The last novels of 2016 … and nine (!) years of blogging …

All these novels came in a big rush towards the end of 2016 … during the last 2 weeks … I had wanted to post these early this year, but as it happens with me, every new year brings in a lot of confusion and uncertainty … I don’t know why, but it happens … and this time, January was also busy with lots of other things … Shruti’s Delhi visit and my parenting for two and a half days that brought its own tensions and anxieties, a celebration that brought in lots of guests and the attendant anxieties, a foolish idea that resulted in an interview and resultant pre- and post- anxieties … I am a great one for feeling anxious … anxiety keeps me together … anyway, the first casualty under the circumstances is my blog … no mental space, you see … so I drifted on … I wanted to write a post to sort of gloat over my 9 years of blogging … 11 January 2008 was when I posted my first piece on my blog … so this ‘gloat’ post too didn’t happen on time … no time to gloat too … he he …

Anyway, so, along the way I discovered this writer (I mean, I discovered for myself!) who is a farmer in Scotland and turned to writing crime fiction … James Oswald … he started in 2012 with Natural Causes … these are police procedural novels and Oswald’s hero is Inspector McLean … and already 5 Inspector McLean novels are released and have become hugely successful … I found three on a used books portal on amazon …

I have all along wanted to read Michael Connelly’s Inspector Bosch novels … again police procedural novels set in Los Angeles … Ian Rankin had referred to his novels in one of his interviews, where he said, “…What I like about crime fiction is the sense of place. You are right to mention Michael Connelly and Henning Mankell.  If I want to find out about contemporary Sweden or contemporary Los Angeles, I will go to these writers.  Not to the literary writers, but the crime writers.”  I had sent up a post when I completed Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus set and had looked for this interview (The Hindu, 28 January 2010) … and when I read this quote again, I was motivated to look for Connelly’s Inspector Bosch novels … and once again, I found these on one of the used books portals on amazon …

 

There are some more that arrived during those two weeks … soon …