Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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Five by Dodge

More ebooks – it’s been a while since I last talked about pulp.

David Dodge (1910-1974) is one of my favorite authors when it comes to thriller crime fiction.
Dodge is universally known as the author of To Catch a Thief, from which Alfred Hitchcock made his classic caper movie featuring Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, but in fact had a huge catalog of titles, most of which are hard to find and have never been reprinted in these last forty years.

To Catch A Thief

Apparently, Dodge – an accountant with a passion for amateur theater – had started his writing career on a dare: when he had complained about the poorly written crime novel he was reading on the beach, claiming he could do better, his wife Elva bet him five dollars that he could not.

David and Elva Dodge, Princeton, NJ, 1956

In 1941, David Dodge wrote Death and Taxes, and won his five bucks. Continue reading


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Hard Case Crime in ebook

The good news is that I have discovered that finally a batch of Hard Case Crime novels are available in ebook format.
The bad news is that now I’ll spend a lot of money on Hard Case Crime ebooks. And I have already started, actually.

thieves fall outYesterday night, to give myself a prize for a job well done – and for discovering it was only Wednesday while I thought it was Friday already – I got me a copy of Gore Vidal’s Thieves Fall Out, a “lost” pulp novel the American writer originally published as Cameron Kay in 1953.

I had set my sights on the paperback a while back, but it was way too expensive for my tastes – especially considering I have a love/hate relationship with Vidal.

But then… the plot seems fun – a story of scoundrels abroad. And an Egyptian setting.
Also, the novel has been compared to the work of Eric Ambler – and that’s high praise as far as I’m concerned.
And the cover is absolutely fantastic – as per Hard Case tradition.
All this, for one buck? C’mon – how could I resist?
Now I have something for the weekend. I’ll let you know my impressions.

And as I said, it’s very likely that more titles will follow.
Don’t you hate it too, when that happens…?


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Looking for traveling companions (a guest post and want ad)

guestpostfeatToday, something different.
Carlos, one of the regular readers here on Karavansara, is looking for companions for a trip along the Silk Road.

Check out his plan, and if you’re interested, use this blog’s contact form (up in the right corner of this page), and I’ll get you in touch with Carlos.
Now, I leave the stage to him, so he will illustrate his plan…

I had a dream

When I was working in China, back in the nineties, when China was somehow opening to Western Industry, I often told my agent that I would like to travel through the Takla Makan.

Of course, being Chinese, my agent told me that he would be glad to organize the trip for me, and that we could go together, “when the right moment came”. And, of course, right moment never came. Either it was winter (too cold) or summer (too hot), or autumn (this autumn the moon is red, and we cannot travel under these circumstances), and of course, spring is the peak time for business.

So, I never fulfilled my dream.

Now I wonder if the moment has not arrived. I love deserts, I love to travel, I love adventure (but not too much), and I seek people with same interests. Continue reading