I have just finished reading a good as new, hard-cover novel with a dust jacket price of $21.95. It cost me only $1.00. I bought it from Edward R. Hamilton, Bookseller, Falls Village, CT 06031-5000.  My last order was for 32 items.  Everything happened to be in stock. On January 11th [1999] I sent a check to Hamilton for $48.30. Hamilton shipped on the 18th. The Swannanoa post office on January 25th. Most expensive was SHAKESPEARE OF LONDON ($3.90). The rest cost either $1.95 or $1.00 apiece. Among the $1.00 bargains was an audio tape on the life of actress Helen Hayes. I bought histories, books on investing and computers. For our very young grandsons we bought two picture books, TEDDY ROOSEVELT’S ELK and THE HARE AND THE TORTOISE.

If I appear delighted with  Edward R. Hamilton, Bookseller, well, I certainly am. “Let the buyer beware!” But after four years of dealing with the firm, entirely by mail, I have  no complaints. Every month or so, if you care to, you receive catalogs of a hundred pages or thereabouts. Most of the offerings are divided by subject into fiction or history or do it yourself and on and on. But I first turn to the final five or six pages: titles of books for $1.95 or $1.00. Three years ago I paid a total of $10 for ten copies of  THE FIRST DISSIDENT, William Safire’s effort to apply the Biblical Book of Job to modern American politics. My church’s discussion group spent 28 delightful weeks talking our way through that one. 

Recently I have begun to buy novels. I buy inexpensive classics by authors like Charles Dickens or Jane Austen. Contemporary novelists  I take a chance on, based on the catalog summaries.  These might be whodunits or spy thrillers, “thud and blunder” adventures, science fiction and the like. For the most part the authors are  well educated, often university graduates with degrees in English or Journalism. Their control of syntax and grammar is, therefore,  markedly above that of the Asheville CITIZEN-TIMES. 

I began by mentioning one particular $21.95 novel. It is fairly typical of the lighter contemporary American novels I select from Edward R. Hamilton, Bookseller. It is called, JUST THE FAX, MA’AM  (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1996, 232 pages). Colorado novelist Leslie O’Kane says that this is the second in a planned series of Molly Masters mysteries. O’Kane lives in Boulder with husband and two children. She was once taken hostage in a robbery .

JUST THE FAX, MA’AM is set in and around Schenectady, New York, with flashbacks to Molly Masters’ 17 years in Boulder, Colorado. “Thud and blunder” and “whodunit” elements abound but are under control. Different reviewers have liked different aspects of the yarn. But what both bewildered and fascinated me was Leslie O’Kane’s reproductions of insider slang within a circle of teenage murder suspects.  As part of her sleuthing, 35-year old Molly pretends to be a twenty-year old,visiting cousin of her baby sitter who lives next door. The latter’s father was murdered a few days earlier and Molly is out to prove Tiffany, her baby sitter, innocent. She visits Tiffany’s school to meet a trio of weird boys who may have had some role in the murder. When Molly shows up in what she thinks to be appropriate teen dress, Tiffany’s reaction was: “You look forty!...I just hope you don’t make me look like a cretin maggot in front of my friends.” 

Molly soon learns that there are two ways to ask local teens for information: to ask “What’s the 911” or  to invite them to “shake me up.” Of course, 401 is the information number, but it sounds too stupid for a self-respecting teen to express her need that obviously. Tiffany upbraids Molly for coming across as a “demoto.” 

The baby sitter also fears that her peers will think Molly is a “real lamen” (=”weirdo”). “Parents are called peeps, or Mom duke and Pop duke.” (p. 59)  On the two-mile school bus ride, one sympathetic girl expresses her condolence about the death of Tiffany’s father: 

“Hey, G,...bahugen buzzkill ‘bout your ol’ man.” 
Another girl sympathetically agrees, “Word up!” 
Tiffany then allows that, “I’m still pretty mopped.”

Amateur detective Molly Masters enjoys an intelligent conversation with the teacher during English class. This peeves her baby sitter into the following rebuke: 
 

--“’If that was the best you can do at pretending to be a teen, I’m sideways! You got that?’ 
--Well, actually, no, I whispered back. ‘What does SIDEWAYS mean?’
--It means, ‘I’m outta here,’ you lamen!’” (p. 65)

While riding with the teen boys in a car, the heroine is told by the driver:
“How ‘bout getting on some phat flavor, Molly?”[ NOTE: that turns out to mean,”pop in a CD.”]

At a McDonald’s, Molly decides that if she (like this reader, for one) cannot understand the Schenectady teens, she can at least riposte with a dose of  Colorado slang. 

“I gotta give you the Abe’s, dude. Compared to Boulder, Carlton (High School) is bogus behoochies. You’ve got nothing but poodunks here. Out there, it’s pure razinoids. And, of course, the skiing is major catoracts. ...We’re talking alts to the minks! (p.71)

JUST THE FAX, MA’AM has more than zany teens and teen talk. The novel exhibits unity, coherence and emphasis, humor and some unforgettable characters. Best of all,  Edward R.Hamilton, Bookseller offers this book and a couple of thousand others a month very inexpensively.

-OOO-

for Asheville TRIBUNE