Miles Landry is a Private Investigator of the hard boiled style. Down on his luck, angry and alone after the unsolved hit and run that killed his fiance Tracy and the suicide of his friend and business partner. Laundry survives on adultery cases and instinct. One day Laundry is offered a more unique and unhinged job which should pay the bills for a bit longer. Jigme Rinpoche of the Diamond Path Dharma Centre, which serves Tibetan refugees hires Landry to investigate the killer known as the Chinatown Monster who has brutally murdered a Chinese gangster. Why aren’t the police doing such work? I hear you ask. Well they are, only Rinpoche of the Buddhist Monks has a theory, that the Chinatown Monster is in fact a reincarnation of a former Buddhist student of Rinpoche’s who is currently reincarnated ‘as a powerful emanation of his wrathful meditation deity’. It is this human incarnation of Yamantaka, Lord of Death that Laundry is tasked with finding. Initially for Laundry, the job is just a pay check, but as the strange dreams and body count rises, Laundry is sucked further into Buddhism and the case, seeing it as a way to find Tracy again as well as compelled to finish what he started. I did not see the twist ending coming, but I suspect other readers might. I’m not familiar with Buddhism but I don’t think that affected my appreciation of the imagery and the story too much. I am not a religious person, but I feel that such atrocities as wars, invasion and countless other atrocities leave scars on communities and races and I felt this represented in the novel. There is an under current of subtle repressed racism, as I reflect on the book I see more subtle prejudice than I noticed whilst reading it. But I do not feel the novel was racist only the characters. The prejudice is presented in a way which is understandable to a large extent. I can’t say any more without spoiling. I would have preferred the story if it was less male focused and hadn’t just abandoned Gemma, the most prominent female character after the sex scene and her role as potential victim/suspect finishes. I would have liked to have known what happened to her. Also there were times when the story didn’t grip me or encourage me to keep reading. I also found it somewhat forgettable to a significant extent. That said The Wind in my Heart is a largely enjoyable read with interesting concepts and imagery and human characters. It deals sympathetically with the rippling effects of war, invasion and loss. Review by Astrid Addams THE WIND IN MY HEART BY DOUGLAS WYNNE Miles Landry is trying to put violence behind him when he takes up work as a private detective focused on humdrum adultery cases. But when a Tibetan monk hires him to find a missing person, things get weird fast. Charged with tracking down the reincarnation of a man possessed by a demonic guardian from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Miles is plunged into a world of fortune-tellers, gangsters, and tantric rituals. The year is 1991 and a series of grisly murders has rocked New York City in the run up to a visit from the Dalai Lama. The police attribute the killings to Chinatown gang warfare. Miles–skeptical of the supernatural–is inclined to agree. But what if the monster he's hunting is more than a myth? Proudly represented by Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from the Darkest Depths. TODAY ON THE GINGER NUTS OF HORROR WEBSITEFILM GUTTER REVIEWS: MOEBIUS (2013), DIR. KI DUK-KIMTHE TINGLE IN THE ‘NUTS: A CHUCK TINGLE INTERVIEW THE HEART AND SOUL OF HORROR WEBSITES Comments are closed.
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