Detective Fiction
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.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins, 1953.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins, n.d. [c.1930].
Collins' 6D Novels series. Large 8vo. Original upper wrapper (lacking lower wrapper).
Unusually for Christie, this title was assembled from twelve linked short stories first published in The Sketch in 1924. Her brother-in-law Campbell Christie helped her turn them into a novel during the difficult months after her mother's death and the breakdown of her marriage. The Times Literary Supplement found it "not so much the clearing up of a mystery as a recital of Poirot's encounters" with a gang of international crooks.
Detective Fiction
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.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins, n.d. [1930s?].
8vo. Original blue cloth. Dust-jacket, contemporary newsagent's sticker to upper cover and spine.
The last of Crofts's four standalone novels before he introduced Inspector French, its plot splits between a South African railway murder investigated by Inspector Vandam and, some years later, a linked Scottish case taken up by Inspector Ross.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins, 1934.
First edition, seventh impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7d.
The sixth Inspector French novel, set largely in Crofts's native Belfast, centres on the disappearance of a retired linen magnate en route from London to Northern Ireland. Widely reported as Crofts's own favourite of his books and among his most admired "unbreakable alibi" plots.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins, 1934.
First edition, seventh impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 1/-.
The seventh Inspector French novel, first published by Collins in 1931, concerns the murder of two company directors aboard their yacht in the Channel, killed just ahead of their firm's collapse and their own planned escape abroad with the proceeds. Contemporary reviewers ranked it among Crofts's strongest French titles.
![Freeman Wills Croft, The Starvel Tragedy, reissue, [1937]](https://lycanthiabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/88496-300x300.jpg)
Detective Fiction
London, Collins, n.d. [1937].
"The Bob Novels" edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 1/-.
The third Inspector French novel (1927): three people die in a Yorkshire house fire, initially ruled accidental, until banknotes supposedly destroyed in the blaze resurface, exposing arson, murder and body-snatching. Regarded as one of Crofts's best-known and most admired titles. Issued here in "The Bob Novels," an interwar cheap-reprint format.
![George Douglas, The House with the Green Shutters, [1932]](https://lycanthiabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/88493-300x300.jpg)
London, Collins, [1932].
8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 5/-.
A brutal realist portrait of small-town Ayrshire life, deliberately written against the sentimental "kailyard" school then dominating Scottish fiction. Brown (1869–1902) died the year after publication, aged 33, leaving this his sole major work; it is credited as an influence on the Scottish Renaissance and remains a landmark of early twentieth-century Scottish literature. Originally published in 1901.
Modern Literature
London, Collins, [c.1922].
Film tie-in edition. Small 8vo. Original red cloth, gilt spine. Dust-jacket, priced 2/-. Accompanied by a promotional, pictorial book-mark.
Attractive edition published to tie-in with the 1922 film, starring in Lon Chaney as Fagin and Jackie Coogan as Oliver Twist. The book-mark also features Jackie Coogan as Twist.
Modern Literature
London, Collins, [1922].
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, unpriced possibly for colonial issue.
Pickthall is one of the genuinely extraordinary figures of English letters: the Suffolk clergyman's son whose Near Eastern fiction, Saïd the Fisherman above all, was admired by Wells and later praised by E.M. Forster as the real thing; who publicly embraced Islam in 1917 while England was at war with the Caliphate, and whose Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930), produced in the service of the Nizam of Hyderabad, remains among the most used English renderings a century on.
As Others See Us is late fiction from the threshold of that final vocation, and the title declares the method of his best work: the observing eye reversed, the English seen as others see them: a trick few other novelists of his generation could perform without lapsing into condescension.
Detective Fiction
Gunn (Victor, pseud. Edwy Searles Brooks) The Borgia Head Mystery
London, Collins, 1951.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
Edwy Searles Brooks (1889-1965) was one of British fiction's great production lines: decades of Nelson Lee and Sexton Blake stories before reinventing himself as "Berkeley Gray" and, as here, "Victor Gunn," whose 43 novels featuring the growling Chief Inspector Bill "Ironsides" Cromwell and his skirt-chasing sergeant Johnny Lister ran from 1939 to 1966. This one, roughly the series' midpoint, concerns a golden Borgia head worth £50,000, a retired art dealer murdered for it, and a treasure hunt at a Cumberland country house, told inverted-fashion with the villain known to the reader throughout.
UK firsts in jacket are elusive; most surviving copies led hard library lives.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins, 1959.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced 10s6d.
'Victor Gunn' was one of several pseudonyms of Edwy Searles Brooks (1889–1965), a phenomenally prolific writer (estimated at some 40 million words) who, under his own name and as Berkeley Gray, supplied the Sexton Blake and Nelson Lee story-papers, created the St Frank's school stories, and wrote the Berkeley Gray 'Norman Conquest' thrillers. As Victor Gunn he created Chief Inspector Bill "Ironsides" Cromwell of Scotland Yard, who this title features.
Thriller Fiction
London, Collins, 1953.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
Detective Fiction
Jay (Charlotte, pseud. Geraldine Mary Jay) The Knife is Feminine
London, Collins, 1951.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 8s6d.
The author's scarce first book, and the only one of her works set in Australia.
Modern Literature
London, Collins, [1932].
First edition, first impression. Signed by the author on title-page. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7/6.
Uncommon, especially signed.
Modern Literature
The Education of Anthony Dare; Anthony Dare's Progress
London, Collins, 1923-25.
3 vols. First editions, first impressions. 8vo. Original blue cloth blocked in orange. Dust-jackets, priced 7/6.
A nice group of these novels, by an author whose work was popular in his lifetime and appreciated for its realism.
Modern Literature
London, Collins, 1933.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7/6.
More in the vein of the author's most famous work, The Blue Lagoon (1908).
Modern Literature
London, Collins, 1938.
First edition, first impression. Publisher's file copy. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7s6d.
The ups & downs of a pavement artist in London, from the author of I am your brother.
London, Collins, 1937.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 16/-.
A travel narrative recording Lord Cottenham's journey across the United States. He drives by motor-car from New York to Los Angeles, returns by aeroplane, spends time in Hollywood, and takes a police-escorted tour through San Francisco's nightlife.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins, 1942.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.
The third adventure of wise-cracking crime reporter Tony Carter.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins, 1968.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins, 1973.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins, [1943].
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket.
![H. Douglas Thomson, The Mystery Book, [1930s]](https://lycanthiabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/86856-300x300.jpg)
Detective Fiction
London, Collins, [1930s].
8vo. Original black cloth, gilt. Dust-jacket.
An anthology comprising classic stories of mystery, detective fiction, adventure, suspense, and supernatural tales. The anthology includes works from notable authors, reflecting the popularity and diversity of early 20th-century genre fiction.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins, 1929.
First edition, early issue. 8vo. Original blue cloth.
A thrilling tale of deception and intrigue unfolds as a group of young adventurers stumble upon a deadly secret connected to the enigmatic Seven Dials Club.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins, 1964.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original blue cloth. Dust-jacket.
An African prince, a criminal mastermind called The Countess, the Crown Jewels and a model whale at the Kensington Natural History Museum provide intriguing elements in this novel by the author of The Gold Bidet.
Detective Fiction
Brock (Lynn, pseud. Alister McAllister) The Dagwort Coombe Murder
London, Collins, 1929.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original dark blue cloth lettered and ruled in red. Dust-jacket.
Brock's first stand-alone novel following the success of his Colonel Gore series during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. In the United States, it was published under the alternative title The Stoke Silver Case. Scarce in jacket.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins, 1932.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth.
The author's debut novel and the first appearance of his iconic detective, Mick Cardby. Celebrated as the earliest genuine English interpretation of the American 'hard-boiled' genre, the story revolves around the perplexing discovery of a corpse in rural Warwickshire, marked by a puzzling array of American traits. Scarce, even without jacket.
Detective Fiction
Gray (Berkeley, pseud. Edwy Searles Brooks) Six Feet of Dynamite
London, Collins, 1941.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original burgundy cloth. Dust-jacket.
Edwy Searles Brooks was a UK novelist who wrote under a number of pseudonyms including Berkeley Gray and Victor Gunn. This is a rare work from his canon.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins, 1923.
First edition, first impression. Publisher's file copy (label to upper cover). 8vo. Original blue cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7/6.
A wonderfully jacketed novel by an author who initially found fame as a War Poet. A tale on the perils of sudden wealth.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins, 1930.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Later black cloth, lettered in red to spine.
A sharply rebound copy of this early collection of short stories by Agatha Christie.
Children's Books
from the Walt Disney production
London & Glasgow, Collins, [1944]..
First UK edition. 4to. Original cloth-backed boards with illustration to upper cover.
A very good first UK edition of Roald Dahl's first book, that launched his career as a writer of nuanced children's literature. The story builds on an RAF legend of mischievous/malicious sprites that hamper the missions of fighter & bomber pilots during the Second World War.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins, 1953.
First edition. 8vo. Original mauve boards. Dust-jacket, priced 10s6d.
The author's first book; a classic murder mystery which will keep you guessing until the final pages.
Modern Literature
London, Collins, [1927].
First edition. 8vo. Original blue cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7/6.
A modern reworking of the Arabian Nights by popular Irish author Tynan - scarce in the jacket.
Detective Fiction
London, Collins, 1922.
First edition. 8vo. Original blue cloth lettered and ruled in red.
Uncommon first edition of this pre Inspector French title.
Modern Literature
London, Collins, 1939.
First edition. Signed by the author on front endpaper. 8vo. Original black cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 7s6d.
An attractive first edition, enhanced further by being signed by the author on the front free endpaper.
Detective Fiction
Gunn (Victor, pseud. Edwy Searles Brooks) Ironsides Sees Red
London, Collins, 1943.
First edition. 8vo. Original red cloth. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.
One of several 'Ironsides' titles written by Brooks under the pseudonym Victor Gunn. He also famously wrote under the pen name of Berkeley Gray.
Modern Literature
London, Collins, 1957.
First edition. 8vo. Publisher's review slip loosely inserted. Original black boards. Dust-jacket, priced 16s.
Mason's most well-known work, inspired by the time he spent at the Luk Kwok Hotel in 1956 and the prostitution services he observed offered there.
Children's Books
London, Collins, 1939.
First edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 8/6.
The second book in White's series 'The Once and Future King'. It continues the story of the newly crowned King Arthur, his tutelage by the wise Merlyn, his war against King Lot, and also introduces the Orkney clan.
Modern Literature
London, Collins, 1936.
First edition. 8vo. Original green cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 8/-.
Considered the author's greatest novel, published posthumously. Centred around a County Council, the novel illustrates how public decisions can mold the individual, at the same time offering a panoramic and unforgettable view of Yorkshire life. Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
War, Invasion & Spy
London, Collins, 1940.
First UK edition. 8vo. 3pp. advertisements. Original mauve cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 8/3.
Attractive jacket artwork for this surprisingly uncommon and highly collectable British edition, combining international intrigue of German & American spies in Central America, with exotic backgrounds, humour and romance.