Yes, I admit it. I have read them all - potboilers branded with a gilded #1, semi-porn cloaked as romances, detective novels cheesier than Sony's CID and more. Those were simpler times, I read for fun. I laughed, cried, gasped and moved on to the next book.
Things changed when i started to write.
'Read like a writer,' said my teacher Renu, in the first writing workshop that I attended. The more I learnt about good writing, the more i demanded from teh books I read. I wanted to be wowed, by the story, yes, but also by the words, the turn of the phrase...the craft. I wanted to revel in the genius of the writer, at her/his grasp of the craft. I started to read for the writer in me.
As I move along the world map, I almost miss the fourth one - Andorra. On the map it is a speck, almost like the cartographer rested his pencil on the map for a bit and then forgot to erase the mark made by the pencil-point. Located between Spain and France, Andorra is so small, it does not qualify to be called a country, it is a micro state. Irrespective, I was not going to discriminate on size. As, I looked for a book based in Andorra, a murder mystery caught my eye. Do I dig deeper for a more literary book or read this one which seemed to have all the trappings of a quickie mystery novel. I was keen to check if I had, indeed, left my past behind me...and I decided on the latter.
Death has a Thousand Doors ticks all the boxes as far as mystery novels go - a heroine with a troubled past, a missing person, romantic undertones between heroine and detective, clues that flummox, creepy people who turn out to be okay and regular people who turn out to be creeps. A mystery novel does not have to do much to keep the pages turning, human curiosity to know whodunnit is enough. The writing is ordinary and the plot is often manipulated to accommodate a romantic scene or attempt to throw the reader off-track.
On the bright side though, as the story winds through the towns and the surrounding mountainside, the landscape pops up on its pages. The characters zip through the towns and streets and give an insight of life in Andorra, best known for being a tax haven. To its credit, the book brings this unknown location under the spotlight and for the 300-odd pages I discover the world within this speck.
...And at the end of the 300-odd pages, I am safe in the knowledge that my past will not come back to haunt me.
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