Naah!. Review on Are You Afraid of the Dark - Sidney Sheldon

My wife has been complaining, ?You are buying too many books these days. Where is the space to keep them in our tiny little flat?? I decide to pay heed to her admonishments but barely for a day or two. Over the last month, I have bought as many as eight books. Now eight aren?t too many. I think more than the space, she is more concerned about the money I seem to be spending on them. Books as we all know are not cheap any more.

A decent paperback costs anything above Rs. 100 and if it?s a hard bound edition that you are keen on taking home, then heavens help you. Rabindrantah Tagore?s Gora, One Yesterday (a collection of memoirs), Legendary Lovers (21 tales of unending legendary love), Complete Works of Bernard Shaw, Red Earth and Pouring Rain by Vikram Chandra, Because He Is (A biography of Gulzar) are some of the books I treated myself to.

Last weekend I went to Ebony, the bookstore I frequent quite often. And guess what? I saw on the stands Are you Afraid of the Dark? ? Sidney Sheldon?s latest. Nothing better than to spend a supposedly nothing-in-it weekend with a Sidney Sheldon potboiler.

Four scientists of a think-tank have been murdered. Two widows are on the run as someone is out to destroy them. Sidney Sheldon gets back to action after a slightly longish layoff with Are you Afraid of the Dark?

Strange things are happening. A woman in Berlin disappears. In Paris, a scientist jumps off the Eiffel Tower ? the police feel that he jumped to his doom due to a broken extra-marital affair with a Russian woman called Olga. In Denver, a plane gets caught in an unusual storm and crashes in the mountains while in Manhattan, the police discover the corpse of yet another scientist ? this time the death is related to his acquaintance with the Mafia.

In New York, Tanner Kingsley runs a global think-tank. He is in the midst of some secret research that could change global trends. Are the deaths related to the Kingsley Group? The FBI definitely seems to believe so as all the four deceased were doing research for the Kingsley Group. Tanner Kingsley is furious and wishes to get to the bottom of this.

Trapped in the middle of all this are two widows ? Kelly Harris and Diane Stevens. Fate brings these diametrically opposite women together and makes them cling to each other desperately. Someone wants them dead. But they are just not interested in the will of the unknown killer.

I rushed through the pages furiously, enjoying each moment as it came across. But at the end of it I was like a man who despite eating too much still leaved the dinner table unsatisfied. Are You Afraid of the Dark? is a BIG TIME DISPPOINTMENT. Despite relentlessly being at you, the book is a big, big let down in terms of logic, plot, character development and storytelling.

Kelly Harris and Diane Stevens remind you of previous Sidney Sheldon heroines, noticeably Catherine Alexander and Noelle Page while the Villain is a pale shadow of the menacing Demeris. The book is nothing but an exposition of the good-vs evil theme done to death by Bollywoodians. Also, the science bit (and there?s quite a bit of it in it) confounds, perplexes and disheartens you. Sidney makes a tamasha of science. Damn it!

Avoid this book unless and until you are a die-hard Sidney Sheldon fan.