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Yesterday by Felicia Yap: Crime and Science Fiction in One Book

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Yesterday by Felicia YapYesterday by Felicia Yap

Summer 2016:   I hear about a book written by a female author from Southeast Asia with a very interesting concept:

There are two types of people in the world: those who can only remember yesterday (Monos), and those who can also recall the day before (Duos). You have just one lifeline to the past: your diary. Each night, you write down the things that matter. Each morning, your diary tells you where you were, who you loved and what you did.

Today, the police are at your door. They say that the body of your husband’s mistress has been found in the River Cam. They think your husband killed her two days ago.

Can you trust the police? Can you trust your husband? Can you trust yourself?

Felicia Yap grew up in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and studied biochemistry at Imperial College London, then earned a doctorate in history at Cambridge University. …

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On The Nightstand: Maestra

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Maestra

Maestra is billed as the “most shocking thriller of the year”, which I thought was a bit early to say considering it came out very early this year in March. Although who am I to say, since The Girl on the Train came out in January 2015 and still seems to be doing relatively well in the market? Maestra did get picked up for a movie much quicker than The Girl on the Train did, and it will be an easier sell — the book does contain sex, money, and murder, and isn’t that easily marketable?

Originally released in the UK by independent publisher Zaffre (an imprint of Bonnier Publishing), Maestra is written by L. S. Hilton, an Oxford graduate of English who also studied Art History in Florence and Paris. From my Google research, I can deduce that she is more widely known for her historical fiction and biographies which are published as being written by Lisa Hilton. Her Maestra pseudonym was taken under the advisement of its publisher, to separate her historical reputation from this erotic thriller1.

I have not read her other books, but again, we can surmise that the woman has had practise in the art of writing with the seven or so previously published books in her list of works. I point this out because Maestra will be and is already often compared to the infamous Fifty Shades of Grey because of its erotic content, but I find this a disservice to the book …

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Book Club Read: I Am Pilgrim

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I Am Pilgrim

I came upon this book via one of the girls from book club, when we were on a crime/thriller spree earlier this year. It was published two summers ago in 2013, and a year later, its movie rights were bought by MGM. The author, Terry Hayes, used to be a journalist (a foreign correspondent in the US for the Sydney Morning Herald who covered the Nixon/Watergate scandal) but his writing skills have been more recently used for screenwriting (although by recent, I meant late 90s to early 2000). His latest venture has been the book I Am Pilgrim, and I reckon he’s probably also involved in the screenwriting process for the movie.

The book’s opening scene starts with quite a big splash — a crime scene in central New York, a ‘remarkable murder’ as described by the main protagonist in first person POV. From there everything just runs, trickles of information coming out about the mystery, about our main man and his past adventures, about another man miles away in the Middle East and his own journey, and how they come together as opposing sides in the fight of “good vs evil”.

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