Time to Kill?

"EVER since Inspector Morse died, there has been a hole in my soul that makes me pick up any fat book with a shadowy illustration on the cover. Indian whodunits are still low on the evolutionary scale, but the bereft reader grasps at straws.
Ramesh Menon has written a pair of thrillers, someone has published it, and two well-known columnists have supplied praises for the back cover, surely after having read something else entirely." Latha Anantharaman, in a demonstration of the rare art of how to kill a book in one line.
It's a bad week for Indian thrillers--in Outlook, Manjula Padmanabhan politely eviscerated Ravi Shankar Etteth's A Village of Widows.
I would have extended my deepest sympathies for the two authors if I hadn't read the books in question. Having done so, I accept that the only way to review these specimens of the thriller is with an axe, a spade and someone to read the last rites at the gravesite.