HUNTING DOWN AMANDA ... ANDREW KLAVAN

Recently i read HUNTING DOWN AMANDA ,,,, a 1999 novel by ANDREW KLAVAN... Actually got a 2 in 1 book ... so now reading THE UNCANNY.

I would say its not bad.

RATING 3/5

The novel opens full-tilt, with a rain of flesh and "liquid fire" on a small town in Massachusetts. I found it a little funny. He has described it as if GOD has gone crazy. It was a just a plane accident. I mean there is no need to so much spice into a accident.

Then comes the little girlin the ground-level conflagration caused by the plane explosion and this part is described in a beautiful way. You can form a visual image of a cute little girl running confused. Her mother, Carol Dodson, chases after her and finds her in the arms of a man staggering through the fire, who hands the girl to Carol.

"Oh God," Carol says in a moment of clarity whose significance is revealed only later, "now they'll come after her."

And a team of villains does, with shocking fierceness, alerted to Amanda's location by the incident and headed by one Edmund Winter, a killer as stone-cold as his name and dispatched by a multinational corporation with a lethalAif a bit too incredibleAinterest in both little Amanda and the man at the crash site.

Again in the character of E Winter he has put more of masala and less of real time brain. I mean he is able to do big time things but gets flattened by sexual and sadist urges.

Fighting to save the girl are several equally desperate characters, including her mother, now on the run, willing to do anything, including selling her body, for her daughter;

Lonnie Blake, a soul-blasted jazz musician looking for a reason to live; and an embittered lit professor stricken with cancer. Poor man ! Love makes you blind.

Related in trim, athletic prose, the novel unfolds around New England and New York City as an extended, twisty chase, breathtaking but seriously deepened by its fallible heroes' varied struggles for redemption.

The ending is a kick in the solar plexus but feels just right: this is a thriller with smarts equal to its ultra-slick style.

ULJHAN

Sapne dekhte hain har pal,
khote hain phir mere afsane,

Soyi soyi si duniya meri,
Unme tum jagi jagi si,

Dil mein pyar ki unjani uljhan,
Bechain ho gaya hoon ab to,

Raha baki na hosh koi,
Tere yadon ke nashe mein,

Aakhon mein chupe kai armaan,
Bayan karne ki himmat nahin,

Nazarein milte nahin sharm se,
Aur door hote hain hum waqt se,

Khuda se maangte hain tumko,
Tumse tumehein maang pate nahin,

Zane kab hogein rubaroo phir,
Milengi kab dil ko tasalli hamare,

Dabe afsane dil mein tadapte hain,
Us pal tumpar kurbaan hone ho,

Kwaishon ke pul banate hue,
Lafzon ke moti pirote hain,

Bas Tu

Phir nazar wo aayin hamein,
Phir sham jhumi lahra ke,

Yun jhukti nigahein unki yaaron,
Zadoo sa cha gaya mujh par yaaron,

Madhosh to ham the ek zamane se,
Mazboor aaj ho rahe hain khud se,

Kya kahoon kho gaya hoon,
unki yaadein aur wo baatein,

Phir chu gayi lahre kinarein,
Bechain baahein unko bharne ko,

Doondhta main bhi har wo nazare,
Khusboo teri chayi ho jinme,

Nazar aa rahi roshni mein bas tu,
Andheron mein sitaron ki rani ho tum,

Tassuvur mein bahak rahe hain hum,
Khile sapnon ki baarat saza rahe hain hum,

Saasein tham si rahi hain hamari,
Wo jhukti nigahein unki yaaron,