PILFERAGES 2013Our Books, Their Books

A Quiz on Popular Fiction by

VENKATESH SRINIVASAN and

VIVEK KARTHIKEYAN

THIS QUIZ IS ABOUT

James Joyce Hadley Chase

Sidney Poitier Sheldon

John Steinbeck Grisham

Harold Pinter Robbins

……….

SOME GROUND RULES

42 questions, all-written, for Teams of 2

*-marked questions to resolve ties

No negatives, please take guesses

Prizes for the Top 3 teams

ANSWERS FOLLOW….

This quiz was held at the KQA on Oct 20, 2013 for

teams of 2

The winning score was 30.5 on 42

1. Paper magazines of the late 19th century, such as

Weird Tales and The Strand, Argosy Magazine and The

Popular Magazine, which featured the work

of authors like H.G. Wells, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, J.R.R.

Tolkien, and Edgar Rice Burroughs, gave rise to which

term?

The Answer is….

Pulp Fiction

2. Why did this 1969 book become familiar to Indian

cinema viewers in 2007?

The Answer is….

Johnny Gaddaar

3. The Pierpont Inn was a hotel built in Ventura,

California back in 1910, by Josephine Pierpont. It soon

became a haunt of the elite crowd, especially

filmmakers who took breaks from their shooting.

In 1933, which lawyer set his first book at the Pierpont

Inn, since it was just down the road from his office?

Name the book as well

The Answer is….

Erle Stanley Gardener

The Case of the Velvet Claws

4. Identify the publishing house from its logo. The

advertising for their second book in 2010 went like this,

“A young woman’s fascination with blue films leads to A

BIZARRE MURDER! A bloodline of debauched ma-

harajas falls prey to AN EVIL CURSE! A beautiful girl uses

karate to retrieve A STOLEN IDOL! 7 THRILL- ING

tales .....from 7 Indian and Singaporean masters of

ACTION, SUSPENSE, and HORROR!”

The Answer is….

Blaft Publications

*5. Identify the creator of this TV series that ran for 5

seasons from 1965-70. The story is about a United States

astronaut finds his life vastly complicated when he

stumbles on to a bottle containing a female genie.The

creator also won an Oscar in 1948 for Best Writing,

Original Screenplay.

The Answer is….

Sidney Sheldon

6. Connect

The Answer is….

Books in Jeffrey Archer’s A Prison Diary series are

named Hell, Purgatory and Heaven

7. Identify the author behind this app

The Answer is….

Ian Rankin

8. An extract from a New York Times article in 2009. Fill

in the blanks with two names

There are certain writers whose prolificacy seems to have little

connection with supply and demand. In this category are people

like _____ _____, the author of 1,500 pulp paperbacks, written in

(an Indian language), and Kathleen Lindsay (aka Mary Faulkner),

who once made it into the Guinness Book of World Records with

904 books written in 45 years. The romance novelist ______

_______seems positively idle by comparison. She wrote, in many

cases dictated, about 700 books, achieving the inconceivable feat of

leaving 160 novels “unpublished” at the time of her death.

The Answer is….

Rajesh Kumar

Barbara Cartland

9. This is TidningarnasTelegrambyrå – the largest news

agency in Scandinavia. Who, after his return from

Eritrea, where he was training a squad of female

Eritrean People's Liberation Front guerrillas, served as

graphic designer in this agency from 1977-1999?

The Answer is….

Stieg Larsson

*10. What do winners of a literary award, sharing its

name with this 1942 film, get on winning it?

The Answer is….

The award, named after the novel The Glass Key by

American crime writer Dashiell Hammett, is a real

glass key given every year by the members of the

Crime Writers of Scandinavia

11. Three books by Jill Walsh, which feature an English

aristocrat detective, created in 1923. Name the character

and the original author

The Answer is….

Lord Peter Wimsey

Dorothy Sayers

12. A 2009 book that won an award for the author.

What is the main plot element in the book?

The Answer is….

A cricket Test match (between India and England) -

the events in the book are set over the five days of

the match and the title refers to the score at the

start of the final day of the match

13. A film slated for release in 2014 film, will be the

fourth of its kind and will star these actors. Name the

2009 book on which it is based and the author

The Answer is….

Two States by Chetan Bhagat

14. Carl Laemmle was a pioneer in American film making

and a founder of one of the original major Hollywood

movie studios – Universal. Which 1949 book, set in the

early 20th century, a "rags-to-riches" story of a penniless

young man who goes to Hollywood and builds a great

film studio, is based on Laemelle? The title of the book is

a colloquial / media term used to describe people in the

film business.

The Answer is….

The Dream Merchants by Harold Robbins

*15. Inspector Virkar has made his debut recently in a

book called Compass Box Killer, by film director Piyush Jha.

His first book had three crime novellas compiled into one,

all set in the same city. It was described as,

“3 fiction stories+ one real city+ one author cum

explorer= A brilliant piece of work.”

Name the book

The Answer is….

Mumbaistan

16. Connect

The Answer is….

Irving Wallace – the movie is based on his book;

David and Amy are his children

17. A pictorial representation of the titles of a series of

crime thrillers featuring which detective by which author?

The Answer is….

Harry Hole

Jo Nesbo

18. Connect with a name

The Answer is….

Elmore Leonard, who wrote westerns before turning

to urban criminals.

19. A biography, and a subject’s letter to the writer. Who is

the subject?

The Answer is….

Hunter S Thompson

*20. A 66-year old author’s response below to an often-

asked question, “Are you still writing?”. The author is

considered the fourth best-selling author of all time and

holds the record for the best-selling author alive. Who?

“What this does is that it immediately puts my writing into the

category as a hobby. As in, are you still taking piano lessons,

doing macrame, have a parrot? I don’t have a huge ego about

my work, but let’s face it, for me it is a job. A job I love, and I

have been doing it since I was 19 years old. I have been in the

Guinness book of world records repeatedly for having a book

on the bestseller list for more weeks consecutively than

whoever. Yes, for Heaven’s sake, I am still writing.”

The Answer is….

Danielle Steele

21. What connects these two books? Just an author will

not do, need a specific connection

The Answer is….

Michael Crichton’s books that were posthumously

published

22. Which character features in the stories in these two

omnibus volumes? This is an exhaustive set of stories

The Answer is….

Ariadne Oliver

23. These are banners for the winning entries in the 2012

Dobby Awards. What are they given for?

The Answer is….

Harry Potter Fan Fiction

24. Founded by Barry Sheck and Peter Neufeld in 1992,

the Innocence Project is a non-profit legal organization

that uses DNA-evidence to free wrongly convicted

prisoners.

Which author is on its Board of Directors and profiled a

case in one of his non-fiction books? Name the book

The Answer is….

John Grisham

The Innocent Man

*25. Who is the most famous name missing from this list

of people from the late 19th/early 20th century?

• Frederic Dorr Steele

• Richard Gutschmidt

• Josef Friedrich

• Frank Wiles

• W. H. Hyde

• Frederic H. Townsend

• Arthur Twidle

• Gilbert Halliday

• Joseph Simpson

• H. M. Brock

• Alec Ball

• Walter ____

• Alfred Gilbert

• Howard K. Elcock

The Answer is….

Sidney Paget – illustrators for the Sherlock Holmes

canon

26. This character was never referred to by his Christian

name until it was revealed on the last page of the

penultimate book, 'Death is Now My Neighbour' in 1996.

While the publishers insisted the author should reveal the

character's name, the author admitted he didn't have the

faintest idea – a fact which led to intense speculation and

considerable odds at the bookmakers William Hill. It was

the author's wife who came up with the answer, partly

inspired by a famous explorer's ship and finding a list of

names drawn from Christian virtues.

Name the character (full name) and the author

The Answer is….

Endeavour Morse

Colin Dexter

27. Name the character

The Answer is….

Byomkesh Bakshi

28. They are the ancestors to today’s popular paperbacks.

The correct name for them according to some historians

should be just X novels and not Y novels.

This is because the first Y, was opened by F. W.

Woolworth in 1879, but the X (which was unlikely to be

found in a respectable establishment like Woolworth's)

had a long history reaching back well over a generation

before that.

What are X and Y?

The Answer is….

X – Dime

Y – Dimestore

29. Name the series and the author; the first book

(published in1992), of a series of 62 books, is seen below

The Answer is….

Goosebumps

RL Stine

30*. Identify the author from his lesser known works

A historical novel set in

12th century Europe and

the Middle East

A sci-fi novel set in the

ruins of the Anasazi

civilization

A Memoir

The Answer is….

Louis L’Amour

31. Geoffrey Yates was originally a PR person for Qantas

Airlines in Australia, before turning to writing pulp. He wrote

westerns, sci-fi space operas, and romance weepies. His

novels were the Swinging Sixties at their sleaziest. His

success even spawned a French award for ‘The most whiskies

drunk in a single round’ He was truly prolific as ______

_____, writing 322 books. Fill in the blanks

The Answer is….

Carter Brown

32. His book Striptease was made into a movie. The book was ok. The movie was not – It won the Razziefor Worst Picture of 1996.

He is also the author of a book on a corporation that according to him “…is so good at being good that it manifests an evil; so uniformly efficient and courteous, so dependably clean and conscientious, so unfailingly entertaining that it's unreal”.

Who? What’s this book about?

The Answer is….

Carl Hiaasen

Disney

33. The series has a lot of similarities to the James Bond

novels. Like M, there’s David Hawk as the head of AXE,

Hawk's personal secretary Della Strokes, a character

similar to Moneypenny - flirtatious but serious, and

Poindexter, AXE's equivalent to Q.

This spy series was published from 1964 until 1990.

Either give the author’s name, or the name of the series.

The Answer is….

Nick Carter / KillMaster

34.

I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the

kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to

go through ____ than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of

God.

- Matthew 19:23-26

What five word phrase will fill the blank to give a 1979

Edgar Award winning novel, that revolved around an Allied

counter-intelligence operation during World War II?

The Answer is….

Eye of the Needle

*35. He looks much like one of the classier hoods in one of his books. He began his career translating James Hadley Chase into Hindi. Filmmaker Anurag Kashyapreportedly grew up wanting to be him.

Who is this grandmaster of Hindi Pulp, who allegedly coined the word ‘company’ that is common in underworld slang today?

The Answer is….

Surender Mohan Pathak

36. Gulshan Nanda apparently copied the story from the Cornell Woolrich book. The movie based on his book got a slew of nominations and won the Filmfare Best Actress Award for Asha Parekh. What was it called?

The Answer is….

Kati Patang

37. A graphic designer has tried to recreate the imagery around the William Irish novel It Had to Be Murder (that was made into a successful movie). What was the name of the film?

The Answer is….

Rear Window

38.

• Dashiell Hammett’s first was "The Road Home",

December 1922 under name Peter Collinson.

• Erle Stanley Gardner's first was "The Shrieking

Skeleton," under the pen name Charles M. Green in the

December 15, 1923 issue

• Raymond Chandler’s first was "Blackmailers Don't

Shoot", published in 1933.

What publication connects?

The Answer is….

Black Mask Magazine

39.

Lester Dent, who wrote most of the adventures,

described his hero as a cross between “Sherlock Holmes

with his deducting ability, Tarzan of the Apes with his

towering physique and muscular ability, Craig Kennedy

with his scientific knowledge, and Abraham Lincoln with

his Christliness.”

Which character, who was created in order to capitalise

on the success of The Shadow?

The Answer is….

Doc Savage

*40.

The picture and text are from a 2005 obituary: Befitting

an author who lived most of his 78 years primarily under

two different identities -- those of ___ _____ and Evan

Hunter -- although neither of those was his real name. He

was born to Italian parents as Salvatore Alberto

Lombino…

Who are we talking about?

The Answer is….

Ed McBain

41.

Once, when T.S. Eliot was asked by an interviewer what

were the two most important changes in his life, he

responded “I prefer Claret to Burgundy and I prefer X to

Y”.

In doing so Eliot had moved on from someone with a

Gallic style and panache, who often did good while

operating on the wrong side of the law, to a Belgian who

was a strong believer in moral justice.

Identify X and Y.

The Answer is….

X – Inspector Maigret

Y – Arsene Lupin

42.

What is this?

The Answer is….

Cartier Diamond Dagger Award

Given to authors who have made an outstanding

lifetime's contribution to the crime genre; past

winners include the likes of Sue Grafton, Elmore

Leonard, and Frederick Forsyth.