Short stories for suspense seekers

Reviewed by H.K. Gunawardane

Portrayal of Different characters consists of 10 short stories all of which are of absorbing interest. They deal with various situations in life. The author has served in a Teacher Training College, Nigeria and has contributed short stories, poems and feature articles to both English dailies and weeklies here and abroad.

"Digging a pit in the midnight" is the first story in this book. This deals wit the team where a couple comes in to possession of a large sum of money. The couple wants to maintain this as a secret and hides the money in a pit. However they get caught to the police. In the story "Human Right Violation", the main character is a three-wheel driver who is faced with the problem of having a tourist's brief case in his vehicle.

The tourist who left his three wheeler for a short time on a particular errant did not return. So the driver returned the tourist's brief case to a newspaper organisation. On his way home, he is intercepted by the police, questioned and severely assaulted which necessitated his hospitalisation.

The police made the wrong conclusion that he had taken the brief-case. The story "On a Midnight Mission" deals with two people who are sent to kill a wealthy oil merchant by their leader. The two people pretend to be pilgrims. Finally, the person assigned to kill the merchant realises that he has come to kill his own father.

The story "A case of Mistaken Identity" reveals that a person is wrongly sentenced to death but on the day he is to be executed, his death sentence is suspended.

"Rebirth" is an interesting story which deals with the dialogue of two souls discussing what they did in the mortal world. The story "He Donated His Eyes" has a surprise ending. The dead person's eyes are to be removed but at the last moment the dead man wakes up. Similarly, the other stories such as 'Death Sentence", "A well

planned robbery", "Marriage Proposal" and "Lucy Nona Becomes a cook" deal with different themes and leave the readers in suspense with unexpected endings.