Dehradun, Dec. 30 -- Ruby Gupta is a writer who understands shadows-the alleys where motives whisper, and mysteries coil like smoke rings around the obvious. Crime and suspense are not merely her genres; they are her natural habitat. When she presented me her book "The Secret Of Leifeng Pagoda", I treated it first like an ornament of intrigue, letting it rest on my book rack, its secrets sealed, its adrenaline corked.

It took a spell of winter to unseal it. One frigid Dehradun morning, cold weather sentenced me to bed arrest for an entire day. I needed a spark, a surge, a voltage of narrative thrill. I reached for Ruby's book.

And what a reach it was. It kept me on the edge-ancient enigmas dissolving into modern espionage, whispers of n...