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 … 

Three from the Hard-Boiled Master …

When I bought those volumes of short-stories by the hard-boiled masters, Hammett and Chandler, sometime in February this year, I had identified some novels by Chandler which I don’t have and haven’t read, and put them on my mental wish-list.  This used-books seller on Amazon, dealstar, has a good collection of books which no other used-books seller on Amazon has.  So, after waiting for around four months, I thought now is the time for some Chandler novels.  The prices are on the higher side, given that we are speaking of used-books, but I am lured by them books all the same; not that I have lots of money, it is that I am more of a succumb-er to book temptation … yen maadodu …

Recently, when Prof T P Ashoka, Kannada scholar and senior literary critic, visited my home, he saw my Hammett collection arranged on my shelf and “… oh, you like Hammett … he is one of my favourite writers …” That, sort of, made my day.  Anyway, to come back to Chandler … I have two of Chandler’s novels, and two collections of short stories … I wanted some more novels … some of the novels were priced very high, so I choose those which were priced the lowest among the lot.  And so, I choose The Long Goodbye, The Little Sister, and The High Window … the portal showed that two of these had good looking covers, but then the third was shown without a cover, just a bland image …

And when I finally received the books, this is how their covers looked … (this ‘perception and reality’ thing happened with another book from the same seller, but that is for the next post … )

I was happy with the covers on The Little Sister, and The High Window … The Long Goodbye cover doesn’t have style I thought … cover courtesy details on the back cover of The Little Sister, and The High Window say that – The covers of this series designed by James Tormey, incorporate material supplied by courtesy of 20^th Century Fox, Warner Brothers, and RKO Pictures … the chaps on the covers are probably stylised images of actors who played Marlowe in films produced by these movie production houses … one of them resembles Humphrey Bogart … anyway … and the other thing is that all three books were published in the 1970s … and this gave me reason for tassalli-fication saying that the price I paid for these three Chandler novels is not that high … that these are rare, almost antique editions … hai na …

So many Marlowes ... a centennial tribute anthology for Raymond Chandler ...

I had managed to collect all of Hammett’s novels and I wanted to see if any used Chandler novels were available with dealstar on amazon.  Oh, lots were available, but while I was searching for Chandler novels the short story collections of both Chandler and Hammett caught my attention.  The ‘short story’ frenzy cooled down once the books were in the bag (… they are here).  And I went back to ogling at Chandler novels.  While this ogling was going on, I kept bumping into this book.  It didn’t look like a novel by Chandler.  And going by the title, I thought this book was a sort of an imagined biography of Philip Marlowe, the fictional detective created by Chandler.  After a while my curiosity got the better of me (as it often does when it comes to books …) and I wanted to take a better and closer look at this book.

And I am glad I was curious.  As I read about the book, I realized that behind the innocuous and deceptively simple title, Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, hides a real gem!  Once this realization dawned, then it was smooth sailing. 

This book has 25 ‘Marlowe’ stories written by 25 well-known detective and mystery story writers.  It is a sort of a centenary tribute to Raymond Chandler, conceived and edited by Byron Preiss, with the consent of the Raymond Chandler Estate.  Some of the leading names of the detective and mystery genre like Sara Paretsky (detective V I Warshawski series), Robert B. Parker (detective Spenser series), Simon Brett (Fethering mysteries and Charles Paris detective novels), Robert Crais (Elvis Cole/Joe Pike novels), Eric Van Lustbader, Roger L. Simon (the Moses Wine series), Max Allan Collins (private detective Nathan Heller series among others), and other equally prominent writers have written a ‘Marlowe’ story each for this volume.  Each writer has also written a brief ‘afterword’ to their story telling us how Chandler has influenced his/her own work/s.  In case you long for the Master himself, Chandler signs off the collection with his last Marlowe story, The Pencil.

Every story has an exclusive and expressive ‘companion’ graphic illustration accompanying it.  Some of America’s renowned graphic artists and illustrators – John Martinez, Dennis Ziemienski, Paul Rivoche, and Javier Romero – have made these sketches. 

Each story is set at a particular year and the stories are arranged chronologically to run through Marlowe’s career as a private detective from 1935 to 1960, to reveal, as the blurb says, “the missing life history and detective adventures of Philip Marlowe, one of the 20^th century’s most enduring and beloved characters.”  So, it is not just a random collection of ‘Marlowe’ stories. 

I have read five stories so far, and I enjoyed them.  I have read only two Chandler novels, Farewell, My Lovely and The Big Sleep, and some short stories, and so, I am yet to reach the stage where I can say I am a die-hard fan of Marlowe.  I approach each story independently and I don’t have enough knowledge to compare the writers’ skills with Chandler’s or their Marlowes with ‘the’ Marlowe.  Going by the sheer variety available in this volume, there is enough stuff here to keep seasoned Marlowe-ites seriously engaged in debates and discussions for quite some time.