Review of The Case of the Chinese Mastermind

Cover photo of The Case of The Chinese Mastermind by

Authoress : Ketaki Karnik

“The Case of the Chinese MasterMind” by Ketaki Karnik, is a young adult fiction and mystery tale of stolen of important documents and catching the culprit.The story starts with a boring vaccation that turned out to be exiting and adventure for Varun,Raima and Kavya.They humourously solved the mystery which the elder ones to them failed to ,and they proved their worth.

As the back cover says ‘ When an annual boring family gathering in an isolated farmhouse turned out to be a gathering of the world’s most devious…With uncle Ravi’s immensely valuable designs stolen and his company refusing to call in the police, it is upto 14 year old Kavya, Raima and Varun, aided by Anna(Kavya’s older cousin), to solve the mystery.Blood-thirsty alien monsters.Killer cars.Hounds of horror.Rogue spies.Menacing threats.Six deadly Chinese daggers.A gun between the eyes.And it only gets worse…
Will the mystery busters succeed before the guests leave the farmhouse? But first, will they escape death that lurks around them?Stifle your fears and sharpen your intelligence as you hurtle into a treacherous whirlpool with the Crime Busters on their first adventure.’

A mystery case solved by three children presented and crafted well.At some moments, I got vibes that I was watching a mysterious twistfull cartoon show.As the story paces up, new facets of the story came into focus that laid to doubt new guest from the house.The first- half is bit dull.My level of interest increased when second half of the story started. Story created the suspense in the very beginning ,and literally, I couldn’t make out any clues about who would be the culprit.Albeit ,title and the cover picture provides you slight hint but it couldn’t draw towards conclusion.

A different writing fashion has been adopted by the author.For an ardent reader, it would be exciting to go with this writing style whereas for a novice reader, this could be difficult.Storyline is good enough to entertain children, neither too complicated nor too facile.One more good thing about the book is the story is not stretched unnecessarily, it is stitched nicely and laid down eloquently.

The downfall of the book is that the description of the characters could be much better.At many places confusion takes place due to this.As in the beginning itself number of characters had been introduced and it became quite difficult to recognize who actually is who ,apart from the main protagonists.Also, I felt that the thread of mystery looses its knot it between .

Children who are more interested in reading mystery tales, full of twists and turns and zig-zag curves in the storyline would get entertain on reading this book.Apart from the fact that those who has loose hands on english could slighltly miss the fun.

Rating : 3.7/5

Reviewer : Shweta Kesari

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