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!