Detective Fiction
London, Peter Davies, 1960.
First edition. 8vo. Original green boards. Dust-jacket, priced 13s6d.
Ace private detective Carolus Deene is on the case in the village of Gladhurst.
Detective Fiction
London, Constable, 1931.
First edition. 8vo. Original red cloth. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.
Tales of Chinatown and Limehouse: "horrible, ironical, whimsically aloof"
London, Ward Lock, 1935.
First edition. 8vo. Original orange cloth. Dust-jacket, with code '617' to spine.
A surprisingly uncommon crime fiction title, one of only four titles by this author recorded in the British Library.
Detective Fiction
London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1928.
First edition. 8vo. Original blue cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7/6.
The first edition of the author's first book, memorably transferred to the big screen in 1936, starring Boris Karloff.
Detective Fiction
London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1936. First edition. 8vo. Original black cloth with yellow spine label. Dust-jacket, priced 7/6. The second of two Buchanesque thrillers by Cannan, right down to the style of the jacket artwork. The author was well known for her detective fiction and children's stories.
Detective Fiction
London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1935. First edition. 8vo. Original black cloth with yellow spine label. Dust-jacket, priced 7/6. The first of two Buchanesque thrillers by Cannan, right down to the style of the jacket artwork. The author was well known for her detective fiction and children's stories.
Detective Fiction
London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1935.
First edition. 8vo. Original black cloth with yellow spine label. Dust-jacket, priced 7/6.
The first of two Bunchanesque thrillers by Cannan, right down to the style of the jacket artwork. The author was well known for her detective fiction and children's stories.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins Crime Club, 1958.
First edition. 8vo. Original dark orange boards. Dust-jacket, correctly priced 10s6d.
Architecture + murder = classic stuff.
Detective Fiction
London, Harper & Brothers, 1930.
First edition. 8vo. Original blue cloth.
A solid first edition of Carr's first novel, of the locked-room subgenre. The work introduced his series character Henri Bencolin: "an impossible murder in a gambling club - the victim, seen to enter an empty room with all entrances under observation, is subsequently found there, beheaded" (Twentieth-Century Crime and Mystery Writers, p.146)
Detective Fiction
London, Hamish Hamilton, 1944.
First edition. 8vo. Original grey-green cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 8s.6d.
A Dr Fell title by this renowned master of the locked room mystery; Till Death do us Part is considered one of Carr's best novels, from his most creative period.
Detective Fiction
London, Victor Gollancz, 1939
First edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
A superb first edition of one of this prolific author's crime/thriller titles.
Detective Fiction
London, Hamish Hamilton, 1953
First edition (preceding the first US edition by a few months). 8vo. Original burgundy boards. Dust-jacket, correctly priced 10s.6d.
Chandler's hard-boiled noir classic, defined by the author himself as "my best book". In 1955, the novel received the Edgar Award for Best Novel. It was later adapted as a 1973 film of the same name, updated to 1970s Los Angeles and starring Elliott Gould.
Detective Fiction
London, Hamish Hamilton, [1965].
First edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.
Fourteen stories by US writer Chandler which originally appeared in the American magazine Black Mask, including the first book appearance of The Pencil.
Detective Fiction
London, Cassell, 1926.
First edition. 8vo. Original black cloth blocked in red.
An uncommonly good example of this highly collectable Father Brown first edition: Father Brown 'unravels the tangled skein of crime with entire success, and does it with convincing common-sense logic' (dust jacket).
Detective Fiction
London, Colliins Crime Club, 1957.
First edition. 8vo. Original red boards. Dust-jacket, priced 12s6d.
Two trains side by side for a brief moment... in that moment, a murder... A very nice first edition of this Miss Marple murder mystery.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins Crime Club, 1953.
First edition. 8vo. Original orange cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 10s6d.
A decent first edition of this Miss Marple title, with the famous scene of the maid found strangled and with a clothes peg on her nose. One of several Christie titles with an allusion to nursery rhymes.
Detective Fiction
Christie (Agatha) and E. Phillips Oppenheim. Two New Crime Stories
[The Under Dog; Blackman's Wood.]
London, The Readers Library, n.d. [1929].
First edition thus. Small 8vo. 2pp. adverts. Original cloth, gilt. Dust-jacket.
A rare pre-1930s Readers Library title, combining a title by Agatha Christie and another by E. Phillips Oppenheim.
Detective Fiction
Issue 1
New York, Avon Book Company, March 1947.
Large 8vo. Original pictorial wrappers, priced 26c.
The first issue of this short-lived magazine published by the Avon Book Company, New York in 1947. It was a bi-monthly magazine carrying reprints of crime stories and the occasional original story (in this case 'The Missing Vice-President' by Paul R. Rickens). The Agatha Christie story here is 'The Tape-Measure Murder' featuring Miss Marple. The magazine ceased after three issues. Scarce.
Detective Fiction
Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1948
First Penguin edition. 8vo. Original green & white wrappers.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins Crime Club, 1956.
First edition. 8vo. Original red boards. Dust-jacket, priced 12s6d.
Classic Hercule Poirot murder mystery, which sees the Belgian detective partnering the crime novelist Ariadne Oliver (who bears a certain resemblance to Agatha Christie).
Detective Fiction
London, Collins Crime Club, 1967.
First edition. 8vo. Original red cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 18s.
Taking its title from William Blake's Auguries of Innocence, this later title ranked amongst the author's favourites of her own works.
Detective Fiction
London, Odhams, 1937.
First Odhams edition. 8vo. Original blue boards. Dust-jacket, priced 7/6.
A great example of the Odhams edition Murder in the Mews, comprising four Poirot stories; featuring the same artwork and printed in the same year as the Collins first printing.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins Crime Club, n.d..
Collins 2/- issue. 12mo. Original blue cloth. Dust-jacket.
A neat early edition of this Agatha Christie classic.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins Crime Club, 1945.
First edition. 8vo. Original orange cloth. Dust-jacket, correctly priced 8s6d.
A very good first edition of one of the more collectable 1940s Agatha Christie titles. The third novel to feature Colonel Race.
Detective Fiction
and other stories.
London, Collins Crime Club, 1936
First Collins edition. 8vo. Original black cloth lettered in red.
A very good copy of this collection of twelve stories by the Queen of Crime, many with a supernatural twist. This Collins Crime Club edition was published after the 1933 Odhams edition, but is surprisingly more uncommon; presumed to be the export issue in this binding.
Detective Fiction
London, John Lane The Bodley Head Limited, 1925.
First edition. 8vo. Modern dark green half morocco with marbled boards, spine label red morocco, lettered in gilt.
A handsomely rebound first edition of this Agatha Christie classic. The novel introduces the characters of Superintendent Battle and Lady Eileen "Bundle" Brent.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins Crime Club, 1951.
First edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, correctly priced 8s.6d.
A pleasing copy of this Agatha Christie first edition, a hard dust-jacket to find in such condition due to its proneness to fading and marking. The story itself builds upon Christie's own excursions alongside her archaeologist husband Max Mallowan, and is more of a spy novel than a whodunnit.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins Crime Club, 1951.
First edition. 8vo. Original dark orange cloth. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.
A very good first edition of this tale of international intrigue and deadly peril.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins Crime Club, 1956.
First edition. 8vo. Original orange cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 10s6d.
Miss Marple senses danger when she visits a friend living in a Victorian mansion which doubles as a rehabilitation centre for delinquents.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins, 1946.
First edition. 8vo. Original red cloth lettered in gilt to spine. Dust-jacket, priced 10s. 6d.
The first edition of Agatha Christie's personal memoirs about her travels to Syria and Iraq in the 1930s with her archaeologist husband Max Mallowan, where she worked on the digs and wrote some of her most evocative novels.
Detective Fiction
London, Robert Hale, 1983.
First edition. 8vo. Original black boards. Dust-jacket.
A fine copy of this later work by the novelist and screenwriter T.E.B. Clarke (1907-89), one of the few Brits to win Best Original Screenplay Oscar, for his script for The Lavender Hill Mob.
Detective Fiction
London, Longmans, 1937.
First edition. 8vo. Original blue cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7/6.
Murder and political intrigue at the Home Office...
Detective Fiction
London, Hutchinson, 1937. One of the Inspector Williams novels, by an author also known for writing Sexton Blake titles.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins Crime Club, 1945.
First edition, third impression. 8vo. Original orange cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 4s6
Mrs Warrander uncovers the truth behind a murder during an undergraduates' dance.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins, 1923.
First edition. 8vo. Original dark blue cloth blocked in orange. Dust-jacket, priced 3/6 (later issue).
The first edition of the author's first novel, in an early issue jacket (1930s), introducing Superintendent Henry Wilson. Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone.