Note: This too is from an old draft and posting now before 2018 slithers away forever. This year I have read some fantastic books both in Malayalam and English and I'll just post the names in a later post to at least have it as a list here.
I know Jane Smiley of The Thousand Acres needs no introductions. Yet the very fact that a movie got made from her books made me leery of wanting to read her. Yeah, I can be mulish like that. But now it looks like I am ready for a Smiley😊. A winning decision on my part! The Duplicate Keys is a very readable book with some teeth to it. Smiley's expertise in showing a period or time is just enthralling especially since she revels in putting the right kind of people in it. New York is always a haunting place and the period of interest here is the rock and roll era in the music industry. The story is around six friends who moved from the Midwest to the Big Apple with thoughts of making it big and what happened to them when their plans did not pan out exactly as they'd hoped. Of course the cover page proclaims this as a cliffhanger murder mystery and all that but what keeps you going is the characters and their interactions to each other in light of the murders. The murders and the investigation surrounding them satisfied a certain craving for mysteries in yours truly and made it for lighter reading. Now I know I can come to a Smiley if I want such a combo. Don't get me wrong, this is probably the only murderous book Smiley wrote but a writer who can do it so deeply has my trust.
