Chase

Dear Readers,

I know it’s been a while, but this piece has been on my mind for a while too. I am glad at last I have put paper to pen for this. I hope you will enjoy this tribute to my cult figure author. Enjoy the read.

Chase

I am not sure if the current generation has heard this name. He is an author who inspired a generation of boys and girls, men and women. He wrote in the 1960s and up to the 80s. He was to action and suspense what Mills and Boons novels were to Romance. He was a cult figure. I have wanted to explore his stories, style, and, most importantly, how he selected the titles of his books. The titles invariably told you a tale. His name is James Hadley Chase. Born as René Lodge Brabazon Raymond, he was well known for his various pseudonyms, including James Hadley Chase, James L. Docherty, Raymond Marshall, R. Raymond, and Ambrose Grant. But his most popular name remains James Hadley Chase.

A number is his books have been made into movies, Hollywood movies. To name a few: No Orchids for Mrs Blandish, made into The Grissom Gang, Just Another Sucker into Palmetto, Coffin from Hongkong, same title as the book, and there are many more. His books have been a subject of movies internationally, France, Germany, Russia, African countries, and even India. James Hadley Chase was the mystery man. His life was as mysterious as his novels. Born a Britisher, he remained loyal to Britain and enrolled in the Royal British Airforce. Rose to the rank of a Squadron Leader, he retired after the war. When success got him money, he moved to Switzerland.

His novels were a fast read and page-turners. He wrote all of them in the crime genre but had a distinct style. He usually wrote his novels in three formats. First, a murder mystery like the Coffin from Hongkong, second a crime and robbery variety where the main plot is a heist like ‘There is Hippie on the Highway’, and lastly personality-oriented novels like Eva & Mallory. It was not his style to let the Protagonist of his novel be a winner always. In the second variety, when the story was a robbery or a heist, invariably, the Protagonist got caught by the law. His female leads were always beautiful but invariably treacherous. They would kill without hesitation for money. The American gang lords also inspired him, and their violent lifestyles and hence his early novels were full of crime and gangs. No Orchids for Mrs Blandish, his first novel was based on a gang war hugely successful. Its film adaptation was titled the Grissom Gang. In all, James Hadley Chase wrote more than 90 novels under this name. There was a time when I would wait for his next novel to arrive in print. My first read was ‘The Coffin from Hongkong’. A novel with terrific suspense and kept you waiting till the last page as to what is happening. The book got me hooked on Chase novels, as the author was called those days. The books were invariably slim around at best 200 pages. He did not believe in writing long novels. The idea was to tell a story and get on to the next one. But I started reading them; I realised that the novels had a very catchy title. They were these catchy phrases that would stick in your mind. Now imagine a book titled “ You find him I will fix him” instantly; as a book lover, the phrase catches your attention. It also gives an idea of what the book would be about, robbery, or a gangster story. And this happens to have a beautiful girl in toe. A plot you cannot resist reading till the end. Imagine the title “There is Always a Price Tag”, almost a management lesson in the offing. There are no free lunches. But this one is a novel and a popular one that found its way into Bollywood. The film Maharathi was inspired by it. Engrossing plot true to the title. Imagine you find out after you murdered a guy that he has left in his will his entire property to you after his natural death. You just killed the golden hen. Such is the predicament of James Hadley s Chase plots. Reading such a novel, one is left wondering if the author chooses the title before he wrote or wrote first and then chose the title. Most likely the former by the sheer audacity of the title. ‘There Is Hippie on The Highway’, ‘Vulture is a Patient Bird’, ‘You are Dead Without Money’, ‘Knock Knock who is there, ‘Like a Hole in the head’, ‘The Guilty are Afraid’, ‘The World in my Pocket’, ‘Lay her Among the Lilies’, ‘The Dead Stay Dumb’. All these are titles of his novels. Think of a catchy phrase, and you most probably would have a novel by that name.

Interestingly, James Hadley’s Chase novels would give you the money’s worth and put you on razor’s edge while you were reading them. They got the adrenalin flowing into you. Most times, the reader is so involved in the story that he starts living the character and hopes like hell that he/she does not get caught even when you knew they had committed a crime. Such was his power of grabbing attention. He wrote books with the same Protagonist, such as ex- CIA Agent Mark Garland; he wrote four books as his Protagonist and a private investigator Vic Malloy, on whom he wrote three books. These were his heroes on whom he wrote stories to bring something out of his character probably. Amongst his best title line that I liked the most is ‘You are Lonely when you are Dead’, and amongst the novels that I loved most is Mallory. Mallory is set up in the resistance time in France during world war II. It has riveting suspense and an excellent storyline.

For me, James Hadley Chase would always remain the author who brought me to the world of reading. He instigated my desire to read books. I would read a Chase any day, and as I grew and read more and more, I missed the charm of reading Chase, so I went and bought up a few of his old novels and read them. To me and many like me, he would remain a cult figure as he would say in one of the titles, ‘Believe this, you would Believe anything, Have a nice Night'.