Some more Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer detective novels

I had seen and lost some secondhand Ross Macdonald novels some months back due to procrastination (ooh …) and also due to some vague sort of discontent regarding pricing … then I felt I was overacting (mmm …).  This was on one of the used books portals on amazon which has a good collection of some hard to get books, both fiction and non-fiction.  I had found and purchased short-story collections of Hammett and Chandler, and some titles of the special set Martin Beck series, the Joe Gores novels … all from here.  I always do this, I do this shillyshallying at the beginning, though I desperately want to buy them books, and then I put them in the shopping cart, I want for a couple of days, nothing happens, I keep visiting the cart … and then what do I see … two of the books in my shopping cart are ‘no longer available with the seller’ … then I say shadaa and slap my (right) palm against my forehead … why didn’t I buy the books that day itself … and all that. 

So, when I found five Lew Archer novels by Ross Macdonald a couple of weeks back, I hesitated for a while … of course, I wanted all of them … I waited for a couple of days, and then I said whadhdha hell … and here they are …

Sleeping Beauty and The Zebra Striped Hearse are old editions … Sleeping Beauty was written in 1973 and this is a 1975 edition … The Zebra Striped Hearse was written in 1962 and this is a 1978 edition … very old ya, almost reaching antique proportions … and they are contemporaneous with the author, who lived till 1983 … I hoped against hope that one of these would be author signed … he he he …

These are editions published in 1988 and 1996 … not too recent … but the covers, which are not exciting as the earlier two, and also monotonous, make them look as if they are more recent editions …