Chandler Early Novels

Grisham, John: PAINTED HOUSE, New York Doubleday Publishing 2001
ISBN: 0-385-50120-X As New

<strong> John Grisham takes a break from penning edge-of-your-seat legal thrillers for his latest effort, a coming-of-age tale with a deceptively languid pace and a strong literary flavor. A Painted House, which Grisham first serialized in his magazine, The Oxford American, depicts the simple but hardscrabble life of an Arkansas farming family during the early '50s. <P> Loosely based on experiences from Grisham's own childhood, this poignant story lacks the legal maneuvering and courtroom scuffles he is best known for. But there's plenty of tension just the same, an underlying, constant tension that stunningly mirrors the life of the story's point-of-view character, a seven-year-old boy named Luke Chandler. <P> Luke hates harvest time. Not only must he head out to the fields and pick cotton until his fingers bleed and his back aches, his cantankerous grandfather is even more irritable than usual, knowing that the success or failure of this year's crop may well determine the family's future. Plus, there is the invasion of migrant workers the family must hire to help pick the fields. This year, the workers consist of two groups: ten Mexicans who traveled north in the back of a cattle truck and the Spruills, one of the many hill families who come down from the Ozarks every fall to work the harvest. Things start out smoothly enough, and the crop is a promising one. But signs of trouble soon appear. Hank, the Spruills' oldest son and one of the biggest men Luke has ever seen, is a walking time bomb of violence and anger. Then there's the Mexican known as Cowboy, as lean and mean as they come. <P> The tension builds until these two indomitable forces inevitably clash, culminating in a shocking denouement that forces young Luke to deal with some very grown-up issues. And the worst is yet to come, for nature has a few things to throw at the Chandler family, as well. Grisham's portrayal of one young boy's rude awakening to the harsh realities of life is, at turns, heartwarming and heartbreaking. The tension is subtle but constant, with undercurrents that build toward a crescendo of explosive emotion. Parts of the story are grim, and the struggles often seem endless. But at the heart of it all is the essence of the human spirit and the story of one family's ability to love and survive in the face of overwhelming adversity. Contributing editor Beth Amos is the author of three novels, including Cold White Fury and Second Sight.<P> FROM THE PUBLISHER : The hill people and the Mexicans arrived on the same day. It was a Wednesday, early in September 1952. The Cardinals were five games behind the Dodgers with three weeks to go, and the season looked hopeless. The cotton, however, was waist-high to my father, over my head, and he and my grandfather could be heard before supper whispering words that were seldom heard. It could be a "good crop." Thus begins the new novel from John Grisham, a story inspired by his own childhood in rural Arkansas. The narrator is a farm boy named Luke Chandler, age seven, who lives in the cotton fields with his parents and grandparents in a little house that's never been painted. The Chandlers farm eighty acres that they rent, not own, and when the cotton is ready they hire a truckload of Mexicans and a family from the Ozarks to help harvest it. For six weeks they pick cotton, battling the heat, the rain, the fatigue, and, sometimes, each other. As the weeks pass Luke sees and hears things no seven-year-old could possibly be prepared for, and finds himself keeping secrets that not only threaten the crop but will change the lives of the Chandlers forever. A Painted House is a moving story of one boy's journey from innocence to experience. <P> FROM THE CRITICS Entertainment Weekly: He takes command of this literary category just as forcefully as he did legal thrillers with The Firm. Never let it be said this man doesn't know how to spin a good yarn....The kind of book you read slowly because you don't want it to end. Published at Twenty Eight Dollars. As New Book Jacket Hardcover 6 x 9 in

[SW: Boys -- Fiction, Arkansas -- Fiction, Farm life -- Fiction, Rural families -- Fiction, Cotton farmers -- Fiction, Domestic fiction, Bildungsromans]

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McBain, Ed: Mary, Mary - A Matthew Hope Novel, New York Warner Books, Inc. 1993
ISBN: 0-446-51738-0 Fine in Fine Dust Jacket Dust Jacket Design By Jackie Merri Meyer; Book Design By Giorgetta Bell Mcree

viii, 376pp. Black faux quarter-cloth, green paper boards, red gilt spine lettering, blindstamped publisher emblem back cover. Dust jacket price 19.95. SIGNED BY AUTHOR to half-title page. Ed McBain is the only American to receive the Diamond Dagger, the British Crime Writers Association's highest award. He also holds the Mystery Writers of America's coveted Grand Master Award. "Ed McBain did not quite invent the police procedural. Dashiell Hammett did not invent the private eye novel, either, but he popularized it, and Raymond Chandler then became its greatest practitioner. Mr. McBain both popularized this important literary subgenre and became its greatest practitioner." - NYTimes. Tenth Matthew Hope mystery novel. Hope is a young, up-and-coming attorney in the Florida Gulf Coast city of Calusa who has moved from New York, practicing civil law with one partner, Frank Summerville. Although he knows nothing about criminal law, he gets involved by chance in various criminal matters. The titles of the series refer to fairy tales and nursery rhymes, and the novels are as grisly as the stories they mirror. "In the 10th nursery rhyme-themed title starring attorney Matthew Hope (after Three Blind Mice ), Mary Barton is, in fact, a gardener of quite contrary personality, but she says she's no murderer. After a telephone repairman unearths the bodies of three children in Mary's backyard and various witnesses connect her with the dead, it seems unlikely that Hope can prevent Mary's conviction. With more than 60 million copies of his 80-plus books in print, McBain has a large following, which makes it all the more regrettable that he resorts here to an amateurish resolution relying on an outrageously cliched and improbable plot twist. While the writing is competent--Hope handles his defense of Mary with lunchbucket clarity--it is not enough to arouse interest in the title character or in the personal secret that eventually resolves the mystery. The suspense is deflated early on in an unidentified monologue that will tip off even semi-alert readers to the ridiculous development to come. Seldom has line-to-line craft been wasted in support of such a slipshod plot." - Publishers Weekly. Book and dust jacket are in Fine, unblemished, unread condition. Signed by Author First Edition Fine Hard Cover 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall

[SW: MYSTERY FIRST EDITIONS]

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Chandler, Raymond; Frank MacShane, Editor: Raymond Chandler; Later Novels and Other Writings (Library of America -80) NY Library of America 1995
ISBN: 1883011086 New

Volume has Unique Publication Qualities! In Chandler's hands, the pulp crime story became a haunting mystery of power and corruption, set against a modern cityscape both lyrical and violent. The Lady in the Lake takes private eye Philip Marlowe out of the seamy L.A. streets to the surrounding mountains, where the search for a missing woman expands into an elegy of loneliness and loss. The Little Sister, with its bitter indictment of Hollywood, The Long Goodbye, with a plot hinging on friendship betrayed and the compromises of middle age, and Playback, the last Marlowe novel, uncover deeper resonances in the classic private eye. Also included is the screenplay for the film noir classic Double Indemnity; a selection of essays; and letters ranging wittily over the worlds of writing, publishing and filmmaking. This volume, along with its companion Stories & Early Novels, is the most comprehensive edition available of our greatest mystery writer. "Raymond Chandler invented a new way of talking about America, and America has never looked the same to us since." - Paul Auster. Velvet ribbon book marker. 1076pp. Ships in a box, no bubble mailers! Many different Library of America volumes available. FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING New Blue Cloth Sewn Binding 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall Hard Cover, Gilt Gold Spine

[SW: FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING Twentieth-Century Fiction, Plays, & Essays]

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Martin Cruz Smith: Red Square, Ballantine Books 1993

Mass Market Paperback 0345384733 From the Publisher Back from exile, Arkady Reko returns to find that his country, his Moscow, even his job, are nearly dead. Not so his enemies. Hounded by the Russian mafia, chased by ruthless minions of the newly rich and powerful, and tempted by his great love, Arkady can only hope for escape. Fate, however, has other ideas.... From The Critics Publishers Weekly The Soviet upheavals have fueled the glowing talent of Smith (Gorky Park), America's preeminent writer of Russia-based thrillers. Investigator Arkady Renko returns from exile on the Polar Star fleet to find the new Moscow a dramatic battlefield of warlords and entrepreneurs; behind it, as still as a painted backdrop, eight million people standing in line. An ingenious bomb kills Renko's informer the banker for freewheeling black marketeers-leading Arkady's team through the quicksand of mafia-dominated official graft. His workaholic forensics expert, Polina (who must wait in line for morgue time as well as for beets), identifies the bomb method, leading Arkady too close for aparatchik comfort. He is bumped from the case, but only after a clue from the dead man's fax (Where is Red Square?) points him toward a Munich connection. Meanwhile, he is stunned to hear his lost love, Irina, on Munichbased Radio Liberty and with his last bit of clout wrangles a barely official trip to Germany. His mastery of the Russian system stymies the Munich embassy and reunites him with Irina in the midst of nasty fellow citizens bent on national theft. With vital aid from a Munich cop, Arkady links the fax clue to Russian bureaucrats, the ethnic Checken mafia, and German bankers. The novel paints the new post-Soviet aura through the stoic hero's wry humor and leaves Arkady and Irina perfectly poised, like Russia itself, for whatever comes next. Major ad/ promo; author tour. (Nov.) BookList A lot has happened to Arkady Renko and to his country since he found three bodies frozen in the middle of Gorky Park more than 11 years ago. There was exile in Siberia, then working on a fishing boat in the Arctic ("Polar Star" ), and now, just prior to the 1991 attempted coup, he finds himself reestablished as an investigator with the Moscow police and struggling to contain a flourishing underworld in the newly democratic Soviet Union. As in "Gorky Park" , however, it's not long before Arkady runs afoul of his superiors, who may be democratized but are still bureaucrats at heart. A seemingly straightforward murder investigation leads Arkady first to corruption in high places, then to official censure, and finally to Munich, where he is reunited with Irina, the lover who got him in all that trouble back in the early 1980s. Just as cynical as ever but even more world weary, Arkady lands in an all-too-familiar position--caught in the middle, this time between continuing his investigation into what now appears to be an art-smuggling racket and winning Irina back from her current lover, Max, who happens to be the brains behind the smuggling scheme. To some extent, Smith is merely replaying "Gorky Park" here--same tune, different lyrics--but, even so, it remains an alluring melody. Daily life in ever-changing Russia is once again masterfully evoked, and, after three novels, the character of Arkady has achieved an almost archetypal resonance: a hybrid of Chandler's Philip Marlowe and Dostoevsky's Underground Man, this chain-smoking insomniac with a taste for misery, a perverse love of deprivation, a desperate need to undermine authority, and an unflagging belief in the resuscitative power of love calls out to that beaten down, trod-upon side of ourselves, but also to our not-yet-stifled romantic souls. Misery and romance--an irresistible combination. ..Rare Books make rare gifts... Experience, Quality, Value..

[SW: Asian Peoples & Cultures - Fiction & Literature, European Peoples & Cultures - Fiction & Literature, Occupations - Fiction]

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