Detective Fiction
Macdonald (John Ross, pseud. Kenneth Millar) The Drowning Pool
New York, Knopf, 1950.
First edition (stated on copyright page). 8vo. Original green patterned cloth. Dust-jacket, correctly priced $2.50
The first edition of John Ross Macdonald's second Lew Archer title, preceding the UK edition by two years; subsequently the inspiration for the 1975 Paul Newman film of the same name.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins Crime Club, 1948.
First edition. 8vo. Original orange cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 8s6d.
An interesting collaboration, recounting the misadventures of a Jekyll & Hyde New York socialite.
Detective Fiction
New York, Alfred Knopf, 1958.
First edition. 8vo. Original patterned boards. Dust-jacket, priced $2.95.
An attractive first edition by an author ranked amongst the very best of American crime fiction. Detective Lew Archer is hired by Carl Hallman to investigate his wealthy parents' deaths. Delving into the corrupt world of the Hallman dynasty in Purissima, Archer uncovers political intimidation, treachery, and a family under threat from its own dark past. Uncommon.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins Crime Club, 1965.
First UK edition. 8vo. Original cloth-backed boards. Dust-jacket, priced 16s.
The first UK edition of this example of US hardboiled 'tec fiction, featuring recurring protagonist Lew Archer.
Detective Fiction
London, Thornton Butterworth, [c.1934].. Crime Circle Novels series. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 2/6. An attractive edition of this teasingly lycanthropic novel, translated from the original French. The jacket design for the series is by Bip Pares, whose work also graced the jackets for Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker and James Hilton's Mr Chips titles, amongst many others.
Detective Fiction
London, F.V. White & Co., Ltd., 1915.
First edition. 8vo. Original red cloth lettered in black. Dust-jacket, priced 6/.
An uncommon murder mystery, particularly in the original 1915 dust-jacket, a rare survivor.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins Crime Club, 1945.
First edition. 8vo. Original red cloth. Dust-jacket,
The first edition of the Scottish author's first novel, featuring former CID detective David Stanners. Uncommon in the jacket.
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
First edition.
London, Collins, 1947.
Stephen Maddock was a pseudonym of JM Walsh and used for his more explicitly criminous titles.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins Crime Club, 1943.
First edition. 8vo. Original dark orange cloth. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.
A murder mystery, set in a thermal spa in the author's home country New Zealand.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins Crime Club, 1940.
First edition. 8vo. Original orange cloth. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.
An uncommon first edition, featuring Marsh's series character Chief Detective-Inspector Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins Crime Club, 1939. First edition. 8vo. Original orange cloth lettered in black. Dust-jacket, without price (Colonial issue?) A Haycraft Queen Cornerstone, and a scarce first edition in the original jacket. This is the eighth novel to feature Roderick Alleyn, and the third novel in which Alleyn's love interest, the painter Agatha Troy features, hastening the imminent departure of Nigel Bathgate (Alleyn's "Watson").
London, Digby, Long, 1900.
First edition. 8vo. Advertisement leaf, publisher's catalogue at end dated October 1900. Original pictorial cloth blocked in white, black & green.
A very attractive turn-of-the-century title by the author of The Beetle. Listed in Hubin.
London, Methuen, [1916].
First edition. 8vo. Publisher's catalogue at end. Original blue cloth.
The adventures of one of Marsh's most intriguing characters, Miss Judith Lee, a young teacher of deaf pupils whose lip-reading ability involves her with mysteries that she solves by acting as a detective.
Detective Fiction
Marsh (Richard, pseud. Richard Bernard Heldmann) The Marquis of Putney
London, Methuen, 1905.
First edition. 8vo. Publisher's catalogue at end dated March 1905. Original red cloth blocked in gilt.
One of the obscurer titles by the author of The Beetle. Hubin-listed.
Detective Fiction
a Demon
London, F.V. White, 1900.
First edition. 8vo. Original dark brown cloth lettered in gilt and with inset red image to upper cover.
A first person account by John Ferguson of his friend Edwin Lawrence's brutal murder, the beautiful woman who dropped through his window on the same night and the subsequent quest to solve the murder.
Detective Fiction
London, New York, Toronto, Hodder & Stoughton, 1913.
First edition. 8vo. Original blue cloth lettered in black to upper cover, spine lettered in gilt. Dust-jacket with inset colour illustration.
An early, rare example of a dust-jacket featuring artwork seemingly solely commissioned for the jacket, rather than repeating a frontispiece or plate from the book. This was an important time of transition for dust-jackets, moving away first from the disposable, purely advertorial type and then those that just repeated an internal design.
Writing in Twentieth-Century Crime and Mystery Writers (London, 1980), Daniel P. King noted "In the mystery genre, [Mason] made ample use of the psychological element - and in doing so, was in advance of his time."
Detective Fiction
London, Gollancz, 1933.
First edition. 8vo. Original black cloth lettered in red. Printed yellow dust-jacket, priced 7/6.
A very good first edition of John Cecil Masterman's first novel, a murder myster set against a backdrop of Oxford academia, starting a trend soon taken up by Gollancz stablemates Michael Innes and Edmund Crispin, and further down the line perhaps Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse books...
Detective Fiction
London, Jarrolds, [1927]. First edition thus. 8vo. Original green cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 2/6. Although originally published in 1909, this later edition is quite superb in the original dust-jacket.
Detective Fiction
London, Hamish Hamilton, 1940.
First UK edition. 8vo. Original tan cloth. Dust-jacket, correctly priced 7/6.
An early title by this American author, featuring her popular serial character, the psychiatric sleuth Basil Willing.
Detective Fiction
London, John Hamilton, [1939].
First edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, correctly priced at 7/6.
A striking dust-jacket design on this rare work set in Malaysia, a strange blend of murder mystery and the weird, with no copies in trade at the time of listing.
Detective Fiction
London, Church & Foster, [1966].
First edition. 8vo. Original pale boards. Dust-jacket, priced 15s.
A very good first edition of this tale of Scotland Yard battling with the Mafia, and the mysterious Dr Khan...
Detective Fiction
London, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1935.
First edition. 8vo. 1p. advertisements. Original cloth. Dust-jackets, correctly priced 7s 6d.
A very good first edition of this intriguing novel, based on the story Mon premier crime by Gustave Macé, in the series "La Police parisienne."
Detective Fiction
London, Michael Joseph, 1972.
First edition. 8vo. Original black boards. Dust-jacket, priced £2.20.
Macabre May-Day rites in Norfolk...Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley investigates.
Detective Fiction
London, Michael Joseph, 1936.
First edition. 8vo. Original red cloth lettered in white. Dust-jacket, correctly priced 7/6.
Murder mystery set amongst beautiful Oxfordshire villages. A genuinely nice copy.
Detective Fiction
London, Michael Joseph, 1954.
First edition. 8vo. Original black boards. Dust-jacket, priced 10s6d.
The 27th title in Mitchell's long-running series featuring the psychoanalyst and amateur sleuth Mrs Bradley.
Detective Fiction
London, Michael Joseph, 1978.
First edition. 8vo. Original black boards. Dust-jacket, priced £4.25.
Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley investigates in a crime thriller set in Cornwall.
Detective Fiction
London, Michael Joseph, 1977.
First edition. 8vo. Original burgundy boards. Dust-jacket, priced £3.75.
A nice copy of this later Mrs Bradley title by "The Great Gladys".
Detective Fiction
London, Michael Joseph, 1960.
First edition. 8vo. Original black boards. Dust-jacket, correctly priced 13s6d.
Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley is on the case in this tale of buried Roman treasure and murder.
Detective Fiction
London, Herbert Jenkins, 1935.
First edition. 8vo. Original orange cloth blocked in black. Dust-jacket, correctly priced 7/6 with 'reduced price' sticker to spine.
Cool jacket artwork graces this uncommon oriental thriller.
Detective Fiction
London, Aldus Publications, 1949.
First edition. 8vo. Original red boards. Dust-jacket, priced at 7/6.
A tale of fatal attraction on Fleet Street. An uncommon imprint.
Detective Fiction
London, Evans Brothers, 1951.
First edition. 8vo. Original blue cloth. Dust-jacket, correctly priced at 9/6.
An accomplished police procedural, the first of only two novels featuring Detective Inspector Luccan of Scotland Yard.
Detective Fiction
London, Sampson Low, Marston, 1949.
First edition. 8vo. 1p. advertisement. Original faux-morocco red cloth. Dust-jacket, correctly priced 8s. 6d.
Vintage Morland, packed with thrills and told with easy humour.
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, Methuen 1922 A Hubin listed mystery in the very elusive jacket which has some visual similarity to the jacket design of ‘Mysterious Affair at Styles’, Agatha Christie’s first novel, published two years earlier. John Moroso was a New York based writer who contributed to various publications in the 1910s and 1920s and also wrote a story about life in an east side New York City ghetto titled The Stumbling Herd, which was made into a silent film in 1926