Sunday pageturners

1. The Hard Way by Lee Child, paperback, published by Bantam, pp 528, Rs 500

2. Imperium by Robert Harris, paperback, published by Pan Books, pp 416, Rs 550

3. The Camel Club by David Baldacci, paperback, pp 400, Rs 500

4. Bangkok Tattoo by John Burdett, paperback, published by Corgi, pp 448, Rs 550

5. The Bancroft Strategy by Robert Ludlum, published by Orion, pp 544, Rs 500

What the books are about

The Hard Way

Late at night, in a New York cafe, Jack Reacher orders coffee in a cup made of foam, not china. So he can move on at a moment’s notice. He owns nothing, carries less. He has never met a woman who said no or a case he couldn’t solve. But now Reacher faces a new case so disturbing that the truth eludes him. He has to sweat the details and work the clues. Doing it the hard way, until what started on a busy New York street explodes 3,000 miles away, in the sleepy English countryside.

Imperium

When Tiro, the confidential secretary of a Roman senator, opens the door to a terrified stranger on a cold November morning, he sets in motion a chain of events which will eventually propel his master into one of the most famous courtroom dramas in history. The stranger is a Sicilian, a victim of the island’s corrupt Roman governor, Verres. The senator is Cicero, a brilliant young lawyer and spellbinding orator, determined to attain imperium — supreme power in the state. This is the starting-point of Robert Harris’ most accomplished novel to date. Compellingly written in Tiro’s voice, it takes us inside the violent, treacherous world of Roman politics, to describe how one man — clever, compassionate, devious, vulnerable — fought to reach the top.

The Camel Club

The man known as Oliver Stone has no official past. He spends most days camped opposite the White House, hoping to expose corruption wherever he finds it. But the stakes are raised when he and his friends, a group of conspiracy theorist misfits known as The Camel Club, accidentally witness the murder of an intelligence analyst. Especially when the authorities are seemingly happy to write it off as a suicide. For Secret Service agent Alex Ford, monitoring the ‘investigation’, the suicide verdict doesn’t ring true. As punishment for sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong, he is reassigned to bodyguard duties. His abilities are tested to the limit when he is sent to protect the President during a visit to his hometown, where a terrorist cell has spent months plotting an event that will shake the world. Meanwhile, America’s powerful intelligence chief Carter Gray is unnerved when he glimpses the face of an old acquaintance in Arlington Cemetery - but it is the face of a man supposedly long dead ...And as “The Camel Club” is poised to expose a conspiracy that reaches into the heart of Washington’s highly secretive corridors of power, Alex Ford finds out that his worst nightmare is about to become so much more.

Bangkok Tattoo

Bangkok, rich in history and spirituality, crowded with temples, markets and canals, is also a city shrouded in shadows. Polluted, corrupt, infamous as the sex capital of the world, it is a place where wealth, poverty and unimaginable evil walk hand in hand. In District 8, the underbelly of Bangkok’s crime world, a dramatically mutilated body is found in a hotel bedroom. It looks bad: the corpse — who’s been flayed — is CIA. And it gets worse when the self-confessed murderer is the beautiful Chanya — the best ‘working girl’ at The Old Man’s Club, a brothel owned jointly by Sonchai’s mother and his boss, Police Colonel Vikorn. Alerted by Sonchai, Vikorn quickly concocts a cover-up that involves an Al Qaeda terrorist cell, located in a southern Thai border-town where, since 9/11, the CIA has also had a covert presence.

The Bancroft Strategy

When Todd Belknap — a field agent for Consular Operations with a reputation as something of a cowboy — is cut loose from the agency after an operation goes wrong, his best friend and fellow agent is abducted in Lebanon by a vicious militia group. When the government refuses to help, Belknap decides to take matters into his own hands. Meanwhile, hedge fund analyst Andrea Newton gets an unexpected call — she has been left $ 6million by a cousin she’s never met. But there’s one condition: she must agree to sit on the board of the Newton foundation, a charitable organisation run by the family patriarch, Paul Newton. But the foundation appears less and less benign as she gets involved...

Information courtesy: UNITED BOOKS, Ganesh Man Singh building, Northfield Cafe ph: 4229 512; Bluebird stores in Lazimpat & Tripureshwore, ph: 4245 726; Momo’s and More, Old Baneshwor; Himalayan Java; Saturday Cafe, Bouddha; Namaste Supermarket in Pulchowk, ph: 5525 017