My recent trip to the birthplace of the English
language.
Hay-On-Wye, on a recommendation from the list. A detour, but
worth it. A book town like one I've visited in Holland.
Except at Ham-On-Rye, as the name slipped, had mostly books
in the Queen's language. Hay is just inside the border of
Wales. "Just," a bookshop/B&B owner said. At her shop,
the Broad Street Book Centre, I found Derek Raymond's autobio
called The Hidden Files.
Bag of Books (Bookends) - Every Book for a Pound Store.
Mostly new, with some used. Upon entering and inspecting, I
noticed how much money and time I could've saved over the
past few years. I bought two bags full of books. I found The
Deadly Percheron by John Franklin Bardin. I've read The Last
of Philip Banter recently and understand the comparisons to
Frederic Brown. They both make the unbelievable real.
Unquestionable.
There was a complete set of Horace McCoy in the Midnight
Classics format scattered throughout the store. I bought a
collection of Gifford's Sailor and Lulu just for the last
book. It was only a quid.
Goodis, Goines, Nunn, Pelecanos, Starr, Westlake. Don
Winslow's The Death and Life of Bobby Z. Derek Raymond's The
Crust of His Uppers. All in B&W for a pound.
I bought a whack of Joe R. Lansdale because of Rara
recommendations. Five series books of Hap and Leonard and two
standalones. Freezer Burn and The Bottoms. I thought "what
the hey? A pound."
At The Hay Cinema Shop, located in an old theatre, I came
across an old Crime Time magazine, "Pulp," and two
anthologies. Red Handed, edited by Joe E. Lewis, a local of
that area, and The Killing Spirit, edited by Jay
Hopler.
Red Handed collects radical crime fiction with stories and
novel excerpts by Chester Himes, Jack London and Jim
Thompson. I've read Himes's contribution "Tang" which opens
the book. It was previously in his short story collection and
a part of his uncompleted apocalyptic novel Plan B.
The Killing Spirit is an anthology of Assassins with writing
from Greene, Ian McEwan, Bukowski, Highsmith, Block, Runyon
and Hemingway. Bukowski?!
Booth's Books, owned by the unofficial mayor of Hay, is a
warehouse. Easily the biggest used bookstore I've ever been
lucky enough to enter. Good selection of everything. There
was seven copies of O'Connell's Skin Palace which I had just
purchased in London a few days before. The book had been hard
to find used and then seven copies in a few days. When it
rains.
While in London, I beelined for Murder One. Found Howard
Browne's Pork City and Shane Steven's Dead City. The latter
was picked up because of Paul Duncan's informative Noir
Fiction, which I bought last time I was in London at the High
Stakes/No-Exit boutique on a tree-lined street surrounded by
hospitals.
At Murder One, no sign of proprietor Maxim Jakubowski like my
last visit. He had been typing at a keyboard in the back
corner circled by piles of hardcovers and paperbacks.
The charity shops scattered across GB are good book sources.
In a Bath Oxfam, I found Derek Raymond's I Was Dora Suarez
for fifty p. You can get nothing for fifty p.
At another in Bristol, I found a copy of a coffeetable book
entitled Graham Greene Country, Visited by Paul Hogarth.
Hogarth painted the covers for Greene's latter Penguins in
watercolour. Sketches and the covers along with a journal.
Foreward and Ccommentary by Greene.
Soho Book Shops (tm.) in London are a good source for cheap
crime fiction. I bought Sallis's Bluebottle. I've read two of
this series, The Long-Legged Fly and Black Hornet, and find
myself waiting for something in the series. I keep seeking it
out though.
It was here where I would've saved a few quid if I waited
until Ham-On-Rye. I bought Skin Palace there, but it seemed
appropriate with the porn shop in the basement and those in
the surrounding area.
On Charing Cross Road, in a store I think is called All About
Books, I found a HC copy of Frederic Brown's Death Has Many
Doors, an Ed & Am Hunter cracker, and an uncorrected
proof of Jason Starr's Hard Feelings. It wasn't free, but it
was cheap.
By a small stand, in a crowded market, near an art exhibit of
dead corpses, I found a collection of short stories by George
V. Higgins called The Sins of The Fathers.
Too many books. Not enough. I had to buy another carry-on.
Used Crime-Times were my reading material on this English
trip in between finishing Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and
London.
Hail Britannia. Go England.
Chong
PS I'm preparing myself for Kent Harrington's The Amercian
Boys I found at the Bargain section in the basement of the
American Book Centre in Amsterdam. I've read his other two
and enjoyed them especially Dias de Muerto. Has anybody read
The American Boys?
Re: Ribic's call to delurk about a month ago. Besides being
tough, colloquial, dark and sinister, Rara Avis has a sense
of lawlessness. Intimidating. Especially Anthony Dauer. In my
more paranoiac moments, I think Mario Taboada is really James
Ellroy. And between you and me, i think miker is a cia
analyst.
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