That
The
Hindu Literary Review of 18th February 2018 has truly set
off a chain of book buys. Though this
search on secondhandbooksindia
started with Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe novels, one search led to
another author and yet another author I ended up with eight delectable novels.
Though
not always having stocks of books of my chosen authors, secondhandbooksindia
has occasionally offered me some very good books. I bought my first stack of John D. Macdonald novels from this
seller, and also my first Simon Brett
novels; and I also was lucky to land a most valuable author-signed copy of Ian Rankin’s The Impossible Dead. Many a time have I visited this site and
returned empty handed, but I continue to visit regularly. I was rewarded this time … sumptuously …
Rex
Stout’s Nero Wolfe novels became my latest target as I searched online for
them. Lots of books were available, but
most of them were new and expensive and I didn’t want to buy a ‘new’ Nero Wolfe
novel yet. I searched for used copies on
my usual used-books portals on amazon, but no luck. In the meantime, to lower the tension, I read
the ebook of the first in the series, Fer-de-Lance and got a feel of the
characters and setting. And thus, with
all my usual avenues closed, I thought I’d try my luck at
secondhandbooksindia.
I
actually found 4 Nero Wolfe novels on secondhandbooksindia!! I wanted to cross check the titles with the
Rex Stout bibliography for chronology, and saw that while The Golden Spiders, Three
Men Out, and Some Buried Caesar were in the list,
Silver
Spire was absent. I was a bit
puzzled and checked the book details again.
It said Silver Spire was a Nero Wolfe novel, but the author was Robert
Goldsborough! A little bit of snooping
revealed that Goldsborough continued the Nero Wolfe series after Stout’s death
with the approval of the estate of Rex Stout and he wrote 12 Nero Wolfe
novels. Let me read the originals first,
I thought, and then find my way to the ‘official pastiches.’ And so, I put The Golden Spiders, Three Men Out, and Some
Buried Caesar in my shopping basket.
During this snooping, I was happy to discover that Three Men Out contained 3
Nero Wolfe short stories.
I was pleased
with this little triumph. And since I
was there anyway, I thought let me do my customary search for books of my
favourite authors. I typed ‘macdonald’
to account for both Ross and John D.
There were the usual Flashman
novels by George MacDonald Fraser and other non-Travis McGee novels of John D. MacDonald. Chal,
jaan-de bhai, I thought as I scrolled down and there was a link to page 2 …
hmmm … going to page 2? … a rare occurrence on the macdonald page … I went to page 2 and found two Ross Macdonald novels listed there!! uhooooo
… this is great … and also one Travis McGee novel by John D. MacDonald, The Quick Red Fox, which I didn’t
have … Ross Macdonald had written 4 novels before he started writing his iconic
Lew Archer series, and he wrote these using his real name Kenneth Millar … Trouble Follows Me is one of them … the
other Ross Macdonald novel I got was Sleeping Beauty … I already have a
copy of the novel, but I was going to get both of them, for it is not every day
that you get a Ross Macdonald for 150 and odd rupees … and of course, in went John
D. MacDonald’s The Quick Red Fox too …
While
all this surprise and happiness was going on, I realized I hadn’t checked the balance
in my account on the site. This site
either gives you the option of using a cheque or internet banking or by
depositing money in your cash basket on the site. I prefer the cash basket mode, but my basket
was empty. I quickly put some money into
my basket and it was activated almost immediately.
A Hammett would have rounded off the purchase nicely … there was one actually, but I had that title already … aah, well, maybe I should have put that too in the basket, after all I had a copy of Sleeping Beauty, and still bought this one here …
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