Crime revisited
NIMI KURIAN
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It's Bond again, and this time with some spine chilling ones...
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Crime fascinates and The Rupa Book of Crime Stories edited by Ruskin Bond is no different. A collection of 14 stories, some of them old favourites like Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Speckled Band", "The Interruption" by W.W. Jacobs and "The Lighthouse on Shivering Sand" by J.S. Fletcher, that are gripping and hold the interest of the reader even long after the tale is done.
Though simply written and easily understood, some stories particularly "Back to Burmah" by E. Temple Thurston, can hardly be described as suitable reading for children. However as Bond himself says in his introduction "The stories in this collection have always stood out in my memory as being different from others, either as psychological studies of the criminal (often a very ordinary, harmless sort of individual) or because of the original methods used by the more diabolical type of killer".
"A Lesson in Crime" by G.D.H and M. Cole is bizarre and leaves you numb with shock with the thought that a joke can be carried too far. Whereas "Death at the Wicket" by Bernard Newman is a perfectly planned and deviously thought out murder that the reader would want to understand, "The Islington Mystery" by Arthur Machen makes the reader fervently wish that the mystery is never unravelled.
An interesting collection of crime stories and at the end of it one comes to the clichéd conclusion that wealth and money are but the two sole reasons for murder.
The Rupa Book of Great Crime Stories Edited by Ruskin Bond, published by Rupa & Co., Rs, 275.
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