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 2nd 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!)”
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.
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