A Prison Diary: Book 3: Heaven: by Jeffrey Archer

The cover photo with a patch of bright sky behind bars high above in the cell shown here is probably from the last cell he occupied in the place he surprisingly names Heaven (wouldn't earth be more appropriate, with Heaven reserved for home and family and freedom?) in this last part of his prison diaries, North Sea Camp, for one day.

That itself is a shocking turn of events stamping forever the British justice and other bureaucratic systems with a blot on the escutcheon, where individuals might be decent on the whole but bullied or otherwise persuaded into officially behaving otherwise, depending on their own bent of mind and heart or on their own individual circumstances. Anyone threatened with a loss of job or pension might do something rather unfair to someone however unwillingly.

And the fact of Archer being treated with unfair persecution, overblown noise about a lie and general misuse of law to punish someone for a completely different reason has been obvious from the start of the affair, even to the lay members of public reading about it all in news. Drunken drivers getting less sentence is just one example of this in evidence, as is the protective treatment of sex offenders in prison including paedophiles. And there is more.

Other than that the book is as others in the series full of interesting stories about how and why people, specifically men, end up in prison, and moreover might be decent apart from their specific crimes. The most horrendous crimes according to prisoners is sex crimes, and paedophiles need not only segregation but a cover story to be able to stay alive in prisons full of murderers. Going by the stories from just four prisons Archer gives this gradation is truly more along what should be put in place in dealing justice.

Strangely enough while prisoners including burglars and murderers see this as well as any general family people, most legal systems don't. Another one they - the legal systems - don't see the danger really of is drivers who drink, more than once being involved in accidents. These ought to be dealt with on par with potential manslaughter and illegal substance users, but in reality get a mere few weeks and have no remorse whatsoever.

His - Archer's - observations about how to prevent spread of intoxicants (I don't see why drugs should be used as a term both for therapeutic medicines and illegal unnecessary substances as well) and how to stop people going from comparatively mild and less harmful stuff like marijuana (much less harmful than tobacco or alcohol, much less addictive, as shown by its prevalent usage in so called less developed nations without any accompanying increase in crime) to seriously harmful substances like heroin, cocaine, and so forth, are very worth paying attention to - although given the circumstances of his persecution by authorities in Britain I would not be surprised if his recommendations are put in place by nations other than Britain first, even US. After all LA was almost the first place to make smoking illegal in public.

There are some human interest, even hilarious stories, about prisoners desperate to go to prison either from being more safe or for wanting to be with someone. There are observations about the general medical system being low compared to that in prison (one gets to see the doctor within an hour without appointment, and is taken to hospital as soon as needed).

And then there is the usual mistake, probably from Archer's need to protect the real names and complete indifference about providing another genuine one.

Patels being Sikh is about as likely as Archer being Romanov prince in entirely male lineage, less in fact. Or a Dubois being entirely Siberian, or a Smith being of Turkish ancestry in entirety.

A Man For All Seasons: by Robert Bolt.

A man who would be careful in treading the narrow path, serving his king and his faith, with careful steps to preserve his loyalty to one and his integrity of self and soul in another realm - and yet must be hounded out due to political needs of the day, with all means used and none barred. One of my most favourite tales - and it reaches its pinnacle when the wise lawyer is debating his son-in-law about fighting those that oppose truth, and explains why "cutting down every tree in the forest that the devil might hide behind" is a bad idea.

Thomas More is known for much wisdom and scholarly achievement, during a difficult time for his nation. He did his best in keeping loyalty to his sovereign and to his faith, and if he was torn it was perhaps the fault of a demand rather than the one who is expected to fulfill it. State and faith ought never to have conflicts, and subsequent (although not immediate) Regina Queen Elizabeth was largely able to see to it that a nation is forged and made strong with conflicts of this nature put behind it.

Thus A Man For All Seasons by Robert Bolt.

And yet - Bolt conveniently leaves out a few details, such as the men who were burnt alive by More while he was in office working for the church and the king both, when he knew fully well the troubled relationship between the two and the fact of the king's growing disenchantment with the politics of Rome and his need to strike free, and his increasing interest in reading on Protestant or otherwise free thinking views. The crime of those burnt alive by More? Thinking, and writing, without permission of Rome.

That Bolt leaves this out says as much for him as for the strong lobby attempting to impose domination of Rome, pretty much like the threatening groups of another religion that stems from the same roots and is younger, attempting to take over the whole world by threatening death to all that do not convert.

Prison Diary part II: Purgatory: by Jeffrey Archer.

Archer was able to buy a beautiful emerald for his very worthy wife as a Christmas gift, even as he was in prison - but if he is able to figure out why he is victimised, and who are the powers really behind it, he is not saying. He is a citizen of UK, and as such won't be able to articulate the truth if he has any suspicions of where it all came from. But it was all clear even as it began, the whole smear campaign that unbelievably blew into this kangaroo court case and the incarceration.

Baroness Nicholson lied about his misdeal with red cross funds for Kurds, not for a frolic without a fear of reprieve but due to perhaps orders from above, perhaps merely a nudge that she was happy to oblige for her own satisfaction. Potts, who knows if he was pressured, blackmailed, or none of the above, merely presented a case of preservation of some authorities higher above in the nation.

Fact is he was and is victimised for being a friend of Diana, the Princess of Wales (one would say late if it were not really that it seems so unreal, even apart from the fact that there won't be another until William is married and PoW), the Queen of Hearts.

He is getting off much lighter at that, compared to Charles Spencer, the brother of Diana - he had his children taken away from him by the divorce that came after death of Diana, and who can say if that was a natural course of events or if Lady Spencer was really persuaded by those that disapproved of Charles telling it like it is and being applauded at the funeral? If she really was persuaded, moreover, who knows how it was done, with threats, or blackmail?

Fact is Charles Spencer is now alone, having lost his family for being the only relative of Diana to be able to defend her, to speak of the beautiful woman with glowing terms unlike the disparagement fashionable in highbrow circles along with a excusing of her being supplanted with a mistress by her husband with a "she was not intellectual enough" (hello, was or is her husband a Nobel prize contender in science? Even a postgraduate degree holder from Oxbridge? A first, perhaps?) - and who knows, perhaps Charles Spencer got off lightly at that, due to his wife leaving her and him losing his family; the option might have been an accident to him, too, in yet another foreign land. Or even right in England.

English history after all is replete with such disposing off of inconvenient persona.

Absolute Power: by David Baldacci.

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

And who has more power than the holder of the most powerful office in the most powerful nation in the world?
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A meticulously good artist, copying paintings at a museum, is also a thief that is an artist in this profession - when he decides to burgle a very wealthy man's home in DC area, he has done his meticulously good research and knows the house well, from architectural plans to various settings.

What he did not know before saves his life that night - that the vault for jewels in the bedroom separated from the main area by a glass wall is a viewing room, with the glass wall being a one way mirror.

He is in the vault when he is trapped by entrance of the mistress of the house, who happens to be returning from a rendezvous with her current lover, the US president. Only, things don't go as romantically as she was expecting. The lover is a power freak, insecure man, who slaps her around for his cheap thrills and begins to hurt her seriously when in fury she slaps him back. She fights for her life as he is strangling her, uses a letter opener and he cries out in pain. His security crew rushes in and shoot to kill, then proceed to clean up the place of traces of their visit.

All this while the artist thief has been watching, transfixed in horror, unable to move lest he reveal himself. When they leave, he comes out, discovers that the letter opener has been left behind and collects it, along with the diamond necklace lying on the night stand worn by the murdered woman that night, and manages to escape unidentified by the security personnel who have returned to collect the letter opener they had forgotten in their confusion.

They now know there is a thief who knows everything, they do not know who he is or how he looks. He has a fighting chance for survival, and they have all the state machinery to hunt him down and destroy him. And they are not above using the machinery, certainly not above killing anyone at all to save their own hides. Anyone however innocent.

He has a daughter, who happens to be a public prosecutor, and as an extra help from powers above the police chief assigned to the case happens to be honest, which is all that the now persecuted thief has on his side. The daughter is unaware of how much the father has watched her through the years he kept apart due to a need to protect her, and there is nothing to save her from the now persecuting murderers - except him.

The story weaves between the thief being prudent and horrified to coming to a steely determination to not let them get away with it (and achieving his end superbly with facing the grieving widower), as he - the thief - goes from being transfixed in horror, prudently fleeing and watching in disgust as the president lies on television, changing his decision to flee and warning the killers right in their home turf, meeting his daughter in spite of all the dangers he knows he faces and being well prepared while managing to remain alive with some luck and managing to meet her and let her know precisely what is going on. He manages to protect her, to punish the miscreants, and in the process incidentally builds back the relationship with his daughter.

The General's Daughter: by Nelson Demille.

No matter how much she achieves, she could never achieve one thing she desperately needed as a child, her father's approval and love. He is a high profile general and a selfish man in that his career, his standards, his name is everything. Perhaps a male heir would beat him at his own game, perhaps not, who knows! But a daughter has no chance whatsoever no matter how high an achiever in his own field, because she has other needs too, of love and admiration, and if she does not get them from him she could only go frigid and die within or do something that would inevitably blot the father's escutcheon, since respectable ways of a happy life with love do not match requirements of a life with high achieving career if you are a woman, not in west, certainly not in military.

So when she is dead in a position incompatible with her father's position, he must order an inquiry but makes his requirements clear, hush. And the setup of the inquiry is as suitable for the purpose, or so those that arranged it think.

Only, those that are given the job have more of a conscience and integrity. They will go to the end to discover truth, and will not hush it up. And truth is, however much others in the base hated her or whatever, for whatever reason, it is her own father that is responsible for her murder, in a more literal way than the slow torture of her life from childhood on.

Eye Of The Needle: by Ken Follett.

Future of civilisation and humanity depended on Allies winning, and before Normandy invasion it looked even chance - albeit not as bleak with need of fortitude as when Britain was going it alone in face of impossible odds - so all the more it was vital the invasion succeed. Allies had brought about an elaborate deception with Patton in East Anglia to give the impression that the invasion would be spearheaded from there at Calais, with shortest distance from England to France to Germany involved, and Patton being the star of various battles until then.

What if the deception was discovered, what if there was a spy, a needle in a haystack, a German who looked and spoke as an upper class Englishman and no one had a clue to his truth, and what if such a needle could get to a submarine in sea off English coast with a launch and alert them that East Anglia was a ruse after all?

If indeed it all happened, we are lucky the lonely woman who was falling for the stranger she and her husband saved after his launch crashed in a strong gale off their island was not blinded by love or even blinkered - for when she discovered her handicapped husband's death, and realised moreover that he had not fallen off a cliff after all but was murdered by the stranger, she did not hesitate in using all her mind and other faculties in trying to overcome whatever the stranger's aim in all this.

She did not know even then - although her husband had been suspicious to begin with and found out, which is why he was murdered - that it was not about jealousy but about the war and espionage. When she did discover that, she managed to stop him from giving it away. How, makes a very worth acquainting oneself with sort of a thriller. And if any of it is true history in fact, she deserves a supreme award of recognition and honour.

Lord Edgeware Dies: by Agatha Christie.

There is more than one person who might murder Lord Edgeware, but one has a watertight alibi - the wife, an actress of yore famed for beauty and style, who was at a very well attended dinner - and the other, a young man, was at late night show of film which no one can corroborate. Both had entered the house at the relevant time, and either could be the murderer.

Then there is another actress, a minor one who resembles the Lady Edgeware, found dead. Did she do it, using the name of the better known actress, and if so why?

Mrs. Dalloway: by Virginia Woolf.

Given a choice, the young woman - or man for that matter - of average sort will choose a safe everyday continuance of routine than choose life and love with all its turmoil, and prefer a safe facsimile rather than the raw truth. For growth is painful and while children can face it fearlessly, even eagerly, age for love brings fear of losing the cocoon one has grown up in - neighbourhood, people one knows, routines, familiar rituals whether parties or church or afternoon coffee sessions with neighbours - and the real risk is a loss of ego on realising one's own self. Most people would rather lose love.

Capitalism: by Ayn Rand.

Expanded version of John Galt Speech from Atlas Shrugged, with the philosophy Ayn Rand expounds generally through her works. While her thinking is not complete, and does reflect partial nature of her knowledge and thought, it nevertheless is good at exposing altruism the veil over would be slavers' face and heart.

To begin with she goes into the question of what precisely is money, and how it is seen, in her work here as well as in Atlas Shrugged; how it is seen, and what is the real reason it was needed, what is its real nature. When seen so at a level exposed of all veils much becomes clear.

When you envision a society without money, any form of money, it is impossible to work out an exchange of worth, of work and of value, unless you are in a family situation where there is a parent or two providing everything and solving all disputes - and this can only be extended to a community larger than a family if such community consist of completely achieved spiritual mendicants with no concern about whether or not needs are provided for and whether or not there is an equal or even just distribution.

Money is that which represents the worth of work and value, it is value of one's work represented in coin or paper or promissory note. Whatever the representation, and however badly it is used or stolen, the best way still is to leave everyone to bargain freely and fearlessly for worth of one's work in market.

Thus far Rand, and it is undeniable. However -

The gaps in her logic and thought are not covered by her opposite but by a complementing of her gaps. Mothers, nurses, teachers are not paid well as are artists, scientists, and inventors generally, or great writers often enough. Sales and money earned during life of such a person does not in any way reflect their true worth as is equally true of great many of corporate overpaid darks suits.

There are many such anomalies, greatest ones being a comparison of Africa and Asia with their losses - former far more than latter, since the latter has to some extent recovered - and the western societies on the other hand that benefited from physically overpowering the people of other continents and robbing them, calling it taxation but in reality a loot since the tax brought no benefits to the people in general. Think diamonds, think coffee, think chocolates. Think how much royalty ought to be paid for them their real worth, and what the natives lose when land is used for western luxury rather than natives needs of food.

Capitalism leaves much unanswered, unless one believes in physical power and threat as justification for wealth, which Ayn Rand does not. She however prefers to keep it simple, complexity defies her and she ignores it.

Anthem: by Ayn Rand.

Reminiscent of George Orwell's 1984, with an Ayn Rand twist - the hero is a hero justifying his stature due to his discovery of the singular first person pronoun.

Pride And Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park, Sense And Sensibility: by Jane Austen

Every time one reads Austen, it is a different experience.

Of course, few read a book repeatedly around the same time unless one is either studying it for an exam or one is really bored and has little other recourse to a life of mind. But a good book entices one to repeat it aftere a while, when one thinks one knows all about it and yet is not quite sure of some small details, or one wishes to refresh the joy the book gave. Some are of course repeated for the reason that one realises one did not quite understand it completely, and then again when one repeats a book one loves one may realise one had not understood it quite, or this time one might see yet another perspective and understand it at another level. In Austen's case many of the above happens - one loves her books, thinks one understood them - there is really not much there, is there, it is all about country life in England and a love story or two, some misunderstandings and resolutions one way or other.

One reads a favourite, then, a few years later, and then realises there is a whole level one had missed. One is surprised one understands a little or a lot more this time, and one gets back to life. Until one picks it up yet again a few years later, and there is a lot more. Jane Austen is deceptively simple in her style of writing - something Agatha Christie did later, in another genre - and goes about describing a little town in countryside in England and its characters, all seemingly as normal and common as everyone else's neighbours, and their concerns just as universal across time and boundaries of geography, of nations and cultures.

A volume like this, with four of her best in one, is a find one cannot pass and that was the reason to buy it - and read it with a desultory beginning, and some revelations along the time I read them through finally. The first growing revelation was an obvious one, that Austen's writing was not about amusing oneself or her reader although she did that plenty all along, what with caricatures and strongly sketched portrayals in few short strokes, with all too human follies and habits of vanity of various characters. And of course English countryside is no longer a stranger once one has read Austen, or of course Agatha Christie or P.G.Wodehouse for that matter. Austen's beautiful descriptions make it come alive in all ut soft gentle beauty. But her real objective is to give a discourse on values, as little or as successfully hidden as a quinine bottle with a clear label and yet no discernible taste when one does have to swallow one, the sugarcoating so successful. In case of Austen, moreover, no one has to prescribe that quinine either, it is so sweet to the last a child could chew a whole bottle full (I know of one naughty, very loved one who did just that) - the Austen readers seldom realise they are getting a discourse on values and cautioned about common follies leading to risking misery for life.

And then, halfway through, one begins to see her world as one, with her people living in towns near or far but her characters with startling similarities and yet with no mass produced push button delivery of justice - instead, they are indeed individuals, and their separate actions bring them their deserts, their follies bring their risks and their virtues earn their rewards. Austen does have mery as well and often rewards the deserving or sometimes even the less deserving but not evil often, still, her rewards and schemes of luck smiling are never without reasonable possibility of events.

A Wickham is not punished only because a young, innocent, spirited Lydia ought not to suffer as well, she is not that guilty - quite guileless, actually - and in the event his punishment is having to put up with himself with no fortune brought by a wife found in an heiress snared for the purpose, while her reward is her ever stout and completely unsuspecting belief that she is the luckiest of women, with a handsome and loving husband. That he is no good nor loves her she will - did, Austen assures us - never see.

A Marianne on the other hand, along with another shadow of a young girl mentioned but never actually brought up to readers' sight, suffers and how horribly, only because of a lack of prudence in allowing - in fact, positively jumping into - an attachment without any knowledge of the character of the person, going by an attractive visage and a charming persona. This is not justice, after all Marianne does not deserve it nor does the girl Elizabeth any more than the mother of the girl (also named Elizabeth) - but it is lifelike in that often innocent suffer due to the faults of others who play with them for pleasure of the moment thoughtlessly, and Austen portrays the risks in all their possible horror. Marianne is not eventually punished but recovers due to her friends and is then rewarded with a life of love and security and happiness, with the ever consistent Colonel Brandon who takes care of Elizabeth (as promised to her mother) too, and deserves to find some happiness and love in his life as well. The character with a severe fault, Willoughby who is neither willing to do justice to the woman he brought into trouble - not so trivial in those days as it might be today in another land, another culture - nor strong enough to then stand by his love and strive for a life with her and instead is cad enough to marry an heiress, for only her money, is merely awarded his life as a punishment - he chose it, after all, and has lost the love and friends he knew for a short time. He has society, but knows the heaven he lost all too well, and must live with the life he chose.

The themes, the characters, the faults and the virtues, the natures and the circumstances keep changing across the world of Austen like patters of a kaleidoscope, every changing and yet with a few pieces of coloured glass to form them - the one constant is the values. Decency, propriety, prudence, due respect and courtesy, integrity, love and friendship, and discerning the truth of what is really love from what is an attachment that might be unwise, or in fact untrue but a mere pretense for sake of a goal completely different - marrying an heiress, playing for amusement for the time - very necessary now as it was then.

One might wonder endlessly what would have happened if only the Crawfords had been brought up more properly, or one can read Emma and find out - Henry Crawford loses Fanny Price, while Frank Churchill gets to marry his love Jane Fairfax since his faults of character, and his actions therefore, are not so disastrous. Emma delights one more than any other young woman with her follies and faults one can shake one's head at, while Jane Bingley and Jane Fairfax suffer travails of love to emerge victorious. Edward Ferrer is rescued by the truely low character of the fiancée he was unwisely attached to when too young and is too noble to break up with no matter if threatened with loss of all his heritance, since the fiancée suddenly marries his brother the heir. Darcy's redemption is his character, which helps him to see his own faults and the truth of the accusations and make up for the consequences of his actions and rescue the innocent. Mary Crawford plays with her own love, and loses him by her assumption that his preference for his values can be turned around by her charms and his attraction for her. Lady Bertram accepts an offer of marriage from a suitable wealthy gentleman and lives her life almost as if she were watching a film, while her sister Frances marries a poor sailor for love and has nine or ten children at the last count, with little thought for those she lost to either benevolence of Bertrams or to death. Mrs. Norris wishes to manage everyone's affairs and is finally only good enought to stand by the foolish Mariah she pampered and encouraged to marry a rich man without love when Mariah is foolish enough to go away with Henry Crawford believing this will force Crawford to marry her.

On and on go the kaleidoscopic patterns, with a little tweak here and there making differences in destiny, and Austen provides as much of a complete world as anyone could - and yet, she wrote less than a dozen books overall, with beautifully simple storytelling about simple English country life.

Just wonder - did anyone else realise Austen carries the seed for Agatha Christie to grow so beautifully into her own genre? Reading Emma again, it was wonderful to see how many gentle clues were strewn about, how deceptively blended into the general pattern of almost old women's gossip structure so one missed them unless one was totally vigilant, something very difficult when reading either Austen or Christie.

Sleeping Murder: by Agatha Christie.

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Sleeping Murder (Miss Marple, #13) 

by Agatha Christie. 

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A young woman is in England in a small town for the first time, after her marriage, and taken a house and is busy redecorating it, only she seems to know the house in a way that is not possible (giving me goosebumps as I write!) - nothing spectacular, only little things that add up and are uncanny. Then she visits a friend in London and goes out to theatre with the couple, only to run out screaming at a murder scene, claiming she was there, she had seen it ...

The friend has an aunt visiting, elderly, frail, soothing and caring, woolly white haired, twinkly eyes the only sign of any intelligence - Miss Marple. She takes the young traumatised visitor totally seriously and treats her as normal, and in fact has an explanation that needs to be supported by facts. So they set out to find the truth of the matter .......

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September 08, 2010. 

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Feb 05, 2016. 

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The Philadelphian: by Richard Powell.

This book is about a young lawyer whose boss's daughter falls in love with him, and the young one is persuaded by his boss to postpone the marriage a few years, thus winning - the daughter wanted to marry now! Sure enough she marries someone a couple of years later, and the young man has learned a lesson about how the old one played him.

He gets his own back, incidentally and inadvertently, when he informs an old woman and her granddaughter that they could save money in taxes if the firm informed them of one particular point, and the old lawyer's firm is up in arms against him accusing him of stealing a client and challenging him to show another point or lose his license - and he wins that one, after a couple of nights or so of poring over the accounts. The old girlfriend, now a mother of two, sends him her congratulations.

The young lawyer goes on to marry the young heiress, with the blessings of her grandmother who with her estate is now his client, and goes on to achieve more success in life and career, trumping the old fox who had prevented him marrying his daughter, trumping him more than once.

Ganga Descends: by Ruskin Bond.

A collection of real life stories and pictures of the region, especially Gangaa river (known with its deformed name Ganges in the west), from Himaalayan region around the Gangaa valley where Ruskin Bond has made his home in Mussoorie situated between the Gangaa and the Yamunaa valleys.

This book is the coffee table edition with hard cover and pictures galore, while another edition has a paperback small size and more stories than photographs. This one is a pleasure to reminisce over when one is just back from a trip and would like to have stayed there forever.

And the pictures don't cover all of one's memories, of course, but add to them as well on the other hand.

Flight of Pidgeons and other stories: by Ruskin Bond

Flight of Pigeons is about the time of first war of independence of India - naturally termed mutiny by British, which is as false as it gets since the British rule was far from established or even ubiquitous, at that time.

This was when East India company had established offices through India, brought in soldiers supposedly to protect its own property with local rulers' permissions, and then gone about playing machiavellian political games and browbeating and dominating various rulers, of which many were far from happy or submissive.

When the war erupted with soldiers working for the British refusing to use the cartridges - the cartridges needed to be used in mouth before loading and had grease from animals that various religions in India forbade their followers from being used this way - various rulers and so forth joined hands and fought. British were able to recruit poor mainly from southern region of Madras, especially those of low castes, for little money to fight the wars in north for them and thus win a war where they had a superiority of weapons.

Subsequently Queen Victoria and the British government took over from East India company and proceeded to follow policies that would help them stay longer, of which the chief weapon was the usual British "divide and rule". A second one was to badmouth and malign the local culture, achievements, knowledge, and so forth at every turn, even falsely - just to break spirit of the ruled, a typical tactic of those who would enslave others.
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This story, from which the book takes its name, uses a flight of pigeons as an analogy for the British during the 1857 war when they might fly away - as eventually they did inf act less than a century later - having eaten their fill and having no bond of heart or otherwise to the land itself or people therein.

The story deals with various angles of the people and their relationship - there is the honest Hindu trader attempting to help the women of the slain British man's family, which consists of his half Indian wife (her mother was from family of Nawab of Rampur) with her mother and her daughter. The daughter Ruth has attracted due to her sheer beauty a Pathan who would rather marry her (needless to say, having converted her first) than give up the women to those only too happy to slaughter them. The various complications in this, and their resolution and the war raging without, is the story.

The characters are sketched well with the wife of the pathan unhappy about a new young girl - just about sixteen or so - that her husband is crazy about, the mother of the girl attempting to keep the marriage question at bay and unwilling to give up her three quarters British daughter to an Indian husband, the grandmother of the girl counseling her daughter to think it over since he is a good guy and the grandmother sees no reduction of value in such a marriage - (until then cross marriages were common, mostly with local women being married to British males who could not after all persuade their own countrywomen to come over to settle so far away, and thus grew a whole new community of Anglo Indians who were held at mid level by British subsequently, lower than themselves and higher than Indians) - and then there are those fighting the war that have contempt for this pathan raging with love for a foreigner, a girl with a British father.

The girl's mother cleverly tied up the question with the victory of the war, and for a while it looked as if she would marry him after all, but then the tide turned and they were able to get away and join the British.

This happens to be a true story, and realising this gives one goosebumps - because the fact is Ruth lived to be old enough, lived in UK, and never married. She never forgot the pathan with his ardent but distant courting.

False Impression: by Jeffrey Archer.

Another intriguing mystery thriller from Archer, with murders and art works, precious masters and corrupt stock market players, WTC and heiresses, US and England and more.

A Matter of Honour: by Jeffrey Archer.

This story mesmerised me for more than one good reason, every time I read it - there is the young innocent Englishman who has been left a letter by his father that he reads after the will is read and the bequests are finished with, which takes one to the history of the father as a jailer at Nuremberg who suffered subsequent to the suicide of his most ill famed jailbird; the son is innocent and moreover has complete faith, unlike the British authorities, in his father's innocence, and goes about opening the letter left him by the prisoner before he committed suicide. The letter is in German, and he gets help from a German au pair working her way in England in student days, after some mistrials (he knows enough to know he has to be careful about not letting anyone know the contents), and implusively invites her to fly with him to Switzerland to get the gift left in a Bank for his father that is now passed on to him.

And this is only the beginning of the practically jewel studded story with its jewels in Swiss banks and other treasures, art icons and Russian revolution, theft of art of private German owners by authorities in '30s, and more. There is the chase across Switzerland, the murders and the close escapes, the brilliant schoolmate who has been surprisingly a low level bank clerk and transforms into a crisp man of command and ability when the flatmate in trouble calls him for help with escape from the murderers chasing him in Switzerland, and then there is more - the murderers themselves.

The other side is about just as much glamour and history, what with history of the Russian revolution and prior era, bankers who know secrets of various past and present people of high up, young men and women of whom much is expected in future, discoveries of past and planning for future, ...

And there is more, much, much more! It involves Russia, Soviets, Tsar Nicholas during revolution, precious secrets, German aristocracy and principalities, accidents of airplanes, US interests and involvements, MI6 or is it another number?

And an icon precious for originality and more.

Ford County: by John Grisham.

The collection of stories begins with a couple of tales about people all too human, the sort no one thinks about much less write, but finds them familiar when reading as the ones one generally would like to avert eyes from and forget. Most people in the first two stories do that as well, even though in the first one it looks like it is about their neighbours caring.

Grisham comes into his own in the rest, with quiet vengeance of Sidney against casinos in one and a carefully planned exit of a lawyer from his hometown in another. One cheers with the two protagonists, never mind the overall aspects of strict ethics - they have after all been good and been dealt a not too good hand. The lawyer's disenchantment is all too justified post his decision to leave, what with his wife and daughters being more than willing, eager in case of the wife, to get rid of him. Sidney is positively a hero, and there is a danger of a stray reader or so attempting the feat. It takes far too much mental discipline though, at least.

The last one is touching, all too familiar story of a man arriving home to die and the town behaving as if he were worse than the gun toting gangsters most people in US are romanticised by even now, never mind the massacres in schools. The man so shunned has AIDS, and that is merely the topping on a series of crimes that include leaving home - backwater Mississippi - for a big town and living an alternate lifestyle, which most people still consider a choice, never mind the discoveries of science saying otherwise.

All in all a good collection, but not the more usual Grisham thrilling roller-coaster ride from a victim to a justice with vengeance - this is a more quieter journey. It fits rather somewhere between the Painted House and The Firm.

Love Is Eternal: by Irving Stone.

He was from a family in log cabin and educated due to his mother's concern and care, she from a wealthy family with relatives in Illinois and Kentucky both, and they met when she was being courted by the man who would be his rival in politics as well, a man of her class and far more acceptable to her family on the whole. But Mary Todd found Abraham Lincoln far more intriguing and challenging, and in spite of his lack of social skills (recall the famous true story about her telling him that he had said he wanted to dance with her in the worst possible way) she accepted his proposal.

He went on to make history, and was assassinated soon; she did not remarry, even though it would be not merely possible but desirable to her relatives, and lived with the legacy.

The Greek Treasures: by Irving Stone.

This is an astounding story of one man with comparatively little education but tremendous determination and perseverance, proving history scholars of his day wrong with sheer evidence of archeological finds. Everyone else was agreed upon Homer's work being myth; Schliemann forced them to reconsider this.

Schliemann family was of German origin as the name indicates, and not very well to do; Heinrich Schliemann had been in US since a tender age, mostly fending for himself, and the era was good to those with initiative and force and self reliance, with some sharpness and business acumen.

Not very much educated, he did very well in business on his own, but had deep interests in some matters of literature and history, one of them being Troy. He was convinced unlike the scholars of his day that Homer's work was based on history, and was determined to fond Troy.

To this end he in his middle age went to Greece, and since he was an outsider who would find it difficult to get permissions for excavation from the government, arranged through middlemen to find a Greek wife for himself so he could carry out his mission. Fortunately he found a young woman who understood and was as interested when she heard his purpose.

Sophia was from a not very well to do family, as Heinrich had been, but that does not necessarily amount to lack of higher interests and aspirations, as commonly thought in west (or pretended, at least). She cared about various aspects of the issue, and the turning point of conviction in marrying him was the fact that he intended to restore the glory of Greece to the Greek nation by turning over his finds to Greece, which he was convinced of successfully finding.

After some unsuccessful attempts he realised he needed to excavate in a region that was now in Turkey, since the boundaries of culture and state are fluid over the millennia and what was once all Greece was now divided in Greece, Turkey and other nations. (Alexander was Greek, for example, but he was from a region that is now the nation of Macedonia, independent of Greece.) So they moved to Trukey with their teams, obtained the necessary permissions - which included working with supervision of the Turkish government and promise not taking out any significant findings.

But of course no western nation or person ever intended honouring any such promises made to any eastern country (think Elgin marbles named after the man who took away inestimable treasures of Greece to be housed in British museum and referred to diminutively as marbles, as if it were playing marbles which are little glass ball toys for little boys, rather than beautiful marble statues, works of art and of inestimable significance to history, and a Greek national treasure as well) - and nor was Schliemann an exception.

When the find did happen finally against all hopes dimmed by the time, he took care to dismiss all workers for the day and for next day, and the trusted part of his contingent ran with the treasure from the country. The workers did suspect and inform and they were pursued, but escaped with most of the finds, including the treasure of gold of Troy they had found.

With this success though Heinrich was encouraged subconsciously to change his mind about restoring the treasure to Greece, which broke his young Greek wife's heart. Nevertheless he deliberated, and perhaps she might have agreed it was a safer choice to leave it to US for sake of safety of the treasure, except his final choice rested on the nation of his origin, Germany. The treasure was exhibited with great pride in Berlin before wwii.

Post wwii which followed soon enough, the treasure was missing, and there was no telling where it had gone. The government and high officials had taken away treasures of all sort including art works from private owners, especially those sent to concentration camps to be murdered, and a good deal of it was missing as well, then and now. There were guesses that alpine tunnels were used for the storage of this stolen property and were sealed, and it was impossible to go about finding them without a clue as to where, since arbitrary dynamiting of suspicious locations would destroy the very treasures that were being attempted to be located whereabouts of by any authority.

Irving Stone tells this story with his usual good way of writing historical novels, wholesome and informative.

(Troy treasure including gold was fortunately another story, as came to light post fall of Berlin wall etcetera - Russian government admitted to having taken it to Russia.)