‘Too many great works are lost’: A publishing company CEO has curated a list of 175 crime classics

The newly released Yellowbacks series by Hachette India is possibly the largest single reissue of a handpicked set of books. Thomas Abraham, the managing director of Hachette India, has personally curated the list of nearly 200 titles over a period of seven years. But why a revival? For one thing, 2023 is the hundredth year of the legendary Yellowbacks series first published by Hodder & Stoughton in yellow jackets in 1923. For another, the revival is aimed at what Abraham calls “nostalgia reading”.

For Abraham, it is a project of love. The Yellowbacks are curated in a way that the reader can journey through the history of crime and detective fiction – from the 18th century to the golden age of the 1950s and ’60s. But that’s not all – the series also includes the sub-genres that existed back then within the crime and detective fiction. The reissued titles retain the distinctive size of the original “pocket” mass-market paperbacks and other elements of design.

In a conversation with Scroll, Abraham talked about putting together these huge list, the roadblocks that he faced, the business plan for the series, and more. Excerpts from the conversation:

How did the idea of reviving the Yellowbacks come to be? Would you say it was done for young readers in India to get a taste of these classics?
I’ve been collecting the Yellowbacks for some time now – from the late 1980s – and they’re not easy to come by. So that was the starting point even before I was working in publishing. Through my years in publishing, I’ve been fascinated by the history of publishing and the great imprints, and have now found a great many of the heritage ones in Hachette – from John Murray (who published Charles Darwin, Jane Austen and Arthur Conan Doyle), through Virago and Gollancz and of course my personal favourite – the Yellowbacks by Hodder and Stoughton.

From a market perspective, India has always been a throwback market – where books from a bygone era still dominate sales in a way you don’t see in other publishing markets – whether it’s nonfiction or general or literary fiction. But that’s been very well covered. The gap I felt was in crime fiction and thrillers – traditionally the top-selling leisure segment. Hence the idea of reviving this imprint in its 100th year.

Classics are discovered anew by every generation, though today the rediscovery sometimes takes on hues of “cancel” culture. The satirical Tom Lehrer song “Smut” springs to mind – “filth I’m glad to say is in the eye of the beholder.../ (I could tell you things about Peter Pan and the Wizard of Oz, there’s a dirty old man!)”

So to answer your question – no this was not done with young readers in mind. It was done for those interested in the retro market and nostalgia reading. Generationally those in their 40s and above – who would know these names and discover some old favourites and a lot of new books in the same categories. While I hope some books may interest young readers, they weren’t my target audience at all. The treatment you’ll see is exactly the opposite of what is done when you target younger readers today.

Usually, when you reintroduce classic works to a new generation, you do so with “contemporary” covers that appeal to the current generation – these are going back to the original cover and series elements of the Yellowbacks. So, it’s been a pleasant surprise to see reactions from the sub-30 generation to these books as “these look so cool”, but they weren’t really meant to be getting Instagram buzz or be our version of Booktok hits, though I’m happy to take that too if it happens.

You mentioned that it was a seven-year-long project and a list that you curated. Was this a personal project from the beginning or did it become one over time?
As I said, it started with being a personal collection. So it’s always been a personal passion project if you will. Almost every book signed on by an editor in a publishing house is essentially that – a book they are passionate about. But from there to being a publishing project it has to be a viable business proposition too. This was no different. So from the first stage of looking at titles and authors – as a range and series and imprint, to costing them, and finally publishing them – it followed the same publishing process. But with one major difference – that of stock control. I didn’t have the pressure of needing large print runs to make it work.

You put together a list of 175 books. That’s a massive number by any standard. Could you tell me briefly about how you curated the list?
The first batch has 175 books (comprising almost 200 titles if you count the omnibuses that have four books in one and so on) and there will be at least another batch coming. Some are already in the pipeline, and some are from more rabbit holes I’m ready to go down. So, in terms of curation, it sort of came about in two ways. First, there was the existing heritage – of the imprint, the livery, the design, and the broad contents or categories they covered.

So I looked first at the Yellowback stable and pulled out the ones I thought would have the most resonance today. There are quite a few that were hits of their time, but didn’t make the cut in terms of having that classic timeless appeal or didn’t age well. Then as I was reading more and more, I decided while the list would have all the main categories that the Yellowbacks covered – crime, detective, noir, adventure-thrillers, swashbucklers, Westerns, romance and general fiction (in short most commercial genres) – I would also see that first batch would showcase a history of detective and crime fiction.

From there it went into looking for landmark works. Hence the start of the crime oeuvre with Zadig (1747) and not a century down with Dupin or Lecoq, though they’re all there. So from the first traces in the 18th century down to the Golden Age – you’ll find them all in this release. From perennial favourites (Sherlock Holmes, Peter Wimsey, or Sam Spade) to lesser-known (today) figures like Martin Hewitt, Montague Egg or The Thinking Machine, or Uncle Abner.

Further curation was in figuring out what sort of editions we want and what should the “packaging” combinations be. Complete works, series, and cycles within works…all at the price of a conventional paperback – that’s where the real value lies. The collections are truly complete (for example, The Prisoner of Zenda is commonly available, but this is the only edition in India together with its sequel and rare prequel Princess Osra); the selections go for key inclusions, hand-picked bundling and combinations; and core saga/story cycle elements (Bulldog Drummond’s Peterson rounds, Wallace’s Just Men series, The Saint’s Rayt Marius duel, or Tarzan’s first quadrilogy).

Did you also seek input from your colleagues or other crime fiction readers about the titles that should be on the list?
I’ve had a few conversations with a couple of colleagues and the former head of Hodder about the imprint itself, but otherwise no, every title here is chosen by me. But I hope to have crime buffs suggesting more. Though yes, my selection came from the fact I had to read a lot about this and when you do that (blogs, sites, introductions to anthologies, etcetera) you further go down rabbit holes, and then you discover more and more works you want to include. I found Elliott Paul like that, the lost mystery works by AA Milne or James Hilton, and even a Ruritanian Swashbuckler by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Were there any authors/titles who could not be easily tracked down? What I mean to ask is, what are some of the roadblocks you faced in this project?
Oh yes, quite a few. I was very particular that I wanted to include the greatest of Sherlock Holmes imitations – Solar Pons in this list. Holmes is still the largest-selling detective character today, especially in India and I found it amazing that with such an interest, there was not a single copy of Solar Pons to be had. And this was a series so successful that it had more than one author continuing the character. August Derleth the original creator of Pons himself is fairly well known to fans of HP Lovecraft as the publisher responsible for curating and publishing his works, but Pons was not as commonly available. It took some time to trace the rights but we did find the author’s estate via his American publishers, and have Pons in the series today. There are still a couple I’m looking for, which I hope to find and include in my second batch.

There was also the question of texts, many not available anywhere. And part of our curation was to have definitive editions – so when we say “Complete” we mean complete. The complete Father Brown for instance very rarely includes the unpublished three stories. We’ve also gone a step further and included the original illustrations. Something we’ve done with our Holmes editions too. And some roadblocks were fun too. For example, while researching Dashiell Hammet’s The Thin Man, I found that there was a first draft that existed as a complete novella, published in a magazine in 1975 (never before or since in book form), so we couldn’t justifiably call the edition The Complete Thin Man without including that draft. It took some years to find a copy and get it off an auction in the US – but today our Yellowback is the only actual edition that is The Complete Thin Man.

This must be an expensive project. Are you optimistic about the books selling in huge numbers? Do you think this series will boost the revenues generated by fiction sales?
Selling in large numbers…not really. That is a function of technology today – I’m taking advantage of the short-run digital printing option to do this. I wouldn’t have been able to do them ten or15 years ago, where even with digital printing the economies wouldn’t have worked. So yes, these definitely need to be commercially successful but viability doesn’t need them to sell in large numbers, though I’d love for that to happen.

I’m hoping it will give a boost to detective and crime fiction, which is something that within the local publishing scene does not see much traction. So the yellowjacket range will be followed up with the imprint also going contemporary – and local – and we’re following this up with the first-ever anthology of Indian detective fiction. There have been some excellent crime and pulp fiction anthologies, but no anthology of Indian detective fiction. So watch this space later this year for release details – we’re doing not one but two volumes of Indian detective fiction.

It is a common complaint that crime fiction is no longer what it used to be. You have worked for many years on this project and you must have read (and re-read) each title on the list. What do you think contemporary crime fiction is lacking?
I don’t think anything is lacking. It has just taken a different turn that’s all. The West has seen an evolution from the Golden Age of the 1950s and ’60s down to noir/hard-boiled fiction and then to gritty police procedurals, psychological thrillers, and the most recent, domestic noir.

India, as I mentioned is still a throwback market and therefore, still prefers Golden Age cosy crime or adventure thrillers (a reason why Christie, Maclean, and Perry Mason are present in most bookshops). It’s telling that crime and thriller as a leisure segment have fallen off the way it has...which means we’re losing new readership. The same segments however dominate in viewership – movies and OTT. But in reading, that seems to have fallen off from the way it was a few decades ago.

Even now new books will break out – Keigo Higashino, The Silent Patient all sell in great numbers, and there’s been a comeback with writers like Harini Nagendran seeing success, but these are still either one-offs or because of some huge tailwind from the West. The category itself as a whole has seen a slight decline. So as a leisure option, contemporary crime and thriller fiction are being read less. But the last year and a half are seeing a big comeback in independent bookshops, and I’m hoping that hand-selling comes back to crime and thrillers too.

And no, I haven’t read every title on the list. My own personal tastes for instance don’t stretch to the occult and supernatural detectives, but that historical sweep wouldn’t have been complete without Simon Iff or Prince Zaleski!

What are your favourite titles on the list?
There are too many, so I’d rather answer this in a series of personal recommendations across the range.

For fans of Holmes, the Solar Pons series is an absolute must-read. And the gap fillers of their time when new Holmes stories were no longer forthcoming. Martin Hewitt, The Old Man in The Corner, or the Uncle Abner stories.

For the offbeat and road less taken, try Montague Egg, who is Dorothy Sayers’ wine salesman who does his detecting while dishing out sales aphorisms. And other brilliant detectives like The Thinking Machine, Mr Tarrant, Mr Fortune, the Lone Wolf and the redoubtable Miss Silver who preceded Miss Marple.

For the impossible problem and locked room mystery aficionado, there’s the only double volume of Rouletabille (The Yellow Room Mystery and The Perfume of the Lady in Black together in a single edition), classics like The Big Bow Mystery.

For hard-boiled and noir fans, there are definitive collections of Dashiell Hammett and omnibuses of Philip Marlowe and Slim Callaghan. Some great lost noir (including some great comic nor) are The Mysterious Mickey Finn, You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up, The Woman in the Window, and No Pockets in a Shroud.

For the anti-hero buff – fans of Raffles and Lupin, there’s a whole range of criminal masterminds from Fantomas, and Dr Nikola to the gentleman burglar trope with the Infallible Godahl, Simon Carne, even a burglar priest in Constantine Dix; and of course coming in the second batch is The Saint.

For sub-genres like Blind Detectives (Max Carrados, Thornley Colton); Early Women Detectives (Miss G, Loveday Brooke, Lady Molly); Railway and specialist Detectives (Hazell Thorpe the railway detective, Prince Zaleski the occultist, Allan Pinkerton, the real-life detective).

For Swashbucklers and Ruritanian saga – the Zenda trilogy, the Graustark saga, The Mad King, Captain Blood, Tizzo, For adventure thrillers – Edgar Wallace, Sexton Blake, Bulldog Drummond, Allan Quatermain, and more.

For Hitchcock and suspense film buffs there are a lot of the original books on which these films were based – The Lodger, Rope, Gaslight, The Spiral Staircase, The Wheel Spins, The Woman in the Window, and The House of Dr Edwardes. And for the quirky solve-it-yourself, there’s Cain’s Jawbone by ace puzzle creator Torquemada where you tear the pages up to rearrange the order and solve the murder mystery. Only four people have done it in a hundred years.

I know it’s too soon to ask, but will you – or Hachette India – do a similar list for other (underrated) classic titles?
The Yellowback range will expand. The second range with another 50 to 70 titles will be announced at the end of this year. And that will see extensions beyond crime fiction to the other categories too. This will become the umbrella for a range of classics that are not overtly literary. We’ve seen literary classics come through – continued by university courses, disseminated and augmented by critical opinion. Many of these literary giants in their day were themselves massive sellers (we tend to forget Austen or Dickens were bestselling writers with massive commercial success), but from the late 19th century to even the 1980s before the advent and distractions of TV (the way we have it today), there was a thriving leisure segment, even in India. So much so we had lending libraries in every other neighbourhood that did brisk business. And yes, a lot of commercial fiction often is intended to be one-offs – or products just for that age, but even within that framework, there were great works of fiction being written, and too many of them are forgotten or lost, and they don’t deserve to be. They embodied what great light reading and commercial fiction were supposed to do – have great storytelling at their heart while being greatly entertaining. That’s what the Yellowbacks pay tribute to.