Cheka returns with a rollercoaster thriller
Young Cheka Mendis makes a triumphant comeback with Fire through Glass after Smoke and Mirrors, the adventure novel that won him a State Literary Award in 2020 when aged 14.
Cheka has obviously grown up, and, though his hero Ryan Neville is still aged 14, he too has matured beyond any of our expectations. We meet him toughened almost into an adult, having gone through a baptism of fire.
While the first novel was as Yankee as any Hardy Boys’ adventure, the new book is mostly set in Sri Lanka with Sigiriya, Nuwara Eliya and Liberty junction being part of the pacey read.
The plot itself is complex – a labyrinthine puzzle that begins in Boston with the tentacles of the previous adventure still grasping at the hero and his family.
Amaya Neville, Ryan’s mother, being Sri Lankan they make their biannual peregrination to the island but an international criminal plot won’t let them savour ‘achchi’s’ curry dinners or the beauty of ancient Sigiriya at dusk.
It is a rumbustious rollercoaster with a dead man (Ryan’s mentor Kritides) leading the young hero via a tape recording while there are FBI agents, murders at the American Embassy in Colombo, a nearly fatal fray amidst Sigiriya’s fountains and gardens, a whole hotelful of people marooned in Nuwara Eliya with a killer on the loose and a quartet of masked master criminals who call themselves the King of Clubs, the Queen of Diamonds, the King of Hearts and the Ace of Spades. While most of the novel is narrated by Ryan, other perspectives enter in third person. It is a fastidiously crafted story though coherence is a tad problematic- in the sense that sometimes the flow of events (though never the language) is not all that smooth.
Yet, with maturity beyond his years, Cheka has produced what is not just a thriller but a work with a literary element to it. For it is an enduring story of love (in its full spectrum), sacrifice and human tragedy.
The novel is also a love letter to his homeland by a boy writer who had partly grown up in America. It reflects Cheka’s own once-strong longing for his natal Boston that it seems is being rapidly replaced by a glowing love for his exotic island home with its fiery curries and “orange geckoes… and coconut and breadfruit trees”.
Fire through Glass is for anyone who likes a Boy’s Own adventure with oodles of action and a smart geeky flavour to it.
The book priced at Rs. 2250 is available at Sarasavi bookshops.