Sunday (Aug 15) happened to be the last day of the fortnight long sale of second hand books organized by the Best Books people at YMCA, Secunderabad. Since I’d been there thrice already and picked up a couple of books after searching long I did not feel there would be any more books to find and so dropped the idea of going for the fourth and last time. However, just before nodding off to sleep on Sunday night I realized that I should have visited one last time to pick up a book I had forgotten to buy. The excitement of finding Maugham’s ‘On a Chinese Screen’ completely put it out of my mind that I had seen Woody Allen’s new book 'Mere Anarchy.' However I overcame the regret of missing Woody Allen’s book since earlier in the day I had found a good book on my weekly visit to the second hand book bazaars.
Not many know that apart from Abids in Hyderabad, Chikkadpally is also a place one can find people selling second hand books. At least half a dozen people display used books at various spots at Chikkadpally on the road linking Narayanguda and RTC Crossroads. This Sunday I spotted a new seller with a decent number of books arranged before him. I stopped to take a look at what he had and was glad I had stopped. I found Raymond Chandler’s ‘The Simple Art of Murder’, a good enough copy that I got for fifty rupees after a few minutes of bargaining. It was a 378 page affair with eight murder stories and an essay by Chandler on detective stories that has been earlier published in Atlantic Monthly.
In the essay with the same title as the book ‘The Simple Art of Murder’ Chandler takes a critical look at the detective fiction of the times and presents some interesting observations on the genre and it’s English and American practitioners. He finds that the style of the English writers is better and prefers them over the Americans. Chandler states that though a low form of fiction the popularity of the detective story causes a lot of heartburn among the ‘literary’ writers. It is quite true that the common reader prefers something that entertains him than something that is written in a high brow language. Chandler dissects a popular detective story (The Red House Mystery by AA Milne) called as ‘one of the three best mystery stories of all time’ by Alexander Woollcott. After reading the essay (twice) I have decided to read books by Dashiell Hammett, the American writer mentioned in it.
There are eight stories in ‘The Simple Art of Murder’- Spanish Blood, I’ll Be Waiting, The King in Yellow, Pearls Are a Nuisance, Pickup on Noon Street, Smart-Aleck Kill, Guns at Cyrano’s, and Nevada Gas. After reading ‘I’ll be Waiting’ I wondered why it never struck me to read Chandler’s books though I know a little about Philip Marlowe, his famous creation. I have to begin looking for his first novel ‘The Big Sleep’ and his other books featuring Philip Marlowe.
2 comments:
I really, really envy you this find. The book is worth buying just for essay but with the stories, it's an amazing treasure.
Sridala,I did not know it was such a treasure though I had a vague feeling it was a good book. Thanks.
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