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Random House India

Pages: 204

Rs 199

Ibn-e-Safi was the Conan Doyle of Urdu. His nine-anna thrillers were a rage from Kanpur to Karachi in the 1950s and the 60s. A few are being translated into English now. This volume,translated by Taimoor Shahid,brings back Imran the rich,goofy sleuth with a sports car and sarcastic one-liners. The landscape is a blur in Ibn-e-Safi novels it is somewhere in the East with few architectural or cultural markers. But all the devices of a good old thriller are present. In Mysterious Screams,the first of the two stories,a strange case has resurfaced for Imran: 10 years after Nawwab Hashib was found murdered in his house,his face blown to smithereens by a gunshot at close range,a man who claims that he is the real Nawwab Hashib is in town. Searching for a lead,Imran latches on to a rumour that the Nawwab has a daughter who lives in a small yellow house near the half minaret. Meanwhile,Imrans American friend Moody is entrusted with a jewelled casket by a girl who soon disappears into the night. Is she the same girl who lives in the yellow house? The title story is about a call girl,Roshi,who meets a man called Parrot. And intrigue of the Ibn-e-Safi brand follows.

24 Akbar Road

Rasheed Kidwai

Hachette

Pages: 295

Rs 495

A portrait of a place can be intriguing; and 24 Akbar Road especially so. This bungalow in Lutyens Delhi became the uber-power centre of national politics after a defeated Indira Gandhi and a few Congress karmacharis entered its portals in 1978. But Kidwai is not quite interested in power play as he is about trivia. This is more about sidelights than substance. There are broad brushstrokes,especially of Sanjay Gandhi,and nice cameos,especially of Subhadra Joshi. It is the kind of book where the most lasting image of the Emergency Indira and Sanjays flirtation with mild dictatorship is of Rukhsana Sultana walking through Old Delhi in her over-sized go-go shades and supervising the demolition of shops in the Turkaman Gate area.

Mask in the Mirror

Nidhi Chawla

Cedar Books

Pages: 312

Rs 295

A novel about writer and writing,it is about how an ordinary person gets transformed by the very act of writing,and the mystifying interaction between the author and the characters. This is rather indulgent meta-fiction.