But I persevered to the bitter end. A whodunnit complete with the twist in the tale that was entirely predictable.
Hellfire
It was going to be long flight there and back.
So I stocked up with what I could find from Andy McNab and Chris Ryan. Books I can skim through. However I do worry that I should be looking for stuff that has a bit more substance to it. Chris Ryans work is readable although the tales are very much do and die.
Helps to pass the time.
Head Hunters
The Age of Exodus
The Escape
Empire of the Moghul – Serpents Tooth
A work of fiction woven out of historical facts. The melodrama is overdone but it was interesting enough to keep going.
Covering perhaps one of the most interesting periods in the history of the Moghuls. A time when the seeds of conflict were sown, a conflict that has boiled over and which has split the continent between Hindu and Muslim.
The Concubines Child
Reasonably well written but a weak story line
It is a multi-generational tale of a family haunted by the death of a young concubine in 1930s. Essentially a critique of a custom that is still commonly practised widely throughout Asia. It is naive, lacking substance and authenticity.
Just another story which doesn’t really get anywhere.
The Island
A novel based on the true story of Spinalonga, a leper colony established on an island off the coast of Crete.
The book is salvaged from deteriorating into a tiresomely predictable love story by the account of life on the island in the leper colony. That struggle between adversity and the emergence of the human spirit.
Lazy bones
Readable but only just. I needed the help of Google to recall the story line of this book by Mark Billingham.
The unfolding plot is both clumsy and contrived. In particular, the attempt at an erotic twist in the tale. Inserted for impact rather than content, the punch line falls flat. Clumsy and puerile. Only suggested if there is nothing else to hand.