Last year, when I had Covid-19, my colleague and fellow lover of whodunits, Shrabonti, helpfully put together a list of locked-room mysteries, but I was too unwell to read. I have finally started on the list and discovered the joys of Anthony Horowitz’s Hawthorne And Horowitz series. Horowitz—who has written children’s books, TV shows and modern-day Bond and Holmes novels—writes himself into the books as the unreliable narrator of the adventures of Hawthorne, a disgraced but sharp detective who consults for the police on murders. A Watson to a Holmes or a Hastings to a Poirot but without the warmth of those friendships, Horowitz fictionalises his own life, adds gruesome crimes and often muses on the writing life. The relationships, subtle, self-deprecating humour and merry chases make for easy reading.—Shalini Umachandran
Also read: Lounge Loves: Ooty varkey, a documentary on homework and inequality and more
I am a disaster at baking cakes from scratch. It’s a science I have simply not been able to master, so I am constantly on the lookout for mixes that can help create a cake and don’t come loaded with refined flour and sugar. My quest for that decadent and healthy cake (does it even exist!) took me on a journey of trial- and-error with many brands, finally leading me to Mille by Wholsum Foods. It has a wonderful double chocolate millet cake mix containing a blend of sorghum, oats, amaranth and rice. The best part is that you get a separate sachet of raw unrefined sugar, allowing you to add as much or as little as you like. Within 35-40 minutes in the oven, you get a rich, gooey chocolate cake that’s tasty and healthy. —Avantika Bhuyan
The world around us looks quite different under the lens of a microscope. Walt Carroll, an Australia-based science researcher turned online sensation, runs a fun Instagram handle @oneminmicro, creating quick videos that are a mix of science and art. They feature everything from honey to a dog’s saliva—from a microscopic point of view. Carroll often takes requests from users to showcase such content; so, a recent video featured the effect of cigarette smoke on a piece of bread. Along the way, he also busts some myths: Are there really worms in the bruised portions of a banana? Dealing with everything from skin mites to microplastics in water, his videos are both, knowledgeable and a visual treat. No wonder he has over 645,000 subscribers on YouTube. —Nitin Sreedhar
Shiju, Parayil Veedu, Neendakara. How difficult could it be to capture a murderer in a district like Ernakulam, in Kerala, when you have his address and a witness who recognises him? Puzzlingly difficult, it seems. As the six episodes of Kerala Crime Files unspool in this first OTT platform offering from the Malayalam film industry, you are taken on a con- founding chase along with a small team of police officials from the Ernakulam North station that’s in search of Shiju, who has killed a sex worker. I won’t spoil the rest of the story. But you should watch the series if you like a police procedural that has a smooth- as-butter pace, clever writing and— what got me sold on the show—no gore. Directed by Ahammed Khabeer, with actors Lal and Aju Varghese in the lead, Kerala Crime Files is showing on Disney+Hotstar.—Mahalakshmi Prabhakaran
