Step on a Crack - Book Review

It sounds like a sin that I had not heard of James Patterson before. A colleague gave me an audio CD of his book “Step on a Crack”. I am not much into audio books, but wanted to try listening to a story while working. A book is meant to be a book, but the audio book comes closer for those stretched for time. I missed some of the portions of the book since I was deep into work. Anyways, that’s much better than not reading itself. Know what? I look forward to work more than before with the added carrots of audio books. 

On to the book itself, it was great. I felt the suspense so much that I picked up the hard copy book from the library and completed this morning – early morning.

A group of terrorists hold a bunch of celebrities as hostage in a cathedral. The protagonist is a negotiator who is called to talk to the terrorists. That’s a one line story line that the authors have narrated beautifully in the novel.  There are certain aspects though that I would have preferred to have been handled differently. The character of Eugena Humphrey was well developed and nothing happened after that. The author also tried to depict how the celebrity hostages changed during the heist, but that did not come out well.

Step on a crack is the first book in the Bennett series. I am looking forward to reading some of other Bennett books as well. 

A week of the near misses

A snowy weekend yielded to a chilly Monday. Without the snow and the fast winds, I was actually looking forward to a great start to the week. On the first turning from my house, a car appeared from nowhere and I applied the break. The brake kicked my foot back reminding me that the snow over the weekend had converted to ice with a bit of sun coming out. This is Wisconsin; snow and ice are part of the life here. But I slowed down a lot after that. When the next turn came, I was moving at snail’s pace. So what happened next was an even bigger shock. While turning, the steering wheel did not respond, the brake did not oblige and a fence bordered by a brick wall beckoned. The car came to a stop with a thud. As a true blood desi I had forgotten that I could have gotten hurt and feared a heavy car repair bill.

The first step outside the car reminded the reason for the car's disobedience. I carefully maneuvered the ice coated road to the front of the car with a thumping heart. Nothing! Probably a scratch that was more on my mind than on the body of the car. The steering failure was not too bad. If the steering wheel had responded partially, I would have hit the brick wall. Its complete failure made me hit a flexible fence which saved the car. Phew! Another story of the arrow taking the turban instead of the head.

Few days later, while walking out of the office building with the confidence that my car will shield me from the weather, I put my hand in my coat pocket. No car key! Frantic search in the very many pockets of the coat, shirt, pant and bag yielded nothing. With a heavy heart I left the car in office and took a ride with a friend back home. Well, I have back up keys to the car, and this is one of the safest places in the country to leave a car unattended. So why worry?

The next day a friend dropped me at office and I casually took the backup key and tried inserting it in the car. Forget opening the door, the key did not even go inside the hole. Is it the freezing temperature, is it the glove in my hand, or is it fate? There was confidence in the fact that there was one more spare key at home, but I started researching about the cost of making a new key. A website proudly announced that an uncut key with remote facility costs $250 at the dealer and only $140 with them. I really wished that the 2^nd spare key would work. One more visit home and back, and I was standing again in front of the car with another key in hand. This time the car relented to the key’s request and opened. The engine showed frustration at being in the subzero weather for the whole night, but worked. A quick check around the car showed that it was doing fine. The trunk though had something interesting. The original key!

Flash back. After parking the car the previous day, I had opened the trunk to keep the snow remover back in its place. With the heavy winter gloves I did not feel my hands dropping the car key and the cold weather made me run to the office door without realizing that I did not close the car. With auto lock and a safe place, no one really remembers locking the car. But from now on, I will. It might have been a close miss, but is something worth learning from.