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Title: The Art of Hearing Heartbeats: A Novel Author: Jan-Phillipp Sendker Publisher: New York: Other Press [2011], c2006 Call No.: English SEN Imagine being blind, and possessing such acute hearing that you could hear heartbeats – of a yet unhatched chick, or of a loved one standing across the room. Meet Tin Win, father of [...]

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(This is the second in two reviews on new British mysteries.) London Calling is a first novel by journalist James Craig. A body was found in a luxury London hotel room. Investigating this murder led Inspector John Carlyle of London’s Metropolitan Police to uncover the sordid ongoings in British ruling classes. Edgar Carlton, the man [...]

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(This is the first in a series of two reviews on new British mysteries.) Compare an American to a British mystery, and one always gets a stronger sense of place in the latter. While the American detective zips around one crime scene to another in less than a sentence, the British detective will walk you [...]

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Title: Please Look After Mom: a novel Author: Kyung-sook Shin Publisher: New York : A.A. Knopf, c2011 Call No.: English SIN Nominated for the Man Asian Literary Prize, Please Look After Mom is a bestselling novel by Shin Kyung-sook, published in 2009, translated in 2011. The title does not shy from its emotional plot; an [...]

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The Sherlockian Author: Graham Moore Publisher: Call No.: English MOO- [MY] I am caught on a Sherlock wave as of late. I blame it on Guy Ritchie’s blockbuster (starring Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law) and BBC’s re-interpretation of Sherlock, directed by Mark Gatiss, which pits Sherlock as our contemporary. Both movies renewed my interest [...]

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You steal my car, you rip the seat out, you kidnap me, you ask me to help you find your daughter which I very kindly do, and then you get me involved in a shoot out where people are dying and there’s blood spurting all over the place, and then I watch you rip a [...]

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