Flood of Fire - Amitav Ghosh

It is 1839 and China has embargoed the trade of opium, yet too much is at stake in the lucrative business and the British Foreign Secretary has ordered the colonial government in India to assemble an expeditionary force for an attack to reinstate the trade. 
Among those consigned is Kesri Singh, a soldier in the army of the East India Company.
He makes his way eastward on the Hind, a transport ship that will carry him from Bengal to Hong Kong. 
Along the way, many characters from the Ibis Trilogy come aboard, including Zachary Reid, a young American speculator in opium futures, and Shireen, the widow of an opium merchant whose mysterious death in China has compelled her to seek out his lost son.  
The Hind docks in Hong Kong just as war breaks out and opium "pours into the market like monsoon flood." 
From Bombay to Calcutta, from naval engagements to the decks of a hospital ship, among embezzlement, profiteering, and espionage, Amitav Ghosh charts a breathless course through the culminating moment of the British opium trade and vexed colonial history. 
With all the verve of the first two novels in the trilogy, Flood of Fire completes Ghosh’s unprecedented re-envisioning of the nineteenth-century war on drugs. 
With remarkable historic vision and a vibrant cast of characters, Ghosh brings the Opium Wars to bear on the contemporary moment with the storytelling that has charmed readers around the world.

[Book Description Source: www.amazon.com ]
Ratings
Goodreads Rating - 4.1 out of 5 (3,345 Ratings, 465 Reviews -As on Feb 19 2018)
My Rating:   3 out of 5
My Comments:
The concluding part of Ibis Trilogy is quite interesting but nothing exceptional. I found the first part of the trilogy - The Sea of Poppies the best among the three novels.
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The Floating Admiral - The Detection Club

Inspector Rudge does not encounter many cases of murder in the sleepy seaside town of Whynmouth. 

But when an old sailor lands a rowing boat containing a fresh corpse with a stab wound to the chest, the Inspector's investigation immediately comes up against several obstacles. 

The vicar, whose boat the body was found in, is clearly withholding information, and the victim's niece has disappeared.

There is clearly more to this case than meets the eye even the identity of the victim is called into doubt. 

Inspector Rudge begins to wonder just how many people have contributed to this extraordinary crime and whether he will ever unravel it

In 1931, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and ten other crime writers from the newly-formed Detection Club’ collaborated in publishing a unique crime novel. 

In a literary game of consequences, each author would write one chapter, leaving G.K. Chesterton to write a typically paradoxical prologue and Anthony Berkeley to tie up all the loose ends.

In addition, each of the authors provided their own solution in a sealed envelope, all of which appeared at the end of the book, with Agatha Christie’s ingenious conclusion acknowledged at the time to be enough to make the book worth buying on its own’.
The authors of this novel are: G. K. Chesterton, Canon Victor Whitechurch, G. D. H. Cole and Margaret Cole, Henry Wade, Agatha Christie, John Rhode, Milward Kennedy, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ronald Knox, Freeman Wills Crofts, Edgar Jepson, Clemence Dane and Anthony Berkeley.

[Book Description Source: www.flipkart.com ]
Ratings
Goodreads Rating - 3.86 out of 5 (3,765 Ratings ,184 Reviews -As on Feb 03 2018)
My Rating:   3 out of 5
My Comments:
They say too many cooks spoil the broth. 
This however is not the case here. But at the same time the book can't be compared to a gourmet dish, despite legends of detective fiction writing like Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, G.K. Chesterton and many more writers collaborating to write this book.
You may read it for its uniqueness of being the first collaborative novel by the greatest crime writers but don't have any great expectations..

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