Finally … the MARTINBECK set is complete …

Yessss, and it is complete … just a few days before the end of the year, the last two remaining novels in the MARTINBECK set were delivered … The Fire Engine that Disappeared and Cop Killer … Nos 5 and 9 and the letters I and C in the series …

I have been pursuing the completion of this set ever since I came across 4 novels in this series in March 2015 … I have written this before, but I wish to reiterate that this set, published by Harper Perennial during 2006-2007, offers a comprehensive retrospective of the MARTINBECK series through ‘introductions’ by fellow ‘police procedure’ and crime novel writers …

Henning Mankell, the author of the well-known ‘Inspector Wallander’ novels writes an introduction to Roseanna, Michael Connelly, writer of the immensely popular Detective Bosch novels introduces The Locked Room, Colin Dexter, author of the Inspector Morse novels writes an introduction to The Fire Engine that Disappeared, and another husband-wife crime writer duo (like Wahloo and Sjowall), Sean and Nicci French, write an introduction to The Laughing Policeman … Andrew Taylor, known for his Lydmouth series and other crime and historical novels, introduces The Man on the Balcony, Val Mcdermid, author of the Dr Tony Hill series and other crime novels has an introduction in The Man who went up in Smoke, and crime fiction reviewer and film critic, Michael Carlson, writes an introduction to Murder at the Savoy …

These essays by such popular and formidable writers could by themselves become a separate book … and it is also enchanting to see all these acclaimed CF writers talking about the ‘Martin Beck’ novels of Sjowall and Wahloo, their seniors in the ‘police procedural’ genre …

Apart from these ‘introductions,’ each novel has some ‘extras’ at the end … essays about this specific genre (some of them repeated across the ten novels), interview pieces with the authors, their biographies, the legacy of the authors, brief bios about other CF writers, other CF novels of the same kind, etc.  …

All in all, it was a nice journey … but I think I gave in too quickly at the end … in spite of them being ‘used books,’ I paid much more for the last three novels in the series than I paid for the earlier seven put together … I think the seller on amazon caught on to this fact that there is this bakra going after the novels in this series … it is no secret actually, it is all there in my posts … (he he … too much, Jai … overaction, overaction only) … anyway, the one thing I am pleased about is all the novels in this set that I bought (from various sources) are used books …

It is a nice way to round off 2016 … not an achievement as such, but some satisfaction … now finally, my set looks like this …

There are other books from other series’ that also came in during the last couple of weeks of 2016, all crime fiction … I will put up posts in the new year …

Wish you all a Happy New Year 2017 … and please continue reading …    

The first in the MARTIN BECK set ... Roseanna ...

Found the first in the Martin Beck series I am collecting … I had to pay quite a sum for a used book, but I had no choice and moreover, I waited long enough … so, Roseanna, as the first in the series, took its place at the head of the set … and for some reason the dispatch and delivery was quite convoluted … I bought it from a used books seller on Amazon called ‘dealstar’ and for some reason ‘dealstar’ wouldn’t ship to the regular address that I have on Amazon, though I have been receiving books and stuff from Amazon to this address for some years now … I had to think of an alternative and gave my college address and those strange people accepted that address … my college is in Aushapur village, beyond Ghatkesar, on the outskirts of Hyderabad … and it is on the national highway … there are only small villages around it … these people must be really weird … but after placing the order, I started worrying … would the book reach the address?  and one day all of a sudden I receive a message from Bluedart saying that a package would be delivered today … I wondered which package and was worried … the delivery date for the book was still a long way away … I checked the number on the message and cross checked it with the number in my mailbox and they matched … I was confused … and it was a Sunday … I called the Admin Officer to find out if the security guys would be at the college premises … and the courier chap spoke to me in the afternoon to find out where my college is located … I didn’t get any ‘delivered’ message … I was slightly disturbed … I checked the Bluedart website, used the number on the message and discovered that the book had been delivered!  Monday was a holiday and I could get my book only on Tuesday … and when I saw the Bluedart pick-up point address, I couldn’t help laughing … it was in Habsiguda, barely half a kilometre from my house ... 

Why do I keep rambling like this about unrelated things … anyway, force of habit … can’t help it … so, I finally got Roseanna … I had already read the novel and it was an intriguing experience … a dead-body is found and it takes some days to discover that the woman was an American … imagine the legwork and correspondence and telephone conversations … days without any lead … investigation plodding along … frustrated detectives … and finally some hope … a slender lead … and then the solution … if you want to read ‘real’ police procedural novels, Martin Beck is the series …

Two more novels and my Martin Beck set would be complete … I browsed around and found them on the Amazon UK site … they were used books, and the prices were just £ 0.01 each … but the postage and packaging comes to £ 14.02 … he he … I still have these books in the shopping cart … let’s see … only two more … and my set would look like this ... 

One more for the MARTIN BECK set … Murder at the Savoy …

Though I was pleasantly surprised when I saw Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo’s Murder at the Savoy on sale at one of the used books portals on Amazon, I wanted to be absolutely sure.  There was no photo of the book cover and that made me cautious.  I wanted to see the photo of the cover to see if the book belonged to the MARTIN BECK set I was putting together (see here http://jaisiri.blogspot.in/search/label/Martin%20Beck%20series for posts on ongoing efforts at putting the unique set together).  If not, I could very well abandon it.  I sent a message to the seller and asked him if they could mail me the photo of the cover.  I got the picture on my phone and was elated to see that it did belong to the set and fit the vacant ‘N’ slot in MARTIN BECK.  Ooh … that was some relief. 

The novels in this particular series are hard to come by and I have to rely on used books stores to fill the gaps.  Though I had read a couple of ‘Martin Beck’ novels, I was not aware of this ‘MARTIN BECK’ set until one fine March afternoon last year in Secunderabad when I saw four novels and picked them up.  Once I realized what I had got, the obsession to get the other novels to complete the set caught hold of me.  And when I realized how daunting the task would be, I sort of calmed down.

And in August this year, there was some rekindling of hope when, out of the blue, I found two more in the ‘MARTIN BECK’ set on one of the used books portals on Amazon.  I had six now and I have been checking those portals regularly since then and found Murder at the Savoy …

I have seven now … ‘_ART_NBE_K’ … and this is how my ‘MARTIN BECK’ set looks now …

I need three more M, I, and C to make my set complete … though it promises to be a long haul, it sure is an interesting thing to be preoccupied with …  and if my luck holds good, I might get one more soon enough … fingers crossed … 

Chasing Inspector Beck … second shipment from Save Earth Books

I never thought I’d be chasing after a book set.  The only set I chased after and managed to complete was the seven HMT 'colour colour' Pilot mechanical watch set.  So, it was with a sense of surprise that I saw two novels from the Martin Beck Harper Perennial Set appeared on the screen when I typed the author’s name on Save Earth Books’ page on Amazon. 

It was more than a year ago that I fortuitously came across four novels in the Martin Beck series at a secondhand bookstall in Secunderabad (narrated here).  When I bought the books, I only had a vague sort of memory of having bought one of the titles earlier.  It was only later I realized that the four novels that I bought that day belong to a set of ten crime fiction (police procedural) novels written by the Swedish couple, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo.  It was a unique concept of a book set thought out by Harper Perennial (publishers).  Each book, from the first to the tenth, is arranged according to the letters of the name of the chief protagonist, Inspector MARTIN BECK.  So, each book carries the number and the corresponding letter on the spine.  If you had bought the entire set or had managed to collect all the novels, then if you placed all the novels side by side and took a photo of the spines, it would look like this …

 (picture taken from http://fleurinherworld.com/2010/04/28/roseanna-by-maj-sjowall-per-wahloo/ )

This set was published in 2007, whereas the authors wrote these ten novels in the 1960s and 70s.  The concept itself has, I felt, ‘brainwave’ and flashing and popping bulbs written all over it.  The person who had the brainwave saw that the authors wrote only ten novels in the series and the chief protagonist had ten letters in his name.  After that purchase of four novels, I looked around the net if I could get the other 6 novels in the set.  This enthusiasm lasted almost a month and I drifted away after reading the novels.  I kept looking though, and quite unexpectedly, last week I was rewarded with two books from the set -- The Man Who Went up in Smoke and The Man on the Balcony. 

I have seen other editions of the same novels, but somehow this keeda has caught hold of me and I have also vowed to read the unread novels only from this set.  So, with the addition of these two novels, i.e., nos. 2 & 3 (letters A & R), my unfinished set looks like this.   

 

I now need four novels to complete the set (M I N C)

I also bought a Dashiell Hammet novel, The Glass Key, along with these two Beck novels.  I have been looking for The Glass Key to add to my Hammett collection, and I got it here. Hammett considered The Glass Key to be his favourite work and, this novel, along with The Maltese Falcon, is considered two of Hammett's finest works by many critics.

The prices were quite high if we call them as ‘used’ books and compare them with the Peter Robinson novels that I had bought earlier.  But I consoled myself saying that I should make the best use of the opportunities that I get, and though they are called ‘used’ books, they are not ‘used,’ i. e, ‘pre-owned,’ in the sense that these are fresh copies, may be old copies.  And it has taken me more than a year to find two more novels belonging to the set.  Who knows when and where the other novels are going to surface.