Usually the Best Books people send mobile messages to their regular
clients, and I usually get one announcing their sale, usually at YMCA,
Secunderabad and I have written posts about the books I bought at their
sales...but this time I didn’t get any message and it was through Vinod’s post
that I got to know of their early-year sale...I had just returned from
Bangalore that morning and had read Vinod’s post and decided to drop in at YMCA
in the evening...I had to really struggle hard at their previous sale to put
together a collection of 3-4 books...so with great optimism, I entered the sale
hall...after around 10 minutes I realised that this time too was not going to
be any different...I was really struggling...I found a couple of books
interesting, but I realised that I was really stretching my ‘interest
quotient’... then I stumbled across a Dashiell Hammett title...Dashiell Hammett
is considered the pioneer of ‘hard boiled’ crime fiction writing and I knew
that he had written The Maltese Falcon and had also seen the
movie based on the story...but I hadn’t read any Dashiell Hammett novel or
story before and I picked it up eagerly... Red Harvest...
And then I saw some more Dashiell Hammetts...a novel called The Dain
Curse and a collection of short stories called The Continental
Op...and another novel called The Thin Man...I read the
blurbs on all the novels and discovered that Red Harvest, The
Dain Curse and The Continental Op featured a private
investigator just called Continental Op (short for ‘Operative’), and has
no other name (and is employed as an operative of the Continental Detective
Agency’s office in San Francisco...) and the blurb on The Thin Man
said that the novel featured the detective couple Nick and Nora Charles...and
that the novel was also a kind of ‘comedy of manners’ apart from being a mystery
novel...and this did not excite me very much...it was not ‘hard-boiled’
enough...he he...but, after reading about Dashiell Hammett on Wikipedia, I now
feel I should have picked up The Thin Man...but I might not get
it again...I know...anyway, Wikipedia also told me that Red Harvest and The
Dain Curse are not strictly novels, but more like ‘linked stories’... I am
eager to see how the ‘linked stories’ concept works out...but for starters, I
began reading the short story collection The Continental Op...
Anyway, from one crime fiction writer to another...or rather, from
Continental Op to Philip Marlowe...I then found Raymond Chandler’s Farewell,
My Lovely...I thought it was lovely, finding novels of Hammett and
Chandler, the early purveyors of ‘hard-boiled’ crime fiction, at the same time
in the same place...Continental Op and Philip Marlowe...I wish I had found The
Maltese Falcon...then, we would have had Sam Spade too... so, all in
all, the going was good so far...I thought enough was enough...and I should get
going now...and as I walking past shelves to the check-out counter, I noticed
John le Carre’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which was on my
wishlist for a long time...and the catch came to five books...3 Hammetts, 1
Chandler, and 1 le Carré...
And at the counter, I told the proprietor, more as an observation, that the
rates of books have increased since the last sale (Hammetts and Chandlers were
priced at Rs.150 each)...and he looked at the books I had selected and said... “Sir,
it is difficult to get Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler novels...these
books are at least in good condition, I have sold Hammetts and Chandlers in
worse condition for higher prices...these are the last ones in my stock”...and
that settled the matter...ha ha ha...
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