Another CF series … a new detective inspector … another Harry …

I am now in waiting mode … very impatient waiting mode, actually.  I am waiting for the next ‘DCI Banks’ novel, Sleeping in the Ground.  The e-book is out, I think, but I am not sure.  I am waiting for the real book.  I am also waiting for the next Harry Bosch novel, Two Kinds of Truth.  But the release date is far off and there is far less impatience. 

Abids offered some solace a couple of weeks ago and I bought those Ross Macdonald novels with the birthday gift money, but even before these books came in I was looking at another series with another inspector.  I had done my basic online research on some ‘target’ writers almost a year back and had finalized some names.  Jo Nesbo’s name was being seen and heard a lot.  Harry Hole was his inspector.  And I had also found a Harry Hole novel at Abids around the same time, but since it was a ‘mid-series’ novel, I wanted to wait till I got the first title in the series.  Anyway, that was a year ago, and now I wanted a new series. 

I wanted to go back to Scandinavia.  Of course, it all started in Sweden with the Inspector Beck series and then Henning Mankell came with his Inspector Wallander … and yeah, Stieg Larsson too … and there are a number of other Scandinavian crime fiction writers that I am waiting to read.  Yeah, there is a whole school of Swedish and Nordish noir writing out there. 

And there it was … all decided and all set … Jo Nesbo it was going to be.  And since price was not going to be a great concern because I was going for secondhand copies and availability was checked and confirmed, I didn’t want to wait.  I got all the ten novels in the series so far from three different sellers.  And the one ‘Nesbo-Harry Hole’ novel I had found in Abids last year, I gave Vinod when we met at Abids recently.

I picked up the first novel, The Bat to read.  I was looking forward to a trip to Norway.  I had found the cold and the dim sunless Scandinavian setting in Wallander and Martin Beck novels enchanting and since then I had moved on to dark and gray Yorkshire and from there to sunny Los Angeles.  I hoped to get back to a familiar environment through Jo Nesbo’s novels.  I started reading and I saw that The Bat is set in, off all places, Australia!!  Where cold Norway and where sunny and hot Australia …!!!  Harry Hole is sent to Australia to solve the murder of a young Norwegian girl who was working in Sydney … instead of Norway, I am learning a lot about Australia … hope Harry stays in Norway in the next one …

Birthday gift books … thank you, Shubha …

Aha … I bought these four books from the generous birthday gift that Shubha gave me in the form of an amazon gift voucher … Shubha is my cousin (sister), who went on to become my sister-in-law ... of course, her husband (my brother), and their son, along with her, form the gifter triumvirate, but Shubha is the gifter-in-chief … she is one of the few people who indulges me in my madness for books and also one of the few who reads (I can't see this) and responds (I can see this) in some way or the other to my posts  …  

Two books arrived on Saturday last week and two on Sunday …

These two are the first Ross Macdonalds that I have purchased fresh and new.  My previous Ross Macdonalds are all used copies.  Come to think of it, I haven’t purchased any ‘new’ crime fiction book in a long time, until I bought these two.  Ross Macdonalds are very scarce even in used book stores, and even when they show up they are quite expensive.  Even those sources from where I had earlier picked up my used Ross Macdonalds have dried up.  I hadn’t read any Ross Macdonald novel for almost a year and was thirsty and hungry.  It is not that I was not tempted to buy a ‘new’ Ross Macdonald novel earlier.  The prices are much higher, of course.  So, I’d transfer some new ones into the shopping cart and wait, and wait, and wait … nothing would happen.  Once, the prices fell dramatically, but like a fool, I pushed my luck and waited.  The prices rose in the midnight 36 hours later, while I was sleeping and I continued to wait.  This gift voucher came at the right time, then.  Another sixty pages and The Goodbye Look would be done.

Haan … Precious and Grace is the latest novel in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith … and this is a series that I dearly love to read (along with many others!!) and I was waiting for the prices to fall on this one too … the book was released late last year, but the prices then were too high … I waited, again … and price came down a couple of days after my birthday … nice timing, I should say … in went this book to the cart …

1400 Bananas, 76 Towns, and 1 Million People was supposed to be part of a set of travel books that I intended to buy … but one book in the set is playing truant, and refusing to come down from the high horse it’s been sitting on for some time now … and when I was putting together books for the birthday gift set, Samir Nazareth’s book fit into the last slot, with just a wee bit sticking out …

I was finally satisfied only after I pushed the buy button and wiped out the gift voucher amount completely …

Thanks so much, Shubha … and Mahesh, and Teju … you jazz! men … 

Abids … after more than a year … friends, chai, banter, and a 6-book haul of CF novels …

It was a wonderful feeling to be at Abids on Sunday among friends and books after more than a year … the lure of the book was always there, but the hook of friendship was stronger … many’s the time I wanted to go to Abids during the past 18 months … something or the other and sometimes lethargy would force me to cancel the Abidian plan … and on one of the days during the previous week, Vinod bumped into me at a newspaper stand near Secunderabad railway station … he was on his way to his office, I had a day off and had gone there to buy my weekly stock of magazines … we spoke very briefly … ‘haven’t seen you in Abids for a long time, Jai,’ he said … I mumbled something ... that was the trigger, sort of … this Sunday, I have to visit Abids, I came home and told Shruti … her sister is here and they had planned some shopping that Sunday morning … So, on Sunday, the 2^nd of July, I went this-a way, they went that-a way …

I got a direct bus to Abids soon enough from near my home and after a leisurely 45-minute ride in an almost empty bus on empty Sunday morning roads, I reached Abids … I spied Vinod soon enough … ‘hi, hello, welcome’ later, we went towards the Irani hotel, looking at books and picking up Umashankar and Srikanth along the way … Umashankar had decided to jettison his facial fur and was decidedly looking dapper, what with his ray ban and all … the meeting at the Irani hotel was all about films, books, politics, and general mutual enquiries … and chai, Osmania biskits, and samosas … I had taken along a book for Vinod, which I gave him after the chai & banter session ...

And then we were back on the streets … for a long time I didn’t find anything that interested me … and I went over to the other side of the road … a heap of books selling at Rs.20 each … actually there are many heaps like this across Abids, one needs patience and lots of luck … with me, both are in very short supply and so, my expectations were not very high … I dug in, and started looking for books that looked like they might belong to the crime fiction family … one by one I picked them up … Vinod pointed out a book by Ross Thomas and asked me to pick it up … four of the books had names of unfamiliar (to me!) writers, including Ross Thomas’ … and two books were by authors familiar, Simon Brett and P. D. James … six was a good number … I read the short descriptions, blurbs, author bios, etc. of the four books with names of unfamiliar writers and all that seemed appetizing enough for me to decide to keep all of them … so, I got six books, all in one place and all for a princely sum of Rs.120/- … great, na? I was mighty pleased with myself … after this haul, I slackened a bit and after moving around desultorily for a while, I decided to call it a day … in the evening, I decided to satisfy my curiosity and tried to find out about the ‘unfamiliar’ authors … and I did find out that these authors are not all that obscure as they appeared to me when I read their names first … but then, who am I …

Amanda Cross is the pen name of Carolyn Gold Heilbrun, an American academic who taught at Columbia University for around 30 years and feminist author of academic books.  Under the name Amanda Cross, she wrote 14 Kate Fansler mysteries.  Like the author, Kate Fansler is an English professor, and the books have sold around one million copies.  And In the Last Analysis is the first in the series and the first I started reading.  It is slow reading now, mainly because the pace itself is slow.

Death on Black Dragon River is the second in the series of 4 crime novels that Christopher West wrote after his visit to China.  His hero is Wang Anshuang, a detective in the Beijing Criminal Investigation Department.  West says something very interesting: “I started writing crime fiction in the 1990s.  At the time, nobody was setting crime novels in China, which I thought was crazy. This was the world's most populous nation, with the world's oldest continuous culture but a thoroughly modern determination to become the richest and most powerful country not just in Asia but the world.  A series of four novels came out during that decade - which turns out to have been a pivotal one in China's development, as it truly began to shake off (and come to terms with) its Maoist past and embrace the market system (with all its opportunities for criminal activity!)”    

Twilight at Mac’s Place is by Ross Thomas, who it is said, is known for his witty thrillers that expose the mechanisms of professional politics.  He also wrote novels under the name Oliver Bleeck. 

This author was a real surprise for me.  She is prolific and has written two popular mystery series, the Irene Adler Holmes suspense novels and this series of 27 novels, called the Midnight Louie mystery series.  Midnight Louie is a slightly overweight fictional black cat.  Each volume of the series is told from the point of view of the cat's "roommate", Temple Barr, a freelance public relations consultant, and from the point of view of Midnight Louie, the cat himself.  And Catnap is the first in the series.  So, that is also good.

 

Simon Brett has been a favourite for some time now.  His Fethering Mysteries featuring Jude and Carole, are delightful and I have read all of them.  Corporate Bodies is part of Brett’s Charles Paris series.  Charles Paris is an actor and an amateur detective.  As he doesn’t find much work coming his way, he takes up all sorts and any sort of acting assignments and find himself in unlikely roles in unusual places; and crime happens and Charles Paris starts exercising his grey cells.  I have read some novels in this series and one doesn’t come across Simon Brett novels that easily among secondhand books, so seeing Corporate Bodies at Abids was a welcome surprise.   

I must confess that though I have a couple of novels by P. D. James bought at Abids, I haven’t read them.  She is known for her Adam Dalgliesh mysteries, but An Unsuitable Job for a Woman is the first of the two novels which features Cordelia Gray, a female private detective.  The blurb on the back and whatever else I read on this novel promise an intriguing mystery. 

So many books to read … when to read, what to read, how to read … all questions only …

Some more Bosch in four fascinating short story anthologies …

This post is a sort of sequel to the previous one … all right and without beating about the bush, which I usually don’t to, I’ll come straight to the point … the four ‘fascinating’ short story anthologies that I stumbled upon while looking frantically for more Bosch stories are –

In the Company of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon (Eds. Laurie R. King & Leslie S, Klinger) is where Connelly’s short story featuring Bosch, The Crooked Man, appears … there are obvious similarities here with the Holmes story of the same name … husband getting murdered and the wife being in the same room, being the most straight one … let me leave it at that and just say that for once Bosch appears baffled at the crime scene and is Watsonned …

In Sunlight or in Shadow: Stories inspired by the paintings of Edward Hopper (Ed. Lawrence Block) … when I realized what this anthology was, I was happily surprised … a book full of stories inspired by the paintings of an artist!!  And you have some top names here: Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Justin Scott, Lee Child … Connelly, of course … and here Bosch appears in the story, Nighthawks, inspired by Hopper’s painting of the same name …

 

Those who have read the Bosch series would recall Bosch at the end of The Black Echo staring at a print of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks … “A quiet, shadowy man sits alone at the counter of a street-front diner. He looks across at another customer much like himself, but only the second man is with a woman. Somehow, Bosch identified with it, with that first man. I am the loner, he thought. I am the nighthawk. The print, with its stark dark hues and shadows, did not fit in this apartment, Bosch realized. Its darkness clashed with the pastels. Why did Eleanor have it? What did she see there?”  The painting also appears in Trunk Music …

In this story, Bosch is shadowing a girl who sits in front of the original painting in Chicago and is writing … he too enters the hall where the painting is hung … tries to be inconspicuous … he looks at the painting … wonders … and suddenly she speaks … they talk about the painting … and then the story moves …   

Face-Off (Ed. David Baldacci) … this anthology is described as … “For the first time ever the world’s greatest thriller characters meet head to head in eleven electrifying stories” … and here Harry Bosch is in a story called Red Eye alongside Patrick Kenzie, a character created by Dennis Lehane … this anthology is a thriller reader’s dream come true … take two famous mavericks and put them together and see what happens … that means both writers would have had to do a lot of weaving in and ducking out to make their heroes gel well … 

I haven’t read any Patrick Kenzie novels and I was not so familiar with the character … but Harry I knew, and enjoyed his encounter and banter with Patrick Kenzie … here too there are heavyweights … Rankin is here, and so is Lee Child … Peter James, R L Stine, John Lescroat, Heather Graham, Paul Wilson …

And the fourth anthology is called The Highway Kind: Tales of Fast Cars, Desperate Drives and Dark Roads … where Mickey Haller, the lawyer character (and Bosch’s half-brother) appears in a story named Burnt Matches … I am not too familiar with Mickey Haller … he appears in a couple of later Bosch novels, and he has a series of his own … I liked the idea of putting together stories about driving on endless and lonely highways, about American car culture, about American crime fiction and its connection with cars … “Follow a lowered 60s Impala, a Honda minivan, or a new Mercedes S-Class sedan, and you’ll likely end up in three very different places listening to three very different stories,” says Patrick Mullikin, the editor of this volume.

I would love to buy the first three anthologies … I already have Face Off in my shopping cart … In the Company of Sherlock Holmes is available for very less, but the delivery charges are double the price of the book … I’ll wait for some time and see … In Sunlight or in Shadow is available, but very expensive for me now … but this one I want to have … I also want to see if there are any other books like this where paintings have inspired stories …