#5 Platform - Last Man in Tower

Another of these books that doesn't really make me want to go to India any time soon.

Book #7: Last Man in Tower
Author: Aravind Adiga
Provenance: Borrowed from Westmount Library

When major change is introduced to a society, you can expect that you're going to see some changes in how people treat each other and what they value, as well. Such is the point of this book on modern Mumbai, viewed through the lens of an old housing society that just so happens to rest on land that a developer wants to put up a new high-rise condo tower on. These people have by and large been living in the building for decades, with old friendships and feuds aplenty. The developer offers an enormous sum of money per square foot, enough to ensure that the residents will be well set up for the future, and can afford places in much nicer parts of town. Most of the residents take up the offer quickly, but some don't, and the huge bags of rupees pour out like acid over the relationships, while surprisingly building up some others.

In the end, the story builds towards the stand-off between the last man to be standing out against the offer, someone who had long had the respect of the others. The story goes into a cycle of the bad things that can be done by good people to other good people when they don't understand the other's position, and just appear to be obstacles to a group goal. It's interesting that the lone holdout really doesn't want anything other than to stay; somehow, no one can understand this motivation.

The story does a good job about building up tension, and the lead characters are three-dimensional and well-realized over the course of the book, particularly Masterji, Shah, Ajwani and Mrs. Puri. I particularly admire making the holdout's stance well-reasoned, but not making him entirely sympathetic. He's an odd guy, and one does get the sense if the other group had known how to approach him better, had treated him like a different sort of person, the story could have ended sooner and happier. In some sense, he did want something, it's just not what any of the group in favor of leaving were offering at the time. And Adiga does have some good lines; he's a nicely evocative writer, and he does land some words that hit the reader admirably, about religion, about law, about the state of Mumbai.

But somehow it doesn't all add up for me, to be honest. Adiga is really heavy-handed with his symbolism sometimes, and that bothers me. I also feel like he thinks it should be more tense than it is, but really, you know how it's going to end up; it's just a question of how it's going to get there, and there's not a ton of choices for that, either, although I didn't exactly get it. I enjoyed this well enough, mostly for the characters, and I did like it better than the White Tiger, but I wasn't overwhelmed. I might still check out his next one, though.

Next up: Review of Think of a Number.

#5 Platform: Think of a Number

With the cover of this, I think it's difficult not to think of "3."

Book #8: Think of a Number
Author: John Verdon
Provenance: Borrowed from Westmount Library

Ah, the impossible crime mystery. This one's definitely got a long and venerable tradition, from Holmes on, where the goal isn't just to figure out who committed a crime, but how. In that sense, this debut effort from Verdon is quite a puzzle, with weird fact on top of weird fact. Retired Det. Dave Gurney, known for his ability to track down the more bizarre killers, has moved up from NYC to a small town upstate, but hasn't been there for all that long before he's contacted by an old college acquaintance. It seems the acquaintance has a problem: a menacing stranger has sent him a letter that manages to predict the first number he thought of between one and a thousand, and is promising further contact. He's freaking out, and wants Gurney's help to work out who's doing this.

The mystery takes a nice while to set up, letting you get a feel for Gurney and the setting, before any crimes are actually committed, but once they get going, they start really piling up, with people getting hurt across a pretty wide area. And as a mystery, this actually really is quite well designed and enjoyable; there are all sorts of outlandish details, certainly, from the titular number guessing game through someone seemingly disappearing in the middle of a field, cryptic poems, nameplay, a set of apparently unconnecting victims, the works. And it actually all is explained well, and most of it I didn't get, so that's a triumph. If you're a thriller fan, if you like this kind of book, you'll almost certainly like this one.

And I did like it, too, but you really only get one nicely realized character in this book, Gurney, and one that's a little less so but still nice, his wife, Madeleine. Maybe this makes sense, since a lot of the characters do seem to be around just to fill their role in the mystery, but I think that could have accomplished better. Gurney really is a well put together character, though, and I'm not surprised to see he's already starring in another book. The writing is pretty good, but nothing super remarkable. And it is a gripping tale - I read through the last 250 pages or so at a burst. But at some level, this book is just a big puzzle delivery device, without tons more to it than that. It aims at its target and hits it pretty squarely on. It's enjoyable for that, certainly, and I did enjoy it, but I'd like to see what else Verdon can do story-wise.

Next up: Currently, I'm reading the Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man, and the Emperor of All Maladies. We'll see what happens first.