![Freeman Wills Croft, The Starvel Tragedy, reissue, [1937]](https://lycanthiabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/88496-100x100.jpg)
Crofts (Freeman Wills) The Hog’s Back Mystery
Original price was: £75.£60Current price is: £60.
London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1940.
First edition, seventh impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.
Inspector French investigates the disappearance of Dr James Earle from his Surrey cottage on the Hog’s Back ridge, a case that deepens as further disappearances follow. Published in 1933, it was the tenth Inspector French novel and Crofts’s first for Hodder & Stoughton, and is widely regarded by genre historians as Crofts near the peak of his craft.
In stock
Bookseller’s small label to front pastedown; jacket price-clipped to front flap, repair to head of spine, some rubbing and minor chipping.
Map frontispiece.
Related products
Detective Fiction
First edition, second impression first month as first state April 1935.
London. Collins, 1935
Stephen Maddock was a pseudonym used by prolific adventure and crime fiction writer JT Walsh born 1897 to 1952. He had two main series characters under this name: Inspector Slane and Timothy Terrel, the latter of whom appears in Conspirators in Capri. Very scarce in a jacket.
Detective Fiction
London, Heinemann, 1939
First UK edition. 8vo. Not original publisher's cloth, some sort of library binding. Photographic dust-jacket correctly priced at 7s 6d on front flap.
Published in US as 'Poor, poor Yorick.' A Hubin-listed title involving the dumping of a corpse off the coast of Connecticut and the apparent suicide by poisoning of a hostess on the eve of divorce.
Frederick Clyde Davis (1902-1977) was an American pulp writer. He was educated at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, and became a professional writer at the age of 22. Davis wrote several novels featuring his series detective, Professor Cy Hatch of which this is one.
Detective Fiction
London, Faber & Gwyer, 1926
First edition. 8vo. Original brown cloth boards. Dust-jacket, correctly priced at 7/6 on spine.
In this Hubin-listed murder story, the author shows the placid life of Minden Town disturbed by a mysterious tragedy. The mystery remains a mystery almost to the very end of the book. A rare and early Faber crime title.
Detective Fiction
First edition.
London, Cassell, 1935.
The Phantom Gunman is the author’s first crime novel and imagines what would happen if Chicago gangsters were to come over to London. Features serial character Mrs Pym.Exceptionally scarce in a jacket
Detective Fiction
First edition.
London, Cassell, 1939
The story centres on the murder of Mr Norwitch found stabbed in an antiques shop. The author worked in an antiques store and clearly draws heavily on this experience. According to authoritative website www.classiccrimefiction.com, UK first editions in original jackets are rare especially this title.