Saturday, November 4, 2017

More hard-boiled … more ‘Travis McGee’ novels …



Sometimes this idle aimless browsing leaves you in a dilemma … here I was at a loose end and found myself looking for novels by Ross Macdonald … totally unintended … yeah, it is true that secondhand copies of Ross Macdonald’s Archer novels are not that easy to come by … I had located some Archer novels a couple of months ago, and after a lot of to buy or not to buy, and futile resistance, I finally gave up and gave in … it was in the aftermath of the placing of this order and waiting for the books to be delivered that I was typing ‘Macdonald’ in the search boxes … at one of the portals, my search results saw me staring at a list of John D. MacDonald’s ‘Travis McGee’ novels …  I had unexpectedly ‘discovered’ John D. MacDonald and his series of Travis McGee novels in 2015 (while looking for Ross Macdonald novels) and had picked up quite a good number of the novels in the series in two big bursts (described with a great deal of zest and zeal here and here) …

And now, two years later, I was looking at four more Travis McGee novels … prices were reasonable … no reason to dilly or dally … or delay … and the four novels arrived two days back … I just loved the covers … and the blurbs on the covers … and take a look at the titles … each title has a ‘colour,’ no? … all Travis McGee novels have a ‘colour’ word in their titles … it was suggested by John D. MacDonald’s publisher and was supposed to act as a mnemonic device for the reader …


Dress her in Indigo … a slight hint of indigo on the cover … the 11th in the series … came out in 1969, and this is the 35th reprint 1991 edition …


The Green Ripper … nice green coloured cover … the 18th in the series, published in 1979, and this copy is the 1980 edition …


Free Fall in Crimson … crimson coloured cover … the 19th in the series, published in 1981 … and this copy is a 1981 edition … first edition … hmmmm ….
 


The last novel in the series … The Lonely Silver Rain … you can see the silver in the title letters … came out in 1985, and this is a 1986 edition …

I like these details which makes the whole collecting and reading experience interesting … the other series that innovates with titles is Simon Brett’s Fethering Mysteries … do check out the titles … the novels are also very good ...

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