New Delhi, Jun 20 (PTI) Publishing house Hachette India on Tuesday announced the release of “The Great Yellowbacks: Where Thrillers Really Began”, a retro revival series of classic crime fiction, adventure, and thrillers from mid-19th century to all the way down to the ‘golden age’ of 1960s.
The yellow jackets, famously called ‘the yellowbacks’, were originally published by Hodder & Stoughton in two main series with series run dates of 1923-39 and 1949-57. The first release list of 175 titles will hit the stands on Tuesday — allowing readers to rediscover and experience these timeless masterpieces of popular literature.
The current reissue, which encapsulates the golden era of crime fiction by bringing back the bestsellers, features some perennial favourites and many rarities — either lost or not easily available — and others that are collectible as omnibuses or ‘complete’ volumes.
“This I believe is the largest ever single release imprint revival with almost 200 titles that will trace the history of detective fiction going through all the key genres from classic crime to hard boiled to noir to supernatural and occult detectives.
“It also covers the sub-genres and tropes like locked door mysteries, blind detectives, women detectives, railway detectives and more,” said Thomas Abraham, managing director of Hachette India.
The titles that made it to the curated series include “The Old Man in the Corner”, “The Complete Raffles”, “The Mysterious Mickey Finn”, “Carnacki”, “Grey Mask”, The Case with Nine Solutions”, “Murder by Matchlight”, “Crime Unlimited”, “The Wheel Spins” and “The Spiral Staircase”.
While the original yellowbacks had both hardback and paperback versions with the latter still carrying the imprint ‘yellow jacket’, the new reissue pays tribute to both using an amalgam of elements from both the editions.
“They also retain the distinctive size of the original ‘pocket’ mass market paperback and follow the three main category variations — the thrillers (crime, detective, westerns, mystery, and adventure) had blue lettering for the author’s name, while romance and ‘softer’ general fiction had red; and other categories like humour had green,” read the description of the revival series. PTI MG RB RB
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