The Paperbackers

A fortnightly look at brisk sellers and quick reads. A Croatian village seeks vengeance,two young witnesses seek refuge from killers,and a child seeks,well,bags...

The 1991 Croatian War of Independence yielded many things: torture,rape,genocide,the occasional Serbian paramilitary commander indicted for his fondness for all three,and now,fertile grounds rich in both mass graves and mass-market fiction,like The Dealer and the Dead by Gerald Seymour Hachette India,Rs 295. Its set in a devastated village near Vukovar,a cursed,lonely place that lives in the shadow of towering cornfields and past atrocities. Here,memories,like landmines,refuse to be buried; in particular,one sharp,haunting memory of betrayal that comes to light with the turn of a plough.

Eighteen years before,battered by a relentless,bloody siege,the villagers had handed over every last valuable to an arms dealer,who promised them weapons to fight back. He never showed up,and those who waited for him were found instead by the sanguinary Cetniks,who cut their eyeballs and genitalia,forced their mouths open,placed bloodied gristle down the throats,and went on to lay waste to the village; maiming,raping,looting and killing. Once evidence found on the killed revealed the betrayers identity,the maimed,raped and looted seek retribution,and wont stop until they have their pound of death-dealing flesh.

That death-dealing turns out to be the surprise catch of a fishing trip that 12-year-old Annie Taylor takes her 10-year-old brother William on in Blue Heaven by C.J. Box Corvus,Rs 450. Deep in the dark woods of North Idaho,the two stumble across three men pumping bullets into Wavy Haired Man. When one of them,the Driver,catches sight of Annie,she feels ice-cold electricity shoot through her,and then,bullets streaming past her. The two run in blind panic past thorny bushes and looming pines,and out on to the road. There,they run into an ex-police officer,a friendly acquaintance of their mother and of the killers. So their flight doesnt end there.

Those who hunt them are new entrants with a shady past,and part of the rapid transformation affecting the town; turning ranches to fortified McRanches owned by outsiders,and shabby old taverns to tourist traps. This is a page-turner with a conscience troubled by the violent gentrification and damage that occurs in a blue-collar town when exuberant,young,crude college-goers and wealthy,shallow city-slickers take an interest in it.

Wealthy,exuberantly shallow city-slicker Becca Brandon returns with a rustle of shopping bags in the sixth novel in Sophie Kinsellas Shopaholic series,Mini Shopaholic Bantam Press,Rs 550. This one finds her trying to cope with curtailed credit,and a marauding,Chanel-mad,two-year-old version of herself her daughter Minnie. Never mind the slowdown,every page is filled with Brandons gaspy,breathless invocations of the Gods she kneels before in Prada heels,naturally Missoni,Dior,Balenciaga. With a wee bit of rewriting,this could make a nifty sequel to American Psycho: Mommy in Killer Heels.