Sample the blurb on the endpapers of the book, currently going for a princely sum of Rs 60. “Ex-paratrooper sergeant Harry Mitchell becomes a lifeguard at a Florida beach restaurant owned by a giant Mexican criminal with an explosive nymphomaniacal [sic] daughter. The sergeant finds life far more dangerous than in Vietnam...”

Sounds like good fun?

You bet. And if you attended any of those schools in the Seventies or Eighties where senior kids had pockets in their uniforms stitched wide enough for a paperback to slip effortlessly in, so as to smuggle them conveniently in and out of classrooms, chances are that you’ve already identified exactly whose pen stuff like that could come from. That’s There’s a Hippie on the Highway for you — written by none other than the inimitable James Hadley Chase, at his raunchiest best.

Those dog-eared, second-hand paperbacks called “thrillers,” which chronicled countless stories of murder, intrigue, seduction and revenge that the adolescent bibliophile in you devoured week after week, are back. Decades after the well-thumbed copies that you brought back from school were sold by your mother to the raddiwala, classic pulp is rearing its — some would say ugly — head again.

All of a sudden, shelves in city bookstores are spilling over with all those racy titles that teenagers once simply couldn’t go to bed without. After lying low for a relatively long period of time, and having fought off the threat of extinction, thrillers from the past have returned with a bang, and those in the book business haven’t failed to spot the opportunity for raking in the bucks.

Publisher Rupa & Co. has spiced up its catalogue with a generous dose of these classic series. Over the past two years, it has worked out tie-ups with global publishers to come out with dozens of titles written by Barbara Cartland, Richard Gordon and Edgar Wallace. Penguin hasn’t been lagging behind either. Its “Retro Revival” section already features a 13-title box set chronicling all the adventures of sassy action lady Modesty Blaise, written by Peter ’Donnell, along with nine Gothic adventure classics written by ’Donnell under the pseudonym Madeleine Brent. “We also have the complete Garth series and the 1952 John Masters classic Bhowani Junction due for release soon,” says a Penguin sales and marketing official.

The James Hadley Chase titles come from a relatively smaller publishing house called Master Mind Books in Bangalore. Apart from re-releasing 88 titles in the Chase series, the publishers have also unleashed 90 Earl Stanley Gardner books — featuring attorney-cum-supersleuth Perry Mason — in the market. All in the course of a single year. And business just couldn’t get better, says Raghunathan, the proprietor of the firm. “Thirty of our Chase titles are already in their second print run. On an average, we are selling about 1,000 copies per title a year,” he says.

Taking advantage of the demand, the publishers have hiked the price of the books — earlier Rs 60 — by Rs 15 in the second editions. But that has had absolutely no effect on the brisk sales.

But what, really, makes these books tick, several decades after they were written? Surely, times have changed, and with them reading tastes too? So why would someone rooted firmly in the 21st century want to mull over blasé literature that people like Edgar Wallace wrote almost 100 years ago? Legend has it that publishers in the 1920s claimed that a quarter of all books then read in England were written by Wallace — such was the soldier-cum-reporter-cum-author’s popularity in the early 20th century. But what makes him such a seller now?

Some are sceptical about the recent surge in classic pulp sales. “It may be indicative of the fact that there’s very little good literature coming out of contemporary writers these days, except for the few top-notch authors,” says literary agent Anuj Bahri, who owns Delhi bookstore Bahri Sons. “And since publishers seldom look beyond best-selling authors to explore new talent, they often exhaust their catalogues quickly and then have little option but to dig out old works such as these and put them back on the shelves,” he says.

While some experts might agree with that logic, others clearly think otherwise. “Contemporary thrillers are being produced and are definitely up to the mark,” says P.M. Sukumar, CEO of HarperCollins India, whose catalogue also boasts of names such as Ngaio Marsh, Sam Bourne, Jack Higgins and Alistair Maclean, apart from the evergreen Sidney Sheldon. “But there is a ‘nostalgia’ aspect to these old series. People who were fans then are interested in reading them again now, while introducing their children to them,” says Sukumar.

Kapish Mehra, publisher, Rupa & Co., looks at the timelessness of these books in his own way. “In the publishing scene, there is always an alternative space for putting out something new, even though new is old in this context. We have always sensed a latent demand for these classics in the domestic market and our coming out with the titles was only an attempt to meet the demand,” he says. “What is doubly heartening is that even the youth of today seems to have taken a liking for the books, if only out of curiosity. They seem to be reading these books by the dozen, and loving them too,” he adds.

Columnist and literature buff Devangshu Datta agrees. “While these aren’t exactly books you’d recommend to your nephew, the fact remains that being the racy thrillers that they are, books from this genre will have a special appeal for children, despite their dated context,” he says.

That is perhaps why oldies such as these will never cease to thrill. “I wonder how they will be received with all their political incorrectness and the occasional racist or sexist undertones,” says Datta. “But then, they might just spawn an element of historical hilarity. I used to laugh my head off when as a kid I read all the bizarre ways in which Indians had been described in pre-Colonial English literature. These books would perhaps evoke the same emotions in today’s kids,” he adds.

No offence meant, then. Here’s to plain, old-fashioned reading. Something like: “The blonde on the floor was like sea breeze. Cold and a bit smelly…”