Chase With Nostalgia

If you are a child of the 80’s you definitely must have in your miserable life heard of the name James Hadley Chase. Man, thanks to Google I got enlightened that this was actually a pseudoname for British writer Renee Brabazon Raymond (and I always thought he was American).
It is in human nature that forbidden fruits are the sweetest. Now, James Hadley Chase was prohibited (this information, true or not, always accompanied the books courtesy of the lender). Can you believe that?! I did. Anyway, so Mr. Moi’s administration allegedly decided that these thriller books were the porn of violence and, well, just plain porn; thusly prohibited joining the ranks of serious and political works of the likes of Karl Marx et al in the contraband corner of the shelves of that time. I really can’t blame them, these books might be the reason I grew up a screw up.

My extended family is, well, 'extensive', hence the grand ensemble of cousins in my life. Every child at a certain age worships their older siblings, and even as I was the only dude in our house I always had the company of the big boys among these extended relations. These were my gods. They were cool gods.
Back to Hadley Chase. What do you expect from titles like; The Dead Stay Dumb, I’ll Get You For This, Lay Her Among The Lillies, The Marijuana Mob, I hold The Four Aces, The Sucker Punch, Mission To Venice, A Lotus For Miss Quon, An Ace Up My Sleeve, Consider Yourself Dead, Knock, Knock, Who’s There?
The italized titles are actually those I recall reading and I refrain from researching their synopses because the nostalgia might just kill me.
I’m not even going to talk about what they put on they covers man! You could judge these bad ass books by their covers; raw violence (apparently reflecting the violent nature of the era of most of their story setting), half-naked vixens in garters and occasionally looking bad-assy with guns (and skirts) drawn. My cousins always made me read them in their ‘cubes’ to minimize the risk of being found with such literature and what fun it was! I could actually wake up early to go have my session before the owners found time to demand their read-time. And FIY, I would arm myself with this knowledge to go brag to kids in school with my newly learnt vocabs like all the motherfucker-laden adjectives, and all the bloody cuss-words of the time. I still believe I was the coolest kid given the stares and O mouths I would get as I displayed my newly-acquired foreign badassery.
Those were the times people took paper-backs seriously. We had our Chases (ironically, later in life I would tone down my taste to The Hardy Boys bullcrap. I blame it on adolescent hormones) the secretaries had their Mills and Boon or whatever mushy pop romance. People in matatus slouched their torsos, necks craned down to some beat up novel on their laps. I would insult your intellect by comparing it to our present tweeting, facebooking,and what not, I know you get the picture. Yeah, people actually read books, real books (with paper pages that flipped and rustled).
Well, I ceased being a fan of popular literature long ago, preferring instead serious and nourishing literature, but lest I forget where I come from.
I don’t know if I’m cool anymore (actually I don’t give a whistling fuck anymore) but I might probably still be a fuck up, so the biscuit probably goes to James Motherfucking Hadley Chase.