("Se7en" starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, "The Seventh Sign" starring Demi Moore) that deal with similar topics... The author seems to have "bible based serial killing" as the center piece and added the rest of the story by backtracking and tying up lose ends... and try to make it interesting in the larger sense. I wonder how this ever became a best seller?