… and I have also been eyeing these
two books for quite some time … lots of eyeing going on, actually … and only dealstar
on amazon had them under the used-books category … one is the ‘prequel’ to The
Maltese Falcon and the other is a fictionalized biography of Dashiell
Hammett, just called Hammett … both written by Joe Gores …
Joe Gores was an award
winning American crime-mystery writer … wrote novels and short stories set in
San Francisco … his novels feature the fictional private investigation firm Dan Kearney and Associates … and Joe
Gores himself was a private eye once … see, lots of similarities with Hammett …
and whenever you search for books by Hammett, you are bound to bump into these
two novels … at first you ignore, then you are curious … you want to find out
more … what, a novel titled Hammett? you exclaim … and another what! … a prequel to The Maltese Falcon? … by now you are intrigued … and
if you are hard-boiled enough, then you want to explore further … dig deeper …
this is exactly what happened with me … all this curiosity, intrigue-ment, and
exploration, and digging, led me to this uncontrollable desire towards
possess-ment of these books … aree, arre,
badebhai, kya hora ye … angrezi poora
kundhal de rein … sambhalo, badebhai … and so, I seriously contemplated
buying these books and started my search for used editions of these books … and
I found this edition of Spade and Archer with a suitably old-looking,
hard-boiled, and grungy looking cover … I was hooked … and I wanted Spade
and Archer with this cover …
Actually, Spade and Archer was
published only in 2009 and Hammett is in fact the older book,
published in 1975 … anyway, I also found a copy of Hammett with the same used-books
seller, dealstar on amazon … so after some hesitation and realizing neither
will get these books with another used-books seller or with the same price, or
with the similar Spade and Archer cover, I bit the bait … and after a couple of
weeks look what the bookseller delivered … !!
The Hammett edition and cover
are the same as was shown on the dealstar portal … but my face fell when I saw Spade
and Archer … I was so thoroughly disappointed that I wanted to pick up
a fight with the seller for showing something and delivering something else …
such a bland undercooked cover … I felt dealstar was using that other cover as
a bait, and like a fool I bit it … I wanted to read the book and I got the
book, I thought resignedly … but did I really … ??
Then I saw this line at the bottom of
the orange cover …
Whoa … what is this? Now, I was
really intrigued … I opened the book and on the inside cover there was a whole
paragraph … !!!
After reading this I felt like I had
transgressed some law or something … who wants all this aggravation, chichcha … I searched the book for
further warnings … and found some pieces of reassurance … a sticker at the back
with a barcode … and a sticker on the cover with a name I recognise as
respectable, namely, Oxfam, and
price of the book in Pounds … I heaved a small sigh of relief … oof … secure in
the belief that I was not indulging in book-legging … so, the book has
legitimately come from England … I surmised … these are extra manuscript proof
copies that the publishers had donated to Oxfam … and Oxfam has sold these as
used books … and one such copy reached me … and moreover the book has already been printed and all, no ... so, nothing to worry ...
The romantic in me thought “Oh my god! Is this a rare book or something … they don’t make
proof copies in large numbers, do they? should
I preserve this book? put it under a glass case or something? maybe it will fetch me a good price in the
future and finance my retirement” … the cynic in me laughed like a villain and
said… “naan-sense … stop day-dreaming,
you idiot, you’ve been sold a lemon … this is only an uncorrected proof copy,
not the final finished book … you’ll have to buy the final version of the book …”
Oh, is that so? I’d better start searching then …
