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First impressions

Almost Single; Advita Kala, Harper Collins, Rs. 195.

Aisha Bhatia is at the threshold of spinsterhood. In a good Punjabi environment, you are married by 25 years. If not , consider yourself over the hill. She’s young, bright, pretty secure financially. Knows her wines: new age and old. Can sit at a perfect five-course meal without tripping over her cutlery. She can also handle difficult guests if push comes to shove, which is part of her job as a guest relations officer at a hotel. Bhatia’s no princess and has a seesaw battle with her boss (a cribber and a slime), her weight (a few pounds generous) and her mother in that order. Sounds familiar?

But here’s the crunch. She loves her friends, her booze(just can’t seem to hold it too well) and Mr Right as and when he’s on the scene. So welcome to the club: pretty young things but no guys. And if there are any, they are usually boyfriends of friends, or real heels or portly fat men only interested in feeling you up. Bhatia generally manages to take no shit from boss, exes or mommy. That is till she meets Karan.

But instead of making a good impression, Bhatia goofs. She’s hungover at his party, trips on her new sari and is constantly lighting up. Even as you turn the pages of this funny and wicked piece of writing, there’s a sense of déjÀ vu.

As Bhatia panics and realises that she’s really lost the chase to the altar, some quick thinking on Mr. Nice Guy’s part sees Bhatia being proposed to.

Irreverent with a whacky sense of humour, Almost Single touches you with its insight into the world of single women.

When Jackson Workman Pickens’ father, a big time lawyer, dies in mysterious circumstances, the whole town is abuzz. Few are sorry since the nasty old man had used many means to amass his wealth.

It was only natural that the police worked on almost everyone who the father knew. And that included junior Pickens and his sister. As Pickens runs around trying to find a reason for his father’s murder little does he realise that he is now a prime suspect.

Only after his father’s will is read out to him does he realise that, given the fact he is beneficiary to a huge fortune, the police would target him as the one with prime motivation to do in the old man. As Pickens tries to prove his innocence, he is dragged back to his painful childhood; the time he and his sister spent with their parents. He clearly remembers his mother’s death and the flareup between his younger sister and his father.

Estranged from his sister, who now lives with her girlfriend, Pickens finds rifts in his marriage too. But then there is his childhood sweetheart who he relies on till he is dragged to prison.

As Pickens tries to prove his innocence he finds himself being betrayed by the people closest to him. It is when he works on the toughest case of his life that he realises the web of deceit and intrigue that his father planted around him.

The Sleeping Doll; Jeffery Deaver, Hodder& Stoughton, £11.99.

So it is only a matter of time when the case is handed over to Agent Kathryn Dance, a behavioural scientist and a brilliant investigator. However, Dance and her colleagues underestimate Pell’s techniques.

A master of control, a great seducer of women and a thinking mind, Pell has routinely led women astray and manages to charm them even from behind prison walls. Each time Dance thinks she is close on his heels, he slips away.

As Dance and her colleagues try to figure out what makes Pell tick, they are thrown up against a series of gruesome cold-blooded murders, which Pell uses to wipe out his trail. Dance is specially afraid for the little girl who survived Pell’s attack on her family years ago.

As Dance finally traces out the girl and tries to get her to talk in the hope that she may understand this master criminal better, her plans are thwarted by member’s of The Family, a cult that Pell set up years ago. Dance is amazed at the women’s loyalty to Pell. She begins to understand that Pell has almost always picked on women who have led insecure lives pushing them into complete submission.

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