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Charlie Lovett's The Bookman's Tale ... an antiquarian bookseller, a...
Charlie Lovett’s The Bookman’s Tale (2013) is one of the most satisfying and enjoyable bibliothrillers that I had read in recent times. I had written about the bibliothrillers that I had already read...
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Peter Robinson’s Inspector Banks … the whole set and some random thoughts …
It is a little more than five years now. I had picked up Past Reason Hated and A Dedicated Man at the biannual Best Books Sale at YMCA Secunderabad in September 2011. I had never heard of Peter...
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Fountain Pens, Handwound Watches … Retro or What?
I am writing this with a Gama fountain pen (eyedropper filler; made by Gem & Co., Chennai) filled with Pelikan 4001 Royal Blue ink. When I wrote this initially as a first draft, I was aware of all...
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The Unexpected Completion of Ian Rankin's 'Inspector Rebus' Collection ...
One of the spinoffs (though a welcome one!!) of my avariciously rushing through the buying and reading of Peter Robinson’s Inspector Banks novels (recounted with great humour and energy through a...
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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...
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Out of the blue ... one from Rankin's hand ... oooooh ... I'm over the moon ...
When Inspector Rebus retired in Exit Music, I was a bit sad. I had enjoyed reading the Rebus novels and now there would be no more new Rebus novels to look out for. Of course, there were quite a few...
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A new ‘Inspector’ for me … Hooking on to Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse …
Read all Inspector Banks novels … Inspector Rebus done, too … done with Wallander too … Inspector Beck, well, only 10 of them and I am still waiting for some more … I felt like I cleared all backlogs...
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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,...
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It had been a particularly exhausting week (around three weeks ago) and I hadn’t been sleeping well too. When finally Sunday came around, I wanted to wake up late and also catch some sleep in the...
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Visit to Hyderabad Book Fair … good for Mamoon, dull for me …
Shruti wanted all of us to visit the Book Fair. She hadn’t visited the HBF for many years and yeah, we set out on a Sunday afternoon. I was open minded as I only wanted to check out the second hand...
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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 Disappearedand Cop Killer… Nos 5 and 9...
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The last novels of 2016 … and nine (!) years of blogging …
All these novels came in a big rush towards the end of 2016 … during the last 2 weeks … I had wanted to post these early this year, but as it happens with me, every new year brings in a lot of...
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Some more books … during the last weeks of 2016 …
Scouting for more and more and other writers of police procedural novels led me to James Ellroy … after reading about him, I understood that he is more of a hard-hitting crime fiction author … not like...
View ArticleMy blog is my battlefield … nine years and blogging on …
For someone who has been blogging for nine years, the number of posts I have written (not even 300 posts so far …) is hardly anything … I don’t average even 50 posts a year … by my standards, at least,...
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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...
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Two George Lamming novels and a wonderful surprise … second time lucky with...
I read George Lamming for the first time in 1991. His first novel, In the Castle of My Skin, written in 1953, was part of the Commonwealth Literature syllabus when I was doing my MA at Fergusson...
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Two George Lamming novels and a wonderful surprise … second time lucky with...
Even while I was in the second semester of the PGDES course at CIEFL, I had more or less decided to work on George Lamming’s novels for my MPhil in case I got a seat in the programme. This was mainly...
View ArticleTwo George Lamming novels and a wonderful surprise … second time lucky with...
When I read George Lamming’s words inscribed for ‘Mike Henshaw’ on Season of Adventure’s flyleaf, I was curious to find out who this person was. It was easy to guess that ‘Mike Henshaw’ was not just...
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Cruising on the hard-boiled highway: Short-stories by the masters
Now I know why Eliot said, “April is the cruellest month.” What with the exam season here and the heat, and the other things that came in and filled the gaps, April was a total washout in terms of...
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O for a pitcher full of more Bosch thrillers ...
I don’t know what to call this … this craving … there is no more, but I want some more … I finished reading all of Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch novels a week ago … though Connelly started the Bosch...
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