{"id":28520,"date":"2014-07-09T19:35:56","date_gmt":"2014-07-09T14:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/my-india\/?p=28520"},"modified":"2015-01-17T17:43:02","modified_gmt":"2015-01-17T12:13:02","slug":"review-lethal-spice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/my-india\/reviews\/review-lethal-spice","title":{"rendered":"Review – Lethal Spice"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Lethal<\/a><\/p>\n

Title: Lethal Spice<\/p>\n

Author: Swati Kaushal<\/p>\n

Publisher: Hachette India<\/p>\n

Let me confess \u2013 I am a whodunit junkie. Like Ellery Queen once said, I like a well-rounded crime where all the facts are laid out to a reader with a challenge to unravel it. While in this case, perhaps all the facts are not available to the reader, but at least the murderer is in plain sight. And in all fairness, Ms. Kaushal did keep the pulse racing to the very end.<\/p>\n

By the time I picked up Lethal Spice (on the recommendation of a well-read Twitter pal), Ms. Swati Kaushal, already had published three well-liked books Piece of Cake, A Girl Like Me, and Drop Dead<\/em>. This means that our beauty-with-brains protagonist, Superintendent of Police Niki Marwah had already been introduced in a previous book. People knew about her. But this one, my first, made me fall headlong in love with our heroine here. By no means unselfconscious about her\u00a0good looks, Niki is certainly not a petite damsel moping in the absence of her chef-boyfriend who is temporarily away and \u2018out of the picture\u2019. Having worked her way up the echelons of the Himachal Pradesh Police by sheer dint of merit, SP Marwah is capable of holding her own in a man\u2019s world and surviving on steaming mugs of elaichi chai and gulab jamuns.<\/p>\n

Now here comes the spicy bit \u2013 the book opens to a dramatic murder during the live screening of Hot Chef, the latest reality show where six finalists are vying to hit the jackpot. Right in the middle of taping a live episode, the\u00a0beautiful judge \u2013 Mala Joseph \u2013 drops dead. No less than cyanide poisoning. Expertly navigating the reader through a maze of police procedures, Ms. Kaushal takes us to\u00a0the chase to nail the culprit.<\/p>\n

Before I go on to the rest, I must talk of the one element that impressed me most \u2013 Ms. Kaushal\u2019s fantastic ability to detail out the settings. From the touch and feel of Shimla autumns to the wilderness and\u00a0jungles of\u00a0central India, right down to the smallest nuances that make Niki\u2019s colleagues, the contestants, and the judges what they are. The attention paid to supporting characters \u2013 the young and tech-savvy ASP Sahay, the determined and efficient Inspector Deepika, rags-to-riches Leena, rebellious Vicky, sultry Sharon, talented Pallavi, persevering Dev, and quick-learner Shaq \u2013 is both fascinating and serves to heighten the intrigue. The life of the judges \u2013 the celebrity victim Mala Joseph, Kemaal Kapoor a.k.a. KK of Kemaal\u2019s Kebabs fame, and green tea sipping actress Ashika De \u2013 go to reveal the depth of Ms. Kaushal\u2019s cultural insight.<\/p>\n

As one would expect of a book called Lethal Spice<\/em>, food is at the heart of the story. While it serves to tease the gastronomic senses of the readers, it\u00a0has not been overemphasized. I read a digital version of the book\u00a0but\u00a0I hear that the print version comes with a pack of spices and a warning that claims it could be lethal!<\/p>\n

Chick lit they\u2019re calling the genre \u2013 not a term that goes well with me. In Lethal Spice<\/em>, SP Marwah, far from being an arrogant feminist, still looks up to her long-distance boyfriend for her dose of flowers. And the focus is far more on the crime, suspects, and victim, than on the sleuth. Like it should be in any good crime fiction.<\/p>\n

Our verdict \u2013 Go ahead and grab it. You\u2019ll love the food talk, the adventure, the sordid reality of reality shows, and the world of the young and adventurous. Following this read, I picked up two of Ms. Kaushal\u2019s other books. Fine books they are but Lethal Spice tops them all. And oh, if action is what you like in your crime fiction, there\u2019s enough of that too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Title: Lethal Spice Author: Swati Kaushal Publisher: Hachette India Let me confess \u2013 I am a whodunit junkie. Like Ellery Queen once said, I like a well-rounded crime where all the facts are laid out to a reader with a challenge to unravel it. While in this case, perhaps all the facts are not available […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":34862,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4114,66],"tags":[6073],"class_list":{"0":"post-28520","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-book-reviews","8":"category-reviews","9":"tag-swati-kaushal"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/my-india\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/my-india\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/my-india\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/my-india\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/my-india\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28520"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/my-india\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34863,"href":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/my-india\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28520\/revisions\/34863"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/my-india\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/my-india\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/my-india\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mapsofindia.com\/my-india\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}