randomized

Okay, here is the thing; I am not a hero. I never was, nor am I now. And I don't think I can be one in the future. My father once said how all your good deeds cease to mean anything once you do a terribly bad thing. 'What is the difference between a bad and a terrible thing, father?' I had asked. 'That depends,' he had said, 'on what you consider a bad thing and what you don't.' I never understood that remark of his. Surely, I thought, bad things are bad for everyone; that bad things were considered bad universally, that was the deal, correct? Turned out it wasn't. Not always were bad things considered bad. Not in every case were guilt a visible emotion in the guilty. But when I understood this, my father was not around; neither was my mother. Both had departed in their sleep on the same day some years ago. And I was left alone to comprehend the terribleness of my deed; a deed that had wiped all my good ones, if there were any before it. ...

There was a front page advertisement in the newspaper yesterday. It had 'Let's fight corruption' written in big bold letters alongside a picture of Narendra Modi, prime ministerial candidate of BJP for the General Elections 2014. It also had three other sentences which went like this, Let's minimise government and maximise governance. Let's use technology for greater public scrutiny. Let's be transparent and accountable. Modi's election campaign started last year with this headline phrase that was in the paper yesterday. Fighting corruption, boosting progress and reducing inflation were some of the apparent primary goals of BJP. The situation though, I must say, is a bit different now. We'll get to it (and the three points up there) in a bit.

There are two types of crime thriller / murder mystery novels. One are those, which throw in innumerable characters with seemingly incomprehensible and complex plot at the very start. Then there are those, which look simple and straightforward in the beginning, with no complex character entanglements, but which go on to prove your assumptions entirely wrong as you progress. This one, belongs to the second category. ---  When a man is discovered dead by poisoning in his empty home his beautiful wife, Ayane, immediately falls under suspicion. All clues point to Ayane being the logical suspect, but how could she have committed the crime when she was hundreds of miles away? As Tokyo police detective Kusanagi tries to unpick a seemingly unrelated sequence of events he finds himself falling for Ayane. When his judgement becomes dangerously clouded his assistant must call on an old friend for help; it will take a genius to unravel the most spectacular web of deceit they ha...