Though I was
pleasantly surprised when I saw Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo’s Murder at the Savoy on sale at one of
the used books portals on Amazon, I wanted to be absolutely sure. There was no photo of the book cover and that
made me cautious. I wanted to see the
photo of the cover to see if the book belonged to the MARTIN BECK set I was
putting together (see here http://jaisiri.blogspot.in/search/label/Martin%20Beck%20series
for posts on ongoing efforts at putting the unique set together). If not, I could very well abandon it. I sent a message to the seller and asked him
if they could mail me the photo of the cover.
I got the picture on my phone and was elated to see that it did belong
to the set and fit the vacant ‘N’ slot in MARTIN BECK. Ooh … that was some relief.
The novels
in this particular series are hard to come by and I have to rely on used books
stores to fill the gaps. Though I had
read a couple of ‘Martin Beck’ novels, I was not aware of this ‘MARTIN BECK’
set until one fine March afternoon last year in Secunderabad when I saw four
novels and picked them up. Once I realized
what I had got, the obsession to get the other novels to complete the set
caught hold of me. And when I realized how
daunting the task would be, I sort of calmed down.
And in
August this year, there was some rekindling of hope when, out of the blue, I found
two more in the ‘MARTIN BECK’ set on one of the used books portals on
Amazon. I had six now and I have been checking
those portals regularly since then and found Murder at the Savoy …
I have
seven now … ‘_ART_NBE_K’ … and this is how my ‘MARTIN BECK’ set looks now …
I need
three more M, I, and C to make my set complete … though it promises to be a
long haul, it sure is an interesting thing to be preoccupied with … and if my luck holds good, I might get one
more soon enough … fingers crossed …
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