Virendra Chandani was born just outside the town of Nagpur in the West of India in 1923. There she attended a missionary school, where she was taught to read and write in strict, classical English style. During her teens, she gained employment with one of the colonial administrators of the British Raj, as a maid or possibly a nanny.

It is not known whether the young Virendra heard stories of the ‘theatre’ here, or whether they had been impressed on her at the missionary school. What is known, is that she sheepishly presented the first draft of her manuscript to her employer, Colonel Henry Rathbone (later KBE) in the summer of 1938. Rathbone was obviously taken completely by surprise at this offering, and the fact he “had a novellist for a maid” became the source of much conversation over Bridge tables in the following weeks.

Rathbone was a progressive and jovial character, and resolved to help Chandani edit and publish her work. However, the outbreak of World War II prevented him from making good on this promise. It was 1941 before he was able to visit Nagpur again, by which time Chandani had contracted pulmonary tuberculosis and died.

The following passage is a typical example of Chandani’s niaive yet charming style, narrating a scene she had seen only in her mind’s eye, a story set in a contient she would never visit.

PERFORMANCE CANCELLED

This caused a stir in the queue, beginning at its head, but the excitement subsided and the queue began to disperse. After an hour there was scarcely a trace of it on Sadovaya Street. The detectives left to pursue their inquiries elsewhere, the staff, except for the watchmen, were dismissed and the doors of the Variety were closed.

Vassily Stepanovich the accountant had two urgent tasks to perform. Firstly to go to the Commission for Theatrical Spectacles and Light

Earth and Heaven, about the Phoenician god Thammuz, about Marduk and even about the fierce little-known god Vitzli-Putzli, who had once been held in great veneration by the Aztecs of Mexico. At the very moment when Mikhail Alexandrovich was telling the poet how the Aztecs used to model figurines of Vitzli-Putzli out of dough– the first man appeared in the avenue.

Afterwards, when it was frankly too late, various bodies collected their data and issued descriptions of this man. As to his teeth, he haid platinum crowns on his left side and gold ones on his tight. He wore an expensive grey suit and foreign shoes of the same colour as his suit. His grey beret was stuck jauntily over one ear and under his arm he carried a

The title appears to be a complete non-sequiter, since no mention of the famous engineer is made throughout the novel, which is set in (alternately) the 2nd millenium B.C. and six billion years in the future. However, the book has been subjected to furious scrutiny in dozens of fanzines, with enthusiasts analysing the structure of the story. One theory is that, just like some of Brunel’s structures, each paragraph in the story bears equal weight.

The volume is over 1000 pages long and consists chiefly of descriptions of the hero, Pawel, running through the streets of Prague, chasing rogue tradesmen.

Although Varenukha was in a hurry, an irresistible urge made him turn aside for a second into the open-air men’s toilet just to check that the electrician had replaced a missing electric lamp.

Running past the shooting gallery, he passed through a thick clump of lilac which screened the blue-painted lavatory. The electrician seemed to have done his job : the lamp in the men’s toilet had been screwed into its socket and the protective wire screen replaced, but the house manager was annoyed to notice that even in the dark before the thunderstorm the pencilled graffiti on the walls were still clearly visible.

“What a…” he began, then suddenly heard a purring voice behind

The novel ends abruptly and without resolution back that the protagonist’s house, where he leans over the kitchen sink and weeps into the plug-hole.

Many of his tales feature the luscious Debbie Draupati, a seemingly innocent yet sexually charged cheer-leader in the mould of Marylin Monroe. The Debbie series numbers at least thirty stories, with titles such as Debbie’s Date, Dream of Debbie and Debbie Demands. This quote is from the latest release, The Day of Debbie:

“Is that the only reason?” she asked, putting her eyes close to mine.
“That’s the only reason.”
She grew terribly excited, hugged me, embraced my neck and said:
“Then I shall die with you. I shall be here tomorrow morning.”
The last that I remember seeing of her was the patch of light from my hall and in that patch of light a loose curl of her hair, her beret and her determined eyes, her dark silhouette in the doorway and a parcel wrapped in white paper.
“I’d see you out, but I don’t trust myself to come back alone, I’m afraid.”

Despite giving her heart, soul and seemingly regenerative maidenhead to countless men, Debbie never seems to find true love.

Sogno Ventotto (‘Dream Twenty-Eight’) is one of the more analysed of Lera’s offerings, primarily because the powerful imagery cries out to be interpreted. However, it is not as disturbing as some of the later dreams which made the work famous.

Had a vision of a palm tree on its elephantine leg and a cat passed by – not a terrible cat but a nice one – and Ivan was just about to fall asleep when suddenly the grille slid noiselessly aside. A mysterious figure appeared on the moonlit balcony and pointed a threatening finger at Ivan. Quite unafraid Ivan sat up in bed and saw a man on the balcony. Pressing his finger to his lips the man whispered : ‘ Shh!’

A little man with a crimson pear-shaped nose, in a battered yellow bowler hat, check trousers and patent leather boots pedalled on to the Variety stage on a bicycle. As the band played a foxtrot he rode round in circles a few times, then gave a triumphant yelp at which the bicycle reared.

Of course, it is not as lyrical in translation, as in the original Italian.

An interesting aspect of Kraig’s novels is that there are no recurring characters, and each new story introduces a new detective. This is because each hero is invariably killed off towards the end of the story. Always, their death is necessary to exposing the crimminal, but sometimes, they meet their demise without discovering their nemesis identity themselves, and it is left to a minor side-kick (and the reader, of course) to complete the puzzle. This allows Kraig a certain freedom with her characterisiations, and one find that her detectives are less likeable than others we encounter in the genre.

Each death happens in unusual ways. Indeed, in the run up to a new novel being published, devoted fans of Kraig’s work spend hours discussing how the lead character may meet their doom.

In this exceprt, from The Magicians’ Accomplice, the arrogant Detective Faggot (pronounced Fa-joh), assumes he is about to reveal the identity of a jewel thief, to great acclaim. In fact, he is merely minutes away from being decapitated inside a magician’s trunk. Only then do we realise that there were actually two jewel thieves!

“Commission,” said his wife haughtily. “Surely that has nothing to do with magic?”

“Oui, madame,” replied Faggot, “it has, but you naturally do not know why. As for the meeting, you are quite wrong. When he went to the meeting – which, incidentally, was never scheduled to take place yesterday – Arkady Apollonich dismissed his chauffeur at the Acoustics Commission (a hush came over the whole theatre) and took a bus to Yelokhovskaya Street where he called on an actress called Militsa Andreyevna Pokobatko from the local repertory theatre and spent about four hours in her flat.”

Ira translated all his own novels into both English and Italian. Here is a typical ethical dilemma from the third Petrovich book, The Sunset Protocol.

came to the man’s assistance and they hit Ivan on the back with some instrument, though not painfully, traced some signs on the skin of his chest with the handle of a little hammer, hit him on the knees with more little hammers, making Ivan’s legs jerk, pricked his finger and drew blood from it, pricked his elbow joint, wrapped rubber bracelets round his arm…

Ivan could only smile bitterly to himself and ponder on the absurdity of it all. He had wanted to warn them all of the danger threatening them from the mysterious professor, and had tried to catch him, yet all he had achieved was to land up in this weird laboratory just to talk a lot of rubbish about his uncle Fyodor who had died of drink in Vologda.

Well, I’ve finally thought of something to do with this space. Over at The Hive, Michelle muses on the beauty of some kinds of spam. She links to Joi Ito’s thoughts on comment spam poetry (“spam-ku”).

So, since I signed up for this blog precisely to combat spam, it struck me as apt to post comedy or interesting examples of the spam I recieve here.

I’m sure someone else is doing this too. I shall continue to do it here until I lose interest.