1) A villain named Acheron Hades has entered Jane Eyre and kidnapped its protagonist. Using a Prose Portal, a detective named ‘Thursday Next’ jumps into the book, giving chase. Meanwhile, characters from Jane Eyre escape from the book into the real world. Whose erudite literary lunacy are we talking about here?
2) What genre do these literary mysteries belong to?
- The Shadow of the Wind
- The Bookman’s Wake
- The 13th Tale
- The Club Dumas
3) The protagonist and narrator of the book is Death, a collector of souls who doesn’t always enjoy the job he must do. Name this children’s thriller that won several literary awards. Five bonus points for the author.
4) What is common to all these mysteries?
- ‘The Skull Mantra’
- ‘Bangkok 8’
- ‘The Mandala of Sherlock
Holmes’
5) ‘The Last Kashmiri Rose’, ‘The Palace Tiger’, and ‘A Ragtime in Simla’ are all highly acclaimed, award-winning trio of detective series set during the British Raj. Name their author.
6) Ira Levin, who died recently, wrote ‘Deathtrap’, the longest running thriller-play on Broadway. Name the other thriller play he wrote that has been staged twice in Bangalore.
7) Name the blockbuster thriller set in Mumbai that is soon to be a Hollywood adaptation directed by Mira Nair, starring Johnny Depp and Amitabh Bachchan.
8) What is the most coveted American mystery/detective fiction award called?
9) Freud and Jung use psychoanalysis to solve a series of shocking serial killer murders in this recent, highly praised historical mystery.
10) Name the book of fairytales handwritten by J K Rowling that she will not publish, that only six of her friends will read, and cannot be read by you or me.
11) ‘The Simoqin Prophecies’, ‘The Manticore’s Secret’ and ‘The Unwaba Revelations’ belong to Samit Basu’s science fiction-fantasy trilogy called…?
12) This Swedish novelist of cult thrillers like ‘The Tandoori Moose’ makes his home in Bangalore. Who could he be?
13) In this overlooked cyberpunk novel set in a futuristic India it is August 2047, the 100th anniversary of India’s independence. Encounter specialists are called Krishna cops, there are no hackers, only data-rajas, genetic engineering has made possible a disease free, slow-aging Brahmin child, armour-plated government Mercedes drive past impoverished beggars, and even as the book thunders to its epiphanic climax, India are 208 for 5 in the second Test match. Name the book.
14) If we say ‘Devi’, ‘The Sadhu’ and ‘Snakewoman’, what would you think?
15) What is unusual about the sleuths featured in the mysteries by the following authors?
- Stepanie Barron
- George C Chesbro
- Mark Frost
- Lawrence Block
- Lillian Jackson Braun.
16) The opening lines from which epic Indian thriller begin...
“A white Pomeranian named Fluffy flew out of a fifth-floor window in Panna, which was a brand-new building with the painter's scaffolding still around it. Fluffy screamed in her little lap-dog voice all the way down, like a little white kettle losing steam, bounced off the bonnet of a Cielo, and skidded to a halt near the rank of schoolgirls waiting for the St Mary's Convent bus.”
17) ‘Holmes of the Raj’ and ‘Messers Dickens, Doyle and Wodehouse Pvt Ltd’: What is interesting about these two Sherlock Holmes pastiches?
Answers:
1. Jasper Fforde— in the books The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots where readers and characters interchange worlds.
2. The ‘bibliomystery’: set in the world of rare books
3. ‘The Book Thief’ by Markus Zusak
4. Buddhism –they are all Buddhist thrillers!
5. Barbara Cleverly
6. ‘Veronica’s Room’
7. ‘Shantaram’
8. The Edgar Allan Poe award
9. ‘The Interpretation of Murder’ by Jed Rubenfeld
10. ‘The Tales of Beedle the Bard’
11. ‘The GameWorld Trilogy’
12. Zac O’ Yeah
13. ‘River of Gods’ by Ian McDonald
14. Indian super hero graphic-novel comics
15. The detectives in each of these series is:
Jane Austen
A dwarf
Arthur Conan Doyle
A burglar
A cat
16. Vikram Chandra’s ‘Sacred Games’
17. Both were written by Indians: Vithal Rajan and Neelum Saran Gour, respectively.
