Child, Lee. The Hard Way. Bantam Dell.New York. 2006.

A modern sleuth, combining the investigative and analytical skills of  Poirot, the deductive capability of Miss Marple and the brawn of Steven Segall, this man Reacher does indeed have the power to emerge as a character worth keeping in touch to give you hard thrills and puissant enjoyment in seeing murderers, rapists, child molesters, mafia and junta groups  brought to justice.

This story of a kidnap of the wife and daughter of an ex-military, paid to fight intergroup wars in far off African lands, with millions in hard cash and Reacher’s involvement in finding them becomes a battle, the hard way. This is because, Reacher,  for the first time, is stumped at every turn, till he reaches a sleepy English countryside, where everything becomes clearer, but not before he almost gives up, for the first time in his life.

This Reacher, reminds one of the  knightly valour of Launcelot – fighting battles to kill dishonourable knights and rescuing maidens in distress, but he is also someone one can identify from the modern scenario- a no-nonsense, hard-hitting,  invincible, charismatic Superhero in print in recent times.

The story itself is interesting, because just as Reacher thinks he has solved the mystery, he finds a new answer that only leads to another question.

Good read, though not a classic of the Agatha Christie type, because there one can return again and again to savour the various bits and pieces coming together to present a collage of unsurpassable intricacy, whereas in Child, Reacher is the one who remains in mind, not the mystery.

Braithwaite.E.R. To Sir With Love. First published in Great Britain.1959. Coronet Paperback.1988.

Over this week, I made my annual pilgrimage through the pages of this book. It is a classic for any educator, because it is a teacher education manual in print and one can consider it as a tool of reference, if one is beset by difficult classes.

What an amazing story, entirely credible, because haven’t we all had some teacher like this Braithwaite who influenced us at school and helped us grow with dignity and self esteem?

The struggle of this black teacher in a school set in the  tough East End neighbourhood is every teacher’s struggle. These students are systemic of learners who fight against odds at deprived homes and loveless existences to find their own paths in a society that mostly does not care.

The story is well knit – the teachers, each an entity with personal prejudices and ideas, Mr.Fabian, the headmaster, the man who dreams and envisions a great educating system for his wards, Ricardo Braithwaite, a black war veteran and now a teacher by sad turn of events, Gillian, who stands for a miniscule white community beginning to respect the balcks, the students who tackle their poverty and the ugliness of their lives with the dignity that Braithwaite has given them, the Thomases who doubt the efficacy of a system that educates without the cane... ah, each of these combines with the other to form a beautiful collage.

There is enough drama,  passion,  romance, trust, anger, mistrust, to make its pages interesting. What caught my interest was that it was on one side, the story of a teacher finding acceptance and solidarity with a tough batch of East End students and on the other, it was the story of a man who wanted to be accepted as a human being, on his own merit, undeterred by the colour of his skin. Gillian’s love for him and the children’s unreserved acceptance of him redeem this man and help him win his battle of colour.

I may go back to this story, may be next year, but I’d like it to be on the bookshelf of my grandchildren, for whom the Civil Wars and Apartheid Policies may be things of a distant past and I’d like them to remember that people went through such struggles before the  people could enjoy the liberty that they are enjoying now.