CY@CY Says Welcome to my dreamscape. Where a Lim is also a Ling.

Lately I have been reading novels by Japanese authors. Quite a number of the novels have been dark and twisted tales but I award the crown for the darkest revenge novel to The Confessions by Kanae Minato. Confessions is a literary phenomenon in Japan. Published in 2008 to critical acclaim, it became a runaway hit and won a slew of ...

I devoured The Name of the Game is a Kidnapping by Keigo Higashino in a day as it was an engrossing read. Compared to the other books by Higashino, this novel is shorter at 238 pages. It is definitely not Higashino’s best but I still thoroughly enjoyed it. When it comes to twists, Keigo Higashino is second to none. It ...

The Dry, the critically acclaimed debut novel by Jane Harper, has garnered so much rave reviews that I just could not resist buying it. It has become a runaway bestseller and Reese Witherspoon’s production company has optioned the film rights. The Dry opens with an apparent open-shut case of murder-suicide in Kiewarra: Luke Hadler snaps after being tortured by years ...

The road to justice was a long one for Reena Virk. On the night of November 14, 1997, the 14-year-old Indian girl was badly bashed up by a group of young teens comprising of almost all girls and then beaten again by one of the girls and a boy and forcibly drowned under a waterway bridge. Her death in the ...

I have never heard of Linwood Barclay until I came across his novel No Time For Goodbye while browsing the books on sale at Popular Bookstore recently. After reading the reviews on the back cover, I decided to buy it as it was only selling at RM8. And I am so glad I did! The premise is excellent: 14 year ...

Out by Natsuo Kirino is a lurid, shocking and bloody thriller which takes an audacious look at lives marginalized by society and the desperation that drives ordinary people to commit acts of unthinkable violence. Kirino has been hailed as the queen of Japanese crime fiction. Out is the first of her novels to be translated into English. What do you ...

99 Months by Ram Tiwary is based on the true case of the Sydney double murders with the author being initially found guilty of the murders for which he spent 99 months in jail. On September 15, 2003, Singaporean Tay Chow Lyang, 26, was bludgeoned and stabbed to death in his Sydney flat and a couple of hours later, his ...

The Girl with a Clock for a Heart by Peter Swanson is hailed as “an addictive, nonstop thriller—an ever-tightening coil of suspense that grips you right up to its electrifying end” but I beg to differ. Swanson may have created an impressive new femme fatale in Liana Decter but I feel that the main character George Foss is way too ...

Touted by master of horror Stephen King as “the first great thriller of 2017,” Final Girls, the debut novel by Riley Sager, is a dark and unsettling psychological thriller with an intriguing premise. I find it so engrossing that I finished the 339-page book in just a day. Ten years ago, Quincy Carpenter, then a college student, became the sole survivor of ...

Six Four, the sixth novel by Hideo Yokoyama but his first to get an English translation, is a Japanese Crime Literature phenomenon with rave reviews from around the world. In Japan, it sold over a million copies in the first six days after it was released. As I started reading it, I was increasingly caught in its grip. It is ...