Detective Fiction
London, Gollancz, 1945.
First edition. 8vo. Original blue cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 8/6.
The first detective fiction title by archaeologist and raconteur Glyn Daniel, introducing Sir Richard Cherrington, an eminent but slightly eccentric archaeologist. Uncommon.
Detective Fiction
London, Robert Hale, 1957.
First UK edition. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, correctly priced at 10/6.
A very good first UK edition of this Inspector McKee novel by the American author Helen Reilly, who derived much of her work from her research into the New York Homicide squad.
Detective Fiction
Rare crime title, all other copies I have seen of this title are described as ‘7th Thousand’.
London, Skeffington, [1930 according to COPAC]
Reasonable to assume this was a publisher gimmick to show titles were popular.
Detective Fiction
Rhode (John, pseud. Cecil John Charles Street) Dead Man at the Folly
London, Collins Crime Club, 1935.
Sixth impression. 8vo. Original black cloth lettered in red. Dust-jacket, correctly priced 2/6.
Classic Dr Priestley territory here courtesy of genre master Rhode.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins Crime Club, 1935.
Sixth impression. 8vo. Original black cloth lettered in red. Dust-jacket, correctly priced 2/6.
Classic Dr Priestley territory here courtesy of genre master Rhode.
Detective Fiction
London, Geoffrey Bles, 1935.
'Popular Edition', second printing. 8vo. Original orange cloth. Dust-jacket, with price-sticker '5/-' on spine.
A decent, early edition of this the second appearance of armchair detective Lancelot Priestley, who featured in a long-running series of novels during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins Crime Club, 1943.
First edition. 8vo. Original orange cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 8s6d.
An amalgamation of espionage, murder, and horror folklore, featuring series character Dr Priestley.
Detective Fiction
A Mystery Story
London, Geoffrey Bles, 1930.
First edition. 8vo. Original orange cloth. Dust-jacket, price neatly excised from spine.
The jacket's menacing photographic artwork enhances this early Dr Priestley title. An uncommon book in the original jacket.
Detective Fiction
New York, Dodd, Mead, 1941.
First US edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced $2.00.
A mysterious beam of light wreaks havoc in this Dr Priestley novel. Nice jacket artwork.
Detective Fiction
London, Geoffrey Bles, 1935. Popular edition first reprint. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 4/6 (second issue?). An uncommon early issue of this rare Rhodes title, originally published in 1928, the jacket featuring the original classic artwork by well-known artist Abbey; one of this prolific author's earliest books, set against a yachting culture backdrop.
Detective Fiction
London, Geoffrey Bles, 1957.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, correctly priced 12/6.
A superior copy of this uncommon crime fiction first edition.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins Crime Club, May, 1938.
Ninth impression. 8vo. Paperback. Dust-jacket, with 'Crime Club 6d'.
Rhode's novel is centered around the great annual motor rally at Torquay. Fog, car "crash" and and an erroneous verdict of accidental death leads to a murder investigation.
Detective Fiction
London, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1939.
First UK edition, first impression, stamped 'Special Presentation Edition' on copyright page. 8vo. Original black cloth lettered in red to spine. Dust-jacket, correctly priced 7s. 6d. net.
The first UK edition of the author's first book. Amateur sleuth Jake Justus is on the case in this Chicago lakeside murder-mystery, and a large amount of alcohol is apparently consumed... Scarce in the original dust-jacket.
'Craig Rice' was a pseudonym for Georgiana Ann Randolph (1908-1957). J. Randolph Cox notes in Twentieth-Century Crime and Mystery Writers (London, 1980) that "...the warmth and humanity in her writing were matched by a sense of form and discipline all her own. She never forgot that the primary purpose of the detective story was entertainment."
Detective Fiction
A Story of Crime
[London], Collins Detective Story Club, n.d. [c.1930].
First edition thus. Small 8vo. Original near-black leather over limp boards, blocked in gilt.
A disappearing corpse, a supernatural theory, and a genuinely shocking finale... This title was originally published in 1907 as 2835 Mayfair, before being brought back to life for Collins' Detective Story Club, one of the first 12 classic crime books chosen for the series.
Detective Fiction
A Story of the Baccarat Club
London, Hodder & Stoughton, [1929].
First edition. 8vo. Blind-stamped presentation copy to front free endpaper. Original blue cloth. Dust-jacket, correctly priced at 7/6.
One of the more decidedly criminous titles by Irish author Jessie Louisa Rickard, one of the founders of the Detection Club in 1930. Moody artwork by the artist John Morton-Sale.
Detective Fiction
London, Jenkins, 1959.
First UK edition. 8vo. Original red boards. Dust-jacket, correctly priced 12/6.
Dr Fu Manchu gets busy on the Tibetan border, much to the concern of the Western allied intelligence agencies...
Detective Fiction
London, Cassell, 1944.
First UK edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, correctly priced at 8/6.
Given it is a War-time production this is a surprisingly good first UK edition of this later but uncommon Sax Rohmer title.
Detective Fiction
Rohmer (Sax) [pseud. Arthur Sarsfield Ward]. Yu’an Hee See Laughs.
London, Cassell, 1933
'Popular edition'. 8vo. Original brown cloth. Dust-jacket, priced at 2/6.
An attractive copy of this early issue (the first UK edition was published the year before), from the creator of the sinister Dr Fu Manchu. The villainous & nebulous Yu'an Hee See does battle with Scotland Yard's Dawson Haigh against a backdrop of Limehouse, Marseilles, the Mediterranean and the Near East, with a vast fortune of gold at stake...
Detective Fiction
First UK edition.
London, Robert Hale, 1944.
Collection of short stories (here presented in the form of a novel) featuring Major Baruk, an Anglo-Arab soldier detective, most with Middle East settings.
Uncommon in jacket.
Detective Fiction
Rolls (Anthony, pseud. Colwyn Edward Vulliamy) The Vicar’s Experiments
London, Geoffrey Bles, 1932.
First edition. 8vo. Original red cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7/6.
"...the case of a country clergyman who happens to be a homicidal maniac..." (jacket blurb). The first crime thriller by Vulliamy, writing as Anthony Rolls.
Detective Fiction
London, W. Foulsham, 1955.
First UK edition. 8vo. Original black boards. Dust-jacket, correctly priced 9/6.
Throught Redheads and a Funeral, taking in San Francisco and Kansas City, "Yes, it's Johnny April again and the fastest, slickest story you'll read in a long, long time." (jacket blurb). An uncommon 'Mask Mystery' by publishers Foulsham.
Detective Fiction
First edition.
London, Herbert Jenkins, 1937.
Signed and inscribed in the year of publication to John Gawsworth on the front endpaper describing Suicide Alibi as ‘’not another little classic but it will serve!’’
Terence Ian Fytton Armstrong, better known as John Gawsworth, was a British writer, poet and compiler of anthologies, both of poetry and of short stories.
A very scarce locked room mystery involving the shooting of a publisher in a room under observation (Adey p275)
Very desirable especially with such a fabulous association.
![John Rowland, The Death of Nevill Norway, first edition, [1942]](https://lycanthiabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/84599-300x300.jpg)
Detective Fiction
London, Herbert Jenkins, [1942].
First edition. 8vo. Original orange cloth lettered in black. Dust-jacket, correctly priced 7/6.
Thankfully not a suspiciously precognitive account of the Town Called Alice author's demise! Great jacket artwork though.
Detective Fiction
London, Columbine Publishing Company Ltd, 1939
First edition. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket 5/- overprice although original price of 3/6 is still visible on the spine.
From the publisher's blurb: 'Delia Romney was born to sin and she elected to make that the way of her life. She murdered without remorse. She sold herself without hesitation or contrition.'
A typically risqué and sensationalist story from a small publishing house well known for both its racy plot lines and lurid dust-jackets.
Detective Fiction
London, Constable, 1924.
First edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, correctly priced 7/6, with publisher's 'file' sticker to spine. Publisher's promotional card loosely inserted.
A tale of mild villainy and opportunism featuring a parasitical couple on the fringes of cosmopolitan society. Attractive jacket artwork by A. Mary Ryland.
Detective Fiction
London, Stanley Paul, 1953.
First edition. 8vo. Original green boards. Dust-jacket, price-clipped with price sticker of 6/-.
An uncommon first edition thriller by an enigmatic author.
Second Series
London, Gollancz, 1931.
First edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
The second (of three) anthologies of genre stories presided over by Lord Peter Wimsey creator Dorothy L. Sayers. Uncommon in jacket.
Detective Fiction
London & Boston, John Lane; Roberts Bros,, 1895.
First edition. 8vo. Original purple decorative cloth.
One of the most well-known and collectable of Lane's important 'Keynotes' series, this being the seventh in the series, and the first of two appearances therein for the "King of Redonda" (the other being his influential work Shapes in the Fire, number XXIX). Aubrey Beardsley provided the title-page/cover designs and most if not all of the monogram key devices for the series up until vol.XXIII.
Prince Zaleski was Shiel's first published work, drawing inspiration in part from the detective tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and comprising three mysteries: "The Race of Orven", "The Stone of the Edmundsbury Monks", and "The S.S.", each to be solved by the eponymous Zaleski, an eccentric Russian nobleman living in exile in a derelict Welsh abbey.
Detective Fiction
First edition.
London, Collins Crime Club, 1930.
This is one of the first 3 books published by the Collins Crime Club when it launched in 1930. The wrapper of Bowery Murder is identical to the first edition except for the price of 3’6 on the spine.
An innovative story in that it is written in newspaper form. It tells the story of a trial of front-page importance in the headlines and news stories of other papers.
Detective Fiction
London, Skeffington, 1932
8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket priced at 2/6 on spine with '5th Thousand' on spine. Skeffington often used such wording to give the impression of sales success.
UK author, prolific between the Wars, specializing in thrillers (often with Oriental villains) and mysteries. The Sound-Machine is centred around a revolutionary machine that destroys by sound vibration (Blieler p.183).
A stunning example of a book that rarely turns up in a jacket especially one as superb as this.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins Crime Club, 1958.
First edition. 8vo. Original red cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 10s6d.
An excellent first edition of the second novel by this founder-member of the Crime Writers' Association.
Detective Fiction
New York, Dutton, 1947.
First edition. 8vo. Original black cloth. Dust-jacket, priced $2.50.
The first edition of Spillane's I, the Jury, introducing the world to Mike Hammer. The book drew on the hard-boiled 'private investigator' tradition pioneered by Black Mask magazine in the 1930s. By 1980, seven of the top 15 all-time bestselling fiction titles in America were written by Spillane.
Detective Fiction
London, Hurst & Blackett, [1927].
First UK edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket correctly priced at 7/6 on spine.
Basis for a 1931 American Oscar winning pre-code film that tells the story of an alcoholic defence attorney in San Francisco who must defend his daughter's ex-boyfriend on a charge of murdering the mobster she had started a relationship with, whom he had previously achieved an acquittal for on a murder charge. Starred Norma Shearer, Leslie Howard, Lionel Barrymore, and Clark Gable
A very rare book into film title especially in such exceptional condition. Adela Nora Rogers St. Johns (1894-1988) was an American journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. She wrote a number of screenplays for silent movies but is best remembered for her groundbreaking exploits as "The World's Greatest Girl Reporter" during the 1920s and 1930s.
Detective Fiction
London, John Gifford Ltd, [1938].
First edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, correctly priced 7/6.
A distinctly hard-to-find title by the creator of The Black Pilgrim.
Detective Fiction
Stansbury (Alec, pseud. Alec Stansbury Higgs) Cupid Painted Blind
London, Alston Rivers, 1929.
First edition. 8vo. Original green cloth. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.
Attractively jacketed 'twenties title; a tale of financial dishonesty and torrid passion that comes good.
Detective Fiction
First edition.
London, 1937
a tale about the seething money markets of the City.