Archer in Hollywood … Ross Macdonald’s first omnibus … how I got an antiquarian first edition ...

Ever since I read Pradeep Sebastian’s The Book Hunters of Katpadi, I have caught this ‘antiquarian’ bug.  I have been carefully going through some old books in my collection to check dates and editions.  Even while reading The Book Hunters …, I discovered that some English novels by Indian writers that I have are first editions.  I was thrilled.

So, this thing continued to bug me.  In my previous Ross Macdonald post I had mentioned that only two more novels and my Lew Archer set would be complete.  I was chasing these two titles, The Moving Target and Doomsters, in right earnest … with washed hands.  This omnibus edition of three Archer novels titled Archer in Hollywood kept popping up at regular intervals … mainly because it had The Moving Target and two other Archer novels that I had already have.  I was looking for a ‘standalone’ copy at a reasonable price, but the ‘reasonable’ part was becoming elusive.  The Archer in Hollywood omnibus edition continued to pop up.  I slowly began noticing that it had a very delicious antiquarian looking cover.  I clicked on it and saw that the book was being sold on a used books portal … not surprising that the book looked ‘antique.’  What about the price?  I want only one novel, but I would be paying for three.  The price was, I felt, higher than what I’d usually consider paying, when push comes to shove.  The cover tempted me so much that I decided to go for it. 

But not so soon.  I checked the details provided on the page once again … publisher, ISBN number, year of publication.  They seemed all right and going by the picture of the cover, the book is bound to be an ‘antique,’ I thought.  I was also aware that sometimes websites use stock images of book covers and not the actual picture of the book they are selling.  I sent a mail to the seller wanting to know if I’ll get the same book with the same cover.  I received a reply which was non-committal and which also sounded optimistic in a vague sort of way.  I didn’t want to mention all that ‘antiquarian’ stuff in the mail because I myself was not so sure; who knows somebody there might decide not to sell the book? 

With no firm answer in sight, I decided to take the leap of faith … ooo aaah …

Anyway, I leaped … and my faith was rewarded … for once …

Look what I got …

The front cover is exactly what was shown on the portal … I was delighted on seeing the covers and spine …

There was more confirmation once I opened the book.  This omnibus was first published in 1967 and this one is a first edition. 

And there is a lovely little foreword by Ross Macdonald himself … and he says this collection is the first omnibus edition of his novels and that he is glad that an omnibus edition was being published during his lifetime … and there is the year at the bottom of the foreword … 1966 … when the foreword was written … the book was published next year …

This is splendid, actually … a favourite author … first omnibus, first edition … a 51-year-old book … the only thing missing is Ross Macdonald’s signature … 

I have hyped this edition up so much that I myself am now scared of reading The Moving Target from this omnibus for which I bought this book in the first place.  I am worried that the page edges may crumble or the cover may tear further.  I might end up buying a standalone copy of The Moving Target after all.  

Running after Ross Macdonald novels after washing hands …. haen?!

And this is what was actually happening … Ross Macdonald ke novels ke peeche haath dhokay pad gaya tha … why one needs to wash one’s hands before running after someone or something I don’t know.  Three years ago was when Vinod first introduced me to Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer novels, and I used to buy and read Ross Macdonald's Archer novels as and when I found them in secondhand book stores.  This was especially after I realized that buying new editions of Lew Archer novels was an expensive proposition and also that not all novels were easily available.  So, finding and reading an Archer novel was a rare pleasure in itself.  After some time, impatience got the better of me as I finished reading the novels one by one and I also became greedy, and threw caution to the winds.  I wanted to finish the series and spent quite a sum six months ago and bought 5 Archer novels in one go from a used books portal on Amazon. 

Sometime in March this year, I bought my first non-Archer novel, Trouble Follows Me.  I was not searching for it … I happened to see it on another secondhand site while searching Ross Macdonald books … the price was good and I thought why not.  Trouble Follows Me is one of the four non-Archer novels that Ross Macdonald wrote under his real name, Kenneth Millar (they are also sometimes reissued under the more familiar ‘Ross Macdonald’ name).  This is one of the two novels that features Chet Gordon, the other being The Dark Tunnel.  He wrote two more non-Archer novels, one under the name John Ross Macdonald and another under his more familiar pen name, Ross Macdonald.  Now that there were only four more Archer novels to read and complete the set, Trouble Follows Me set off a new chase.   I located three such novels in one portal along with two Archer novels.  For some reason, they couldn’t send Blue City.  These four novels came in after a couple of weeks.  Meet me at the Morgue was written as John Ross Macdonald and The Three Roads was written as Kenneth Millar.  All this happened in April.  Only two more Archer novels remained to be bought and read after these two came in … and what a book one of them turned out to be … till then, these are the covers.

An unexpected and exciting bag of books from secondhandbooksindia dot com … Nero Wolfe and hardboiled masters …

That The Hindu Literary Review of 18^th 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. 

The finding of Ross Macdonald novels had energized me.  I typed ‘chandler’ and what … there were two Chandlers that I didn’t have The Lady in the Lake and Playback … this is a golden hard-boiled run I am having I thought … I had 8 books, all of them desirable and welcome additions to my library … 

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 … 

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 …

Birthday gift books … thank you, Shubha …

Aha … I bought these four books from the generous birthday gift that Shubha gave me in the form of an amazon gift voucher … Shubha is my cousin (sister), who went on to become my sister-in-law ... of course, her husband (my brother), and their son, along with her, form the gifter triumvirate, but Shubha is the gifter-in-chief … she is one of the few people who indulges me in my madness for books and also one of the few who reads (I can't see this) and responds (I can see this) in some way or the other to my posts  …  

Two books arrived on Saturday last week and two on Sunday …

These two are the first Ross Macdonalds that I have purchased fresh and new.  My previous Ross Macdonalds are all used copies.  Come to think of it, I haven’t purchased any ‘new’ crime fiction book in a long time, until I bought these two.  Ross Macdonalds are very scarce even in used book stores, and even when they show up they are quite expensive.  Even those sources from where I had earlier picked up my used Ross Macdonalds have dried up.  I hadn’t read any Ross Macdonald novel for almost a year and was thirsty and hungry.  It is not that I was not tempted to buy a ‘new’ Ross Macdonald novel earlier.  The prices are much higher, of course.  So, I’d transfer some new ones into the shopping cart and wait, and wait, and wait … nothing would happen.  Once, the prices fell dramatically, but like a fool, I pushed my luck and waited.  The prices rose in the midnight 36 hours later, while I was sleeping and I continued to wait.  This gift voucher came at the right time, then.  Another sixty pages and The Goodbye Look would be done.

Haan … Precious and Grace is the latest novel in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith … and this is a series that I dearly love to read (along with many others!!) and I was waiting for the prices to fall on this one too … the book was released late last year, but the prices then were too high … I waited, again … and price came down a couple of days after my birthday … nice timing, I should say … in went this book to the cart …

1400 Bananas, 76 Towns, and 1 Million People was supposed to be part of a set of travel books that I intended to buy … but one book in the set is playing truant, and refusing to come down from the high horse it’s been sitting on for some time now … and when I was putting together books for the birthday gift set, Samir Nazareth’s book fit into the last slot, with just a wee bit sticking out …

I was finally satisfied only after I pushed the buy button and wiped out the gift voucher amount completely …

Thanks so much, Shubha … and Mahesh, and Teju … you jazz! men … 

Going back to HardBoiled Ways … my first book in 2017 …

Sometime in the middle of 2015, on one of the Sundays at Abids, Vinod asked me whether I had read any novels by Ross Macdonald … I said no and then he said he too discovered the writer only recently and found out that Ross Macdonald formed a sort of ‘hard-boiled’ triumvirate with Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler … Ross Macdonald has his own detective, Lew Archer, a chap similar in many ways to The Continental Op, Sam Spade, and Philip Marlowe … Archer appeared in 18 novels and if you remember The Maltese Falcon, then you’d know where ‘Archer’ comes from … Macdonald came in slightly later into the hard-boiled game … and that endorsement by Vinod set me off on a hunt for Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer novels …

Vinod also helped me in acquiring my first Lew Archer novel and then many of the others that I have … not much actually, around 6 or so … and along the way, I discovered Ross Macdonald also wrote Archer short stories … and there were three different collections … the first one with 7 stories, the second one is the expanded first one with 2 more stories, and third one has three new stories … and then I discovered that all these short stories are available in one collected volume The Archer Files … this collected volume also has some extras like ‘newly discovered case notes,’ which are actually beginnings of novels or short stories that Macdonald never completed … and Tom Nolan, the editor of this volume, has 'prefaced' this book with a biographical sketch of Lew Archer ... ever since I found about all these, I have been looking for these books … for one and half years, I looked and searched … secondhand bookshops, firsthand book shops, online, brick and mortar …

 

And then sometime towards the end of 2016, I saw The Archer Files on amazon … I was tempted to buy it then and there … it was expensive and I hesitated … but transferred it to the cart … for some reason, the price kept fluctuating … and then suddenly one day, the price fell to the lowest I had seen in two months or so … I considered it to be a good omen and pressed the button … and in the next couple of days, the price increased … and increased further … so, anyway, the book arrived towards the end of January, my first book of this year … this is how it looks …

  

 

Typical ‘hardboiled tropes’-laden cover, no? … he he … the publishers probably couldn’t resist, I suppose … but it was a pleasure going back to hardboiled detective stories, those hardy detectives, the dialogue and repartee, the atmosphere … you can actually hear the music in the background … I have already read 3 stories from this volume and am currently reading Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely, which was lying unread for a couple of years now …