Sunday, December 17, 2017

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 …

2 comments:

Vinod Ekbote said...

Boss, I don't have many of the titles you have bought. Feeling very envious. Share the name of the site, please.

Jayasrinivasa Rao said...

Arre sir, it is dealstar on amazon.in ... price thoda zyada hai, abids ke hisaab se ... it is a used books portal ... link bhejtoon mail mein ...