Zangwill (Israel) The Big Bow Mystery
£95
London, Collins, n.d. [c.1928].
Collins’ 6D Novels series. Large 8vo. Original pictorial wrappers.
Generally regarded as the first full-length locked-room mystery. In a lodging house in Bow, in London’s East End, the landlady Mrs Drabdump cannot wake her lodger, the young idealist Arthur Constant. When the door is broken open, he is found with his throat cut in a room locked and bolted from the inside, with no weapon to be found. Two detectives compete to solve the case: the retired policeman George Grodman, now a celebrity author, and his old rival Inspector Edward Wimp of Scotland Yard.
An inexpensive reprint, no. 104 in Collins’ “6d Novels” series (“Better than a Magazine”). The pictorial front wrapper carries the tag line “The perfect crime: can you solve it?”, and the rear wrapper an OXO advertisement.
In stock
Some toning and minor oxidising to pages; some tears and lifting to wrappers, pulling away from text block, but overall complete.
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