The Glass Key - Dashiell Hammett

Even an ardent fan of Dashiell Hammett would agree that this work of his is known more for the prose than the actual plot and I am one. But as they say - even a dead elephant costs a fortune (inflation adjusted), so does this one. The prose is as hardboiled as any of the Hammett's which makes this book no less than a fortune.

The hero- Ned Beaumont is a tough character who leaves the reader often confused with the more subtle layers of his character. Prima-facie, he is a hero, but the settings around him are hardly clean enough to let him remain one.

He is friend and right hand man to a political bigwig of the town - Paul Madvig, who, like most of his clan, will go any length to fulfill political ambitions. That may include wooing a Senator's daughter or even, possibly, committing a murder. Apart from that, Madvig owns some nightclubs, and has also been party to many corrupt ways and shady deals which is so common and indeed a necessity in his chosen career.

And it is Ned Beaumont who helps him to achieve most of that. All this, and his almost unadulterated loyalty towards his master, makes reader hard to believe in him as a hero.

But hero he is because he is as hardboiled as Sam Spade or The Continental Op could have been; because he is loyal to his friend, and not entirely to his deeds. And throughout the book he also takes a moralistic stand which is contradictory but simultaneous to his other aforementioned stand.

The backdrop of the plot is a murder for which Madvig is accused. Beaumont sets out to investigate to clear his friend, but then gets involved at personal level, when plots become thick with layers.

But I got so much enamoured by Hammett's mesmerizing prose that plot became secondary. It has helped that Hammett himself was a private eye before he took the more lucrative but less interesting job of writing PI books. The readers are not complaining, though.

This may not be first Hammett book one might want to read, but it is definitely highly recommended.

The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler

There is an Urdu couplet(Ghalib) - Jo Maza Intezar Mein Hai, Woh Deedar-E-Yaar Mein Kahan( There is more excitement in waiting for your beloved, than actually meeting the same).

Same is true for Raymond Chandler novels. As much as you want to have them in your possession, you don't want to read them because once you finish reading - that's one less Chandler novel that is left to be read. Of course, if you are that types (which means a fanatic like me) - then you can read as many times you want and still the enjoyment is same.

This mixed feeling of both exhilaration and sinking is specially because of his not-so-prolific writing - he wrote just seven and a half novels (if you also include unfinished Poodle Springs) and twenty three stories. But the quality of writing more than makes up for the lack of quantity.

Each of these polished gems are hard boiled, quintessential noir writing and that's why it doesn't actually matter which of his books one is reading - the fun is all the same. In the eyes of fans, they are not even treated as pure pulp fiction - they are more the masterpieces of literature.

His P.I. (Private Eye) - Philip Marlowe - is not your usual joe. He is a rebel, cynic, a non-conformist, idealistic in a cruel way, (his one liners are) full of sarcasm; some of them good enough to be compiled alongside the quotable quotes of George Orwell.

At one hand, he looks like a misogynist on a mission, on the other hand he appears a fatally battered lover. The love-hate relationship between him and the law agencies are as inexplicable as his devout faith towards his clients - how much ever ambiguous they may have been.

On the whole, what Amitabh Bachhan did as the angry young man in the seventies for emergency ravaged Indian public, Los Angeles based P.I. Philip Marlowe did the same for the the-great-depression hit America.

In The Long Goodbye - Marlowe plays friend-to-the-hilt to a client who is suspected of murder of his nymphomaniac wife, the daughter of the one of the richest person in LA, and is on the run - with Marlowe's help and blessings.

Things turn for worse - when he tries to investigate the reason of her murder to help his friend. Cops mess with him, a gangster sets out for his life and more bodies piled up. In between all this mayhem, to complicate the matter further, he is assigned to investigate another case - that of a missing writer - by latter's drop-dead-gorgeous wife. The result - more dead bodies, enemies and threat.

Things culminate into a pulsating climax involving cops and gangsters again, but this time together - preceded and proceeded by startling revelations, including the one which will knock the winds out of the reader.

Highly recommended!

Our Man In Havana - Graham Greene

There is quote mentioned in Murphy's Law Book Two, More Reasons Why Things Go Wrong which goes like this - "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." That's what the book is all about.

Graham Greene, author of many spy classics and a former British MI-6 spy himself, as a writer is different from most of them others from his clan, because his spy novels are not out an out escapist espionage adventures unlike for e.g. Ian Fleming's are.

They are realistic and humane takes on the personal lives of the spies. They are more a study on their behaviour, reaction to failures, motivation to go on, and their effort to find a balance between personal and professional lives. Of course, there will be a plot and mystery as well along with the ever essential betrayal element within the familiar Cold War surroundings usually.

This time, however, he takes a break from the heavy stuff and pens down a satirical spoof not only upon the ways of on field spy agents but also the way secret "intelligence" is handled as a whole. The outrageous, albeit slightly loose, plot along with some lucid and humourous prose by Greene turns this seemingly pot boiler into a rib tickling affair.

The novel is set in a laid back, refreshing, happy-go-lucky post-war Cuba with prostitutes galore. However, if you scratch below the surface and observe its revolutionary left-leanings and corruption you may wonder that a political coup is waiting to happen.

"Our Man" - Jim Wormold - is a middle aged Englishman, running a vacuum cleaner sales agency in Havana, whose wife has long since deserted him, leaving to him the responsibility of a girl child - Milly - who is seventeen years old now and quite a sensation in the town. The business is not doing great partly because there is not much demand, partly because of the policies of the parent company, and mostly due to techinical inefficiencies of our protagonist vis-a-vis the product.

Jim Wormold would do well to have some money as he wants to head back to England mostly because of growing list of suitors for her daughter in the town which includes the dangerous police chief of the city. Milly - loves this attention and finds out some ingenious methods to spend his hapless father's money.

It was in these circumstances that Jim is induced into spying in the most bizarre manner. What then follows is the most funny roller-coaster ride in the unique world of spying of this amiably bungling field agent. To earn the money he is getting from mother Britannica, he spins yarns of most preposterous proportions which includes hiring sub-agents (which included a motley group war pilot, professor, scientist, a nude dancer whi is also a mistress apart from others)who are not exactly non-existent, but definitely non-compliant.

To put the icing on the cake - he even sends them the design of a nuclear devices supposedly clicked from a hovering aircraft, but actually copied from one of his vacuum cleaner internals. The bosses, suddenly, are highly impressed, and to complicate the matter further, reinforcements in the form of a secretary, and a radio person is sent in, much to the chagrin of our scheming agent.

It is then the things start taking curious turn. First, the set of lies become too complicated to convince and starts getting entangled to the point of contradiction. And then, suddenly some of his lies start turning uncannily to true. Soon more skeletons start tumbling out of the closet involving ferocious Captain Segura and harmless Dr Hasslebacher.

Then, there is an assassination attempt on "our man" which he averts in most hilarious manner(the whole sequence is a laugh riot). The lovely Climax and the flurry of events which lead up to it, including the saving of the so called agents which didn't know anything about it, the revenge, escape from Captain Segura and finally, the confrontation with the flabbergasted bosses in England. Sensational stuff!

Ostensibly, it looks like comparatively a hack job, but if you scratch below the veneer, there might be some truth to what Greene appears to be suggesting at. After all, he is well qualified to talk about that.

How the hapless agents are at constant pressure to seek non-existing intelligence information for their employers, how the same agents turn into highly imaginative story tellers, and how this intelligence mumbo-jumbo is used by the high placed authorities to seek personal, professional and political advantage.

Every espionage story, if not completely, but partially - has a creative element to it. Even the deepest of the moles would agree. Highly Recommended.

(Also suggested is a more recent novel by John Le Carre based on similart theme - The Tailor Of Panama. A Pierce Brosnan movie is based on the novel)

Hello ... Mike .... Sound Check !

Now turning a new page in the book of my life - in terms of a book review blog.

Though the only time I find to read is during my to-and-fro bus journeys between home and work place, even in this restrictive environment I am a serial offender or a chain reader. The quintessential traffic jams - though not exactly conducive to either my sinus cavities or lung bronchi - give me more than sufficient time to kill which I duly kill by reading.

Having said that, reading in a rocking bus is no less than battling vertigos and migraines. Apart from that, one needs to be enterprising to extract more than an elbow of space, getting a perfect seat below an illuminated bulb, and last but not least - a comfortable posture.

As far as my reading tastes are concerned with all above hardships - I am not the one to drown myself with the Dickensian "gothic romance" or Tolstoyan "stream of consciousness." They have been a thing of past for me, not any more. My genre of interest is crime writing even if it is mixed with humour.

That's what I am going to write about. I am not sure for how long, but will enjoy till it lasts.