click on the images above to go direct to our website

Peter Harringtonl o n d o n

Detective Fiction

click on the images above to go direct to our website

Detective FictionWhether you’re sleuthing out that elusive first edition or simply solving the case of the slippery birthday gift, Peter Harrington stocks hundreds of rare detective novels to browse and buy. Click on any of the pictures within this PDF to uncover the respective item on our website; magnifying glass not included

click on the images above to go direct to our website

ALLAIN, Marcel. Fantômas Captured. Translated and edited by A. R. Allinson. London: Stanley, Paul & Co., 1926Octavo. Original green cloth, titles to spine and rules to boards red. With the dust jacket. Ownership inscriptions to front endpapers and rear pastedown. Spine gently rolled, edges of text block lightly foxed and marked; a very good copy in the slightly soiled jacket with tape reinforcements to spine ends and folds of panels, some loss to head of spine, some short closed tears and shallow chips to extremities.First edition in English, first impression. It was first published in French earlier the same year as Fantômas en Danger. Scarce in the jacket.

[ 108024] £175

ALLINGHAM, Margery. Traitor’s Purse. Heinemann, London, 1941Octavo. Original orange cloth, titles to spine in black. With the dust jacket. Annotation to list of titles opposite title page, but an exceptional copy in the lightly creased and very slightly chipped dust jacket.First edition, first impression. A fabulous piece of book design and exceedingly scarce in the dust jacket.

[ 49362] £2,200

ALLINGHAM, Margery; Anthony Berkeley; Freeman Wills Crofts; Fr. Ronald Knox; Dorothy L. Sayers; Russell Thorndike.

Six Against the Yard. In which [the six authors] Commit the Crime of Murder which Ex-Superintendent Cornish, C.I.D., is called upon to solve. London: Selwyn & Bount, [1936]Octavo. Original salmon pink cloth, titles to spine in black. With the dust jacket. Slight rubbing to ends and board edges, spotting to edges and early leaves, a very good copy in the jacket with faint dust-soiling to rear panel and small chips to ends and corners.First edition, first impression. Stamped on the title page in purple ink “With the Publisher’s Compliments”. An interesting variation on the conventional detective fiction anthology, in which the six authors contribute stories featuring supposedly foolproof murders, each followed by an exposition of the flaws in the criminal scheme by the recently-retired detective George W. Cornish of Scotland Yard.

[ 86243] £6,250

click on the images above to go direct to our website

ALLINGHAM, Margery; Anthony Berkeley; Freeman Wills Crofts; Fr. Ronald Knox; Dorothy L. Sayers; Russell Thorndike. Six Against the Yard. In which [the six authors] Commit the Crime of Murder which Ex-Superintendent Cornish, C.I.D., is called upon to solve. London: Selwyn & Bount, [1936]Octavo. Original pink cloth, titles to spine in black. Without the dust jacket. Extremities of spine and boards rubbed, bottom corner of front board lightly bumped, faint tanning to free endpapers, prelims a little foxed. A very good copy.First edition, first impression. An interesting variation on the conventional detective fiction anthology, in which the six authors contribute stories featuring supposedly foolproof murders,

each followed by an exposition of the flaws in the criminal scheme by the recently-retired detective George W. Cornish of Scotland Yard.

[ 89246] £500

AMBLER, Eric. Journey Into Fear. London: Hodder and Stoughton Limited, 1940Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine in black. With the scarce dust jacket. Small pencil inscription on the dedication page. Spine cocked and faded, rear board rubbed and with white and light brown spots, edges a little rubbed, small dampstain to fore edge of text block, faint tanning to free endpapers, occasional single spot or finger mark to contents. A very good copy in a rubbed and chipped jacket with a few minor stains and short closed tears.

First edition, first impression. Inscribed by the author on the title page, “Mort Chambers, from Eric Ambler, Los Angeles, 1970”.

[ 9053 4] £3,250

AMBLER, Eric. The Mask of Dimitrios. London: Hodder and Stoughton Limited, 1939Octavo. Finely bound by The Chelsea Bindery in crimson morocco, titles and decoration to spine, raised bands, single rule to boards, twin rule to turn-ins, dark green endpapers, gilt edges. A fine copy.First edition, first impression. A Haycraft Queen Cornerstone in Detective Fiction.

[ 78304] £2,000

click on the images above to go direct to our website

ANDERSON, Frederick Irving. The Notorious Sophie Lang. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1925Octavo. Original red cloth, titles to spine gilt, with the pictorial dust jacket. Spotting to the edges but a excellent copy in the chipped and somewhat creased dust jacket, tanned at the spine and generally a little grubby.First edition, first impression. This first of the author’s three novels filmed in 1936. Sophie Lang was a jewel thief who featured in several books and a trio of picaresque movies. Of these the first - based on the present title - is by far the most successful. Despite the success of Anderson’s works this title was not published America and must have had a scant print run in the UK since copies in any condition are seldom encountered and examples in the dust jacket are of the utmost scarcity.

[ 105414] £5,250

(ARABIAN NIGHTS) LANE, Edward William. The Thousand and One Nights, Commonly Called, In England, The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. A New Translation from the Arabic, with Copious Notes by Edward William Lane. Illustrated by Many Hundred Engravings on Wood, From Original Designs by William Harvey. In Three Volumes. London: Charles Knight and Co., 1839-413 volumes, octavo (242 × 150 mm). Contemporary tan calf, red and brown morocco labels, elaborate decoration to spines in compartments separated by raised bands, twin rule to boards with cornerpieces, marbled endpapers, gilt edges. Engravings throughout. An excellent set.

First edition of Lane’s translation. An attractive library set.

[ 83174] £650

BERKELEY, Anthony. Death in the House. Hodder & Stoughton: London, 1939Octavo. Original red cloth, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. An exceptional copy in the very lightly creased dust jacket.First edition, first impression. A stunning book.

[ 49363] £4,500

click on the images above to go direct to our website

BERKELEY, Anthony. Trial and Error. London: Hodder and Stoughton Limited, 1937Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine and front board in black. With the dust jacket. Slight rubbing to corners, spotting to edges and the margins of some early and late leaves; overall a very good copy in the mildly soiled jacket with chips, tears and some loss to ends of spine panel.First edition, first printing. One of the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone books. The printed dedication is to P. G. Wodehouse.

[ 83 487] £2,750

BOUCHER, Anthony. The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940Octavo. Original red cloth, titles to spine black, Sherlock

Holmes silhouette to front board black. With the dust jacket. Ownership inscription to front free endpaper. A little darkening to spine and board edges; an excellent, bright copy in the unclipped jacket with extremities slightly creased and rubbed, some shallow chips to extremities.First edition, first impression. With a typed note signed by the author to fellow mystery write Veronica Parker Johns laid in, in which he reflects on her short story, The Homecoming, that it was “a damned good story, which assuredly as an editor I would buy, but a little less strikingly individual. And your greatest virtue is being not quite like anybody else.” The Homecoming won the annual short story contest run by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in June 1952. Although unmarked as such, this copy is from the library of the renowned bibliophile and dermatologist, Lawrence M. Solomon (1931-2014).

[ 108299] £275

BOUCHER, Anthony. The Case of the Seven Sneezes. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1942Octavo. Original black cloth, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. Spine gently rolled; an excellent copy in the unclipped jacket with sunned spine and extremities with some creasing and shallow chips, short closed tear to head of rear panel, small chip to foot of front panel. First edition, first impression. From the library of the renowned bibliophile and dermatologist, Lawrence M. Solomon (1931-2014), with his bookplate to the front pastedown.

[ 108297] £200

click on the images above to go direct to our website

BUCHAN, John. The Thirty-Nine Steps. Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1915Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine and front board in black. Housed in a custom brown quarter cloth solander box. Small bookplate to front pastedown of J. L. Weir. Spine gently rolled and slightly faded; an exceptional, fresh copy. First edition, first impression. From the library of the renowned bibliophile and dermatologist, Lawrence M. Solomon (1931-2014), with his bookplate to the inner cover of the solander box.

[ 108133] £3,000

BUTLER, Ellis Parker. Philo Gubb. Correspondence-School Detective. With illustrations. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company; Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1918Octavo. Original yellow cloth, titles and pictorial decoration to spine and front board blocked in black. With the dust jacket. Frontispiece with tissue guard and 19 plates. An exceptionally fresh copy in excellent condition in a toned and slightly chipped jacket with 2 small tape repairs to the verso.First edition, first printing.

[ 91629] £2,750

CAIN, James M. Mildred Pierce. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1941Octavo. Original green cloth, decoration and titles to spine gilt, top edge stained green. With the dust jacket. Bookplate to front pastedown, spine a little rolled upper board very lightly marked but a very good copy in the rubbed and lightly chipped dust jacket.First edition, first printing. Signed by the author on the front free endpaper.

[ 49365] £1,500

click on the images above to go direct to our website

CAIN, James M. The Postman Always Rings Twice. Jonathan Cape, London, 1934Octavo. Finely bound by The Chelsea Bindery in full black morocco, titles to spine gilt, inner dentelles gilt, black coated endpapers, all edges gilt. A fine copy.First UK Edition, First Impression.

[ 31092] £1,250

CANNAN, Joanna. Frightened Angels. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1936Octavo. Original blue cloth, spine lettered in blue. With the dust jacket. Some foxing to edges, boards stained; a good copy in the jacket with faded spine.First edition, first impression of this psychological crime novel, set in an English school. Cannan is perhaps better known today for her three daughters Josephine, Diana and Christine Pullein-Thompson, who wrote a number of fictional equestrian books which were extremely popular with girls. The publisher’s file copy with their stamp to the front panel of the jacket, the front pastedown and the title page.

[ 95417] £125

CARR, John Dickson. The Crooked Hinge. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1938Octavo. Original red cloth, titles to spine and front board grey. With the dust jacket. Bookplate and ownership signature to front pastedown. Extremities slightly rubbed; an excellent copy in the superb jacket.First edition, first printing of this Dr Gideon Fell mystery. A Haycraft Queen Cornerstone title.

[ 99083] £2,750

click on the images above to go direct to our website

CARR, John Dickson. The Ghosts’ High Noon. New York: Harper & Row, publishers, 1969Octavo. Original grey boards, light grey cloth backstrip, spine lettered in grey, publisher’s device to front board in silver, top edge blue, others untrimmed, grey endpapers. With the dust jacket. Gift inscription to front free endpaper. Spine rolled, foot of spine bumped. An excellent copy in the dust jacket slightly rubbed and creased at spine-ends.First edition, first printing. Inscribed by the author “Yours sincerely, John Dickson Carr” on the title-page. The Ghosts’ High Noon was Carr’s third-to-last novel and his second set in New Orleans, following Papa Là-bas in 1968.

[ 107111] £475

CARR, John Dickson. Till Death Do Us Part. A Dr. Fell Mystery Story. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1944Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine in dark blue. With the pictorial dust jacket. Extremities lightly rubbed, bottom corner of rear board slightly bumped. An excellent copy in a rubbed and edge-chipped jacket with several tape repairs to the verso.First edition, first printing, published simultaneously in the UK by Hamilton.

[ 104 439] £75

CHANDLER, Raymond. The Big Sleep. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1939Octavo. Original orange cloth lettered in blue, top edge blue. With the dust jacket. Housed in a blue quarter morocco solander box by the Chelsea Bindery. Light rubbing to extremities, slight dampstaining to bottom and fore edges of text block, faint tanning to endpapers, else bright and fresh. An excellent copy in a lightly rubbed jacket with very minor chipping and one small dampstain to rear panel.First edition, first printing, of Chandler’s first book.

[ 89888] £12,500

click on the images above to go direct to our website

CHANDLER, Raymond. Farewell My Lovely. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1940Octavo. Original salmon cloth, titles to board and spine in blue, top edge blue. With the dust jacket. Spine gently rolled, extremities a little rubbed. An excellent copy in a lightly rubbed and very slightly edge-chipped jacket with slight tanning to edges of flaps and the verso and light dampstaining to foot of spine panel.First edition, first printing, of Chandler’s second novel.

[ 89889] £4,250

CHANDLER, Raymond. The Little Sister. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1949Octavo. Original red cloth, spine lettered in gilt. With pictorial dust jacket. Dust jacket slightly rubbed at top of spine with a couple of very small chips, price-clipped, interior clean and bright, a very good copy.First edition, first impression. Precedes the first US edition.

[ 47 791] £2,250

CHANDLER, Raymond. The Simple Art of Murder. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1950Octavo. Original purple cloth, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket.   An excellent copy in the lightly rubbed jacket with some nicks and short splits repaired to the verso with tape. First book edition, first printing of the author’s influential essay on detective fiction, which was first published in the Atlantic Monthly in December 1944, along with a selection of his short stories.

[ 72868] £750

click on the images above to go direct to our website

CHESTERTON, G. K. The Incredulity of Father Brown. London: Cassell and Company, Ltd, 1926Octavo. Original black cloth, rule and titles to upper board and spine in red. With the pictorial dust jacket. Ownership inscription to front free endpaper, spotting to edges. An excellent copy in the bright dust jacket, lightly marked, and rubbed to the extremities.First edition, first impression.

[ 76338] £1,750

CHESTERTON, G. K. The Innocence of Father Brown. London, Cassell and Company, Ltd., 1911Octavo. Finely bound by The Chelsea Bindery in full red morocco, titles and decoration to spine gilt, rule to boards gilt, inner dentelles gilt, marbled endpapers, all

edges gilt. With eight full page illustrations by Sydney Seymour Lucas. A fine copy.First Edition, First Impression.

[ 29321] £1,375

CHESTERTON, G. K. The Napoleon of Notting Hill. With seven full-page illustrations by W. Graham Robertson and a Map of the Seat of War. London: The Bodley Head, 1904Octavo. Original green cloth, spine and front board lettered in black, vignettes blocked in red and black to spine and front board, top edge grey, others untrimmed. Frontispiece and 7 plates. Bookplate of Brian Fenwick Smith to front free endpaper. Spine rolled, cloth a little soiled, internally fine; an excellent copy.

First edition, first impression, of the author’s first novel, signed by him on the verso of the frontispiece. The book is a fantasy set in an alternative version of London, which the randomly selected king decides on a whim to divide into separate boroughs, each with their own customs and at war against each other, on the model of city states in Renaissance Italy. “Maisie Ward has said [of the novel’s two protagonists, King Auberon and the provost of Notting Hill] that they ‘are the most living individuals in any of his novels—just because they are the two lobes of his brain individualized’ (Ward, 1958 edn, 127). That is to say, they embody his opposed sides of profound gravity and exuberant fooling, which often united in a pun or an arresting paradox.” (ODNB).

[ 96845] £1,750

click on the images above to go direct to our website

CHRISTIE, Agatha. Death Comes As the End London: For the Crime Club by Collins, 1945Octavo. Original red cloth, titles to spine in black. With the dust jacket.    Ends of spine very slightly faded, a few spots to edges of text block. An excellent copy in the rubbed and nicked jacket with a few short splits and light spots.First edition, first impression.

[ 80743] £675

CHRISTIE, Agatha. The Hound of Death. And other stories. London: Odhams Press Limited, 1933Octavo. Original purple cloth, titles to spine in black. With the supplied dust jacket. Spine faded and rolled, covers unevenly faded, extremities faded, with spotting

to edges and some to margins of early and late leaves; a very good copy in the chipped and creased but overall bright dust jacket.First edition, first impression. Inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “Carlo, from Missus”. From the library of Charlotte (“Carlo”) Fisher (1895–1976), Christie’s secretary and early amanuensis with whom Christie wrote several major early titles. The method was described by Christie in her autobiography: “Charlotte and I sat down opposite each other, she with her notebook and pencil. I stared unhappily at the mantelpiece, and began uttering a few tentative sentences. They sounded dreadful. I could not say more than a word without hesitating and stopping. Nothing I said sounded natural. We persisted for an hour. Long afterwards Carlo told me that she herself had been dreading the moment when literary work should begin.” By this process Christie - or “Missus” as she was known to Fisher - would find

her authorial voice. During the difficult period of the breakdown of her first marriage, Fisher was Christie’s only friend and confidante. They remained close throughout their lives.[ 757 76] £3,500

CHRISTIE, Agatha. Sparkling CyanideLondon: For the Crime Club by Collins, 1945Octavo. Original red boards, titles to spine in black. With the dust jacket.    Small bookplate. Slight fading at ends of spine. An excellent copy in the rubbed and creased jacket with some nicks and fraying at the ends of the spine panel.First UK edition, first impression. Originally published in the US in the same year under the title Remembered Death.[ 80498] £750

click on the images above to go direct to our website

CHRISTIE, Agatha. Murder on the Orient Express. London: for The Crime Club by W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd, 1934Octavo. Original orange cloth, titles to spine and front board in black. Ownership signature to front free endpaper, Times Book Club ticket to rear pastedown. Spine gently rolled and a little faded, extremities faintly rubbed, one tiny waterstain to rear board, internally very crisp. An excellent copy.First edition, first impression.

[ 94811] £4,500

CHRISTIE, Agatha. The Mysterious Affair at Styles. London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1921Octavo. Finely bound by the Chelsea Bindery in blue morocco, titles to spine gilt, raised bands, single rule to boards gilt, inner dentelles gilt, marbled endpapers, gilt edges. A fine copy.First edition of Agatha Christie’s first book, rare.

[ 100708] £5,000

CHRISTIE, Agatha. Poirot Investigates. London: The Bodley Head, 1924Octavo. Original yellow cloth, titles and geometric border to spine and upper board in black, black top-stain. With the dust jacket. Housed in a red solander box by the Chelsea Bindery. 14 page publisher’s ads at rear. A stunning copy in the dust jacket with a single minor chip and some trivial further wear. Wonderful.First edition, first impression. A review copy with the publisher’s slip laid in. Copies of the earlier works of Agatha Christie are notoriously uncommon in dust jacket. The ones of Bodley Head vintage are each known in only tiny handfuls of examples. Indeed we know of just two or maybe three other copies of Poirot Investigates ever to have surfaced. All the more remarkable then that this copy is so beautifully preserved.

[ 7 7457] £75,000

CHRISTIE, Agatha.Crime Collection. London: Hamlyn, 197024 volumes, octavo. Recent tan morocco, crimson and green morocco labels, raised bands, single rule to boards, marbled endpapers, gilt edges. An excellent set.A complete set of this well known collected edition, with three stories per volume. It includes all published crime novels up to 1970.

[ 102627] £6,750

click on the image above to go direct to our website

click on the images above to go direct to our website

(CLARKE, Harry.) POE, Edgar Allan. Tales of Mystery & Imagination. London: George G. Harrap & Co., 1919Quarto (285 × 200 mm). Original vellum with titles and illustrations to front board and spine gilt, top edge gilt, others uncut. Frontispiece with tissue guard and 23 plates in black and white by Harry Clarke. Bookplate to front pastedown. Boards and spine lightly soiled, boards slightly bowed, and a little minor spotting to contents; an excellent copy.Signed limited edition, number 71 of 170 copies signed by the illustrator.

[ 99370] £2,750

COLLINS, Wilkie. The Woman in White. London: Samson Low, Son & Co., 18603 volumes, duodecimo (286 × 120 mm). Finely bound by J. Kelley in black half calf, spines with dark red morocco title labels and gilt with elaborately tooled fleurons, marbled sides, edges and endpapers. Bound without the advertisements. Small chip to the title label of volume 1 and also from the calf at the spine of volume 2; front hinge and lower joint of volume 3 respectively cracked and starting, marbled sides generally rubbed, some light spotting to early and late leaves. Still a very good set overall.First edition, first impression, of Collins’s landmark masterpiece of detective fiction.

[ 79730] £2,500

click on the image above to go direct to our website

COLLINS, Wilkie. The Works. New York: Peter Fenelon, [c.1890]30 volumes, octavo (183 × 114 mm). Recent dark blue morocco, titles and decoration to spines, raised bands, single rule to boards, marbled endpapers, top edges gilt, other edges sprinkled. Frontispiece portrait and further illustrations throughout. Some occasional light foxing, an excellent set.Only collected edition, rare, of the collected works of Wilkie Collins (1824-1889), novelist, playwright, friend and collaborator of Charles Dickens. A handsomely bound set.

[ 997 78] £8,500

click on the images above to go direct to our website

CONRAD, Joseph. Under Western Eyes. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1911Octavo. Original red linen-grain cloth, spine lettered and decorated in gilt. Custom red morocco-backed slipcase and chemise, spine lettered in gilt. Spine lightly faded, untrimmed edges of text-block a little spotted, an excellent copy.First edition, presentation copy to John Galsworthy and his wife, Ada, inscribed on the front free endpaper, “To Jack and Ada with love from J. C. 1911”. Conrad first met Galsworthy in 1893 on the sailing-ship Torrens. Galsworthy, bound for Cape Town, boarded the ship at Adelaide and encountered its first mate, the future novelist, angry and black with coal dust; the two writers became lifelong friends. Under Western Eyes is the last book in the astonishing sequence of novels that constituted

Conrad’s major phase, beginning with The Nigger of the “Narcissus” (1897), taking in Lord Jim, Youth, Typhoon, Nostromo, The Secret Agent, and “The Secret Sharer”. “With Under Western Eyes he even dared to challenge (and arguably surpassed) Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment” (ODNB).

[ 48397] £17,500

CORBETT, James. Death—by Appointment. London: Herbert Jenkins, [1945]Octavo. Original red cloth, titles to spine black. With the dust jacket. Spine gently rolled; an excellent, bright copy in the jacket with rubbed extremities.First edition, first impression one of Corbett’s later mysteries.

[ 108245] £75

click on the images above to go direct to our website

CORNWELL, Patricia. Complete set of the Kay Scarpetta series.Postmortem; Body of Evidence; All That Remains; Cruel and Unusual; The Body Farm; From Potter’s Field; Cause of Death; Unnatural Exposure; Point of Origin; Black Notice; The Last Precinct; Blow Fly; Trace; Predator; Book of the Dead; Scarpetta; The Scarpetta Factor; Port Mortuary; [together with] Food to Die For: Secrets from Kay Scarpetta’s Kitchen. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, (and Putnams), 1990–201019 volumes, octavo and quarto. Original cloth backed boards. With the dust jackets. One title a trifle shaken, a few corners lightly bumped, some minuscule rubbing to one or two dust jackets but an absolutely exceptional set in the jackets - all entirely unread and remarkably fresh.

First editions, first printings. Each copy signed on the title page by the author. The Cornwell/Scarpetta bookplate is loosely inserted into the first title. Also included with this set is a 14 karat gold Scarpetta lapel pin. This set includes the cook book and all 18 Scarpetta novels published up to 2010.

[ 62710] £5,000

CORNWELL, Patricia. Postmortem. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1990Octavo. Original red boards, black cloth backstrip, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. A fine copy in the jacket.First edition, first printing.

[ 74281] £750

click on the images above to go direct to our website

[BERKELEY, Anthony] COX, A. B. Jugged Journalism. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1925Octavo. Original green cloth, title to boards and spine in black. With the pictorial dust jacket. With 32 illustrations by George Morrow. Mild partial browning to the endpapers, spine just leaning a little but an excellent copy in the slightly nicked and tanned dust jacket.First edition, first impression. Anthony Berkeley Cox wrote numerous and particularly highly regarded works of detective fiction under two pen names: as Anthony Berkeley, he took the British Golden Age detective novel to fresh heights, while as Francis Iles, he was a pioneer of psychological suspense fiction with a seasoning of cynical wit. The pieces gathered together here are examples of his journalistic side. Largely

they are concerned with the writing of mystery and detective fiction.

[ 31316] £500

CRISPIN, Edmund. Buried for Pleasure. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1948Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. Bookseller’s ticket to front pastedown. Spine rolled, lightly rubbed at extremities. An excellent copy in the rubbed and tanned jacket with small chips from the corners.First edition, first impression.

[ 70333] £225

CRISPIN, Edmund. The Case of the Gilded Fly. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1944Octavo. Original green cloth, gilt lettered spine (rubbed to white). With the dust jacket.   Spine of jacket toned and a little rubbed, internally a hint of foxing otherwise an excellent copy.First edition, first impression of the author’s debut novel, written when he was still an undergraduate, and introducing eccentric amateur sleuth Gervase Fen. “Crispin’s work is marked by a highly individual sense of light comedy, and by a great flair for verbal deception rather in the Christie manner” (Julian Symonds, Bloody Murder, From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel: A History, 1973, p. 152).

[ 98278] £975

click on the images above to go direct to our website

[MONTGOMERY, Bruce; as] CRISPIN, Edmund (pseud.) Holy Disorders. London: Victor Gollancz, Ltd., 1945Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. Spine lettering a little dull but an unusually nice copy in the rather tanned dust jacket.First edition, first impression. The author’s second novel.

[ 36170] £460

CROFTS, Freeman Wills. The End of Andrew Harrison. London: Hodder and Stoughton Limited, 1938Octavo. Original blue cloth, spine and front board lettered in black, blue endpapers. With the dust jacket. Housed in a custom brown cloth solander box with a

gilt-lettered brown morocco spine-label. Bookplate of Lawrence Solomon, noted American physician and collector of detective fiction, to solander box front panel verso. Printed sheet of borrowing rules for Hays’ Circulating Library of Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania (150 × 100 mm) laid in within taped acetate jacket; library bequest plate to front pastedown. Spine gently rolled and sunned, corners very faintly rubbed, contents slightly toned, small portion of damp-staining to rear free endpaper. An excellent copy in the dust jacket slightly nicked on the spine and a touch rubbed along the joints.First edition, first impression. An Inspector French mystery, published in the US as The Futile Alibi later the same year. Scarce in the dust jacket. The bequest plate, dated August 1938, identifies the donor as Mrs Cole Porter and the institution as the public library at Dark Harbor, Maine, though neither the composer nor his wife Linda Lee Thomas appears to have had any connection with the area.

[ 107919] £975

DEIGHTON, Len. The IPCRESS File. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1962Octavo. Original orange boards, spine lettered in gilt. With the dust jacket. Small spot to top edge, head of spine very lightly bumped, margins of free endpapers tanned. An exceptionally bright copy in the dust jacket with very gentle toning along the spine.First edition, first impression of Deighton’s first book, one of 4,000 copies printed. Raymond Hawkey’s striking dust jacket, much admired by Deighton himself, “went against the prejudice of the book trade at the time in that it was monochromatic, used discreet typography and a photographic rather than a drawn illustration”. Jackets carrying no reviews such as the present example are often referred to as being in the first state, though Milward-Oliver makes no mention of this.

[ 107043] £1,500

click on the images above to go direct to our website

DOYLE, Arthur Conan. The White Company.In three volumes. London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 18913 volumes, crown octavo. Original red-brown cloth, front covers with black rule and bands at head and tail and titled black, spines with bands and rules in black and lettered gilt, grey floral endpapers. Housed in a burgundy cloth slipcase with ribbon by the Chelsea Bindery. Sporadic occurrences of scattered light foxing, vol. II’s spine lightly vertically creased, still a very good copy, the cloth bright and fresh.First edition in book form, one of 750 copies issued of Doyle’s medieval romance, “a remarkable piece of research on fourteenth-century English mercenary warfare in France and Spain” (ODNB).

[ 37588] £4,500

DU MAURIER, Daphne. Rebecca. London: Victor Gollancz Limited, 1938Finely bound by The Chelsea Bindery in dark green morocco, titles and decoration to spine, raised bands, single rule to boards, twin rule to turn-ins, burgundy endpapers, gilt edges.   A fine copy.First edition, first impression.

[ 7 7 756] £1,375

DUKE, Winifred. Skin for Skin. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1935Octavo. Original black cloth, spine lettered in green. With the dust jacket. Edges and endpapers foxed. An excellent coy in the bright dust jacket with a sunned spine and two short closed tears to the rear panel.First edition, first impression, the Gollancz archive copy with their ink-stamp to the front panel of the dust jacket and to the front pastedown. A scarce work of detective fiction, incorporating elements of true crime, scarce with just nine copies in libraries worldwide, and exceedingly hard to find in anything approaching this condition.

[ 106665] £225

click on the images above to go direct to our website

ECO, Umberto. The Name of the Rose.Translated from the Italian by William Weaver. London: Secker and Warburg, 1983Octavo. Original light brown boards with natural linen spine, decoration to front cover and titles to spine in bronze. With the dust jacket. Light rubbing to foot of spine, dust jacket lightly faded to spine.First UK edition, first impression. Eco’s first novel.

[ 68142] £375

ELLIS, Bret Easton. American Psycho. London: Picador, 1991 Octavo. Original black cloth backed black boards, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. An excellent copy with mild sunning to spine.First UK edition, first printing. This is the first hardback edition of the title, originally published in the US as a paperback in 1991.

[ 104621] £650

FREEMAN, R. Austin. The Singing Bone. London: Hodder & Stoughton, [1912]Octavo. Original burgundy cloth, titles to spine gilt and to front board in black. Cloth rubbed, dulled, and bumped at extremities, some faint marks to cloth, spine faded, faint marginal toning to contents. A very good copy.First edition, first impression, the first state of the text with the misprinted quotation marks on the title page and the second state of the binding, with black lettering rather than gilt. Presentation copy inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “Best wishes to R. C. Barrington Partridge from R. Austin Freeman”. Freeman was a pioneer of the inverted detective story, in which the identity of the killer is known from the beginning, and four of the five stories collected in this volume are constructed in such a manner.

[ 80915] £625

click on the images above to go direct to our website

[ROWLING, J. K.] GALBRAITH, Robert. The Cuckoo’s Calling. London: Sphere, 2013Octavo. Original dark blue boards, titles to spine gilt. With the illustrated dust jacket. A fine copy.First edition, first impression of Rowling’s first pseudonymous novel, and signed on the title page as Galbraith. The first printing of the first edition ran to at least 1,500 copies, with a cover which features a quote from Val McDermid, while the back cover has quotes from Mark Billingham and Alex Gray. The copyright page does not have a number line but simply states “First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Sphere”.It is thought that Rowling signed 250 copies of the first edition for promotional purposes before the secret of her authorship was revealed, some three months after publication.

[ 101927] £3,000

GARDNER, Erle Stanley. The Case of the Horrified Heirs. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1964Octavo. Original red boards, titles to spine and front board in black. With the pictorial dust jacket. Housed in a black morocco-backed solander box with a facsimile of the front panel of the dust jacket pasted on the front cover. Spine a little sunned at head and tail, head lightly crumpled, very faint white mark to lower joint of front board, light dampstain to lower gutter of endpapers. An excellent copy in a slightly edge-chipped and rippled jacket with faint dampstaining to the verso.First edition, certified first copy to be printed. Dedication copy inscribed by the author to his close friend, scientist John Glaister on the front free endpaper: “To my friend, John Glaister, D. Sc., M.D., F.R.S.E., this first copy ever to come from the printers and binders (see certificate on the following page). With all good wishes, yours, Erle Stanley Gardner, September 1964”. Professor

John Glaister (1892-1971), whose achievements as a forensic scientist are the object of a two-paragraph hommage at the end of the Foreword, succeeded his father in the Regius Chair of Forensic Science at the University of Glasgow and was well-known for his dramatic appearances at court as an expert witness. As attested by the certificate mentioned by Gardner this copy was the very first to roll off the press.[ 91710] £3,500

GARDNER, Erle Stanley. The Case of the Stuttering Bishop. New York: William Morrow and Company 1936Octavo. Original black cloth, spine and front board lettered in red, top edge red, fore edge untrimmed. With the dust jacket. Spine gently rolled, edges toned and slightly spotted. An excellent copy in the price-clipped, toned and rubbed dust jacket slightly chipped at spine-ends.First edition, first printing.

[ 107114] £375

click on the images above to go direct to our website

GREEN, Anna Katherine. The Filigree Ball: Being a Full and True Account of the Solution of the Mystery Concerning the Jeffrey-Moore Affair. Illustrated by C. M. Relyea. Indianapolis, IN: The Bobs-Merrill Company, 1903Octavo. Original green cloth, titles to spine gilt, titles and pictorial design to upper board in red and gilt. Spine rolled and toned, cloth a little rubbed at extremities, rear hinge cracked, occasional faint spotting in margins of contents. An excellent copy.First edition, first printing. Inscribed by the author to American First Lady Edith Roosevelt on the front free endpaper, “Mrs. Roosevelt, Compliments of Anna K. Green Rohlfs. March 23rd 1903”. Additionally inscribed by Mrs. Roosevelt to her son on the front pastedown, “For Kermit from Mother”. Anna Katherine Green’s first novel, The Leavenworth Case, was the first American detective novel and the first detective fiction

written by a woman – “one of the true historical milestones of the genre” (Haycroft, Murder for Pleasure, page 93). Uncommon inscribed.

[ 83721] £1,500

GRISHAM, John. A Time to Kill. New York: Wynwood Press, 1989Octavo. Original orange boards with burgundy cloth spine, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. Near fine in near fine dust jacket, price clipped.First edition, first impression.[ 37695] £1,400

HAMMETT, Dashiell. [A set of 12 works of Hammet’s collected short fiction:]$106,000 Blood Money; The Adventures of Sam Spade;

The Continental Op; Return of the Continental Op; Hammett Homicides; Dead Yellow Women; Nightmare Town; The Big Knock-Over; They Can Only Hang You Once; Creeping Siamese; Women in the Dark; A Man Named Thin. New York: Lawrence E. Spivak; Joseph W. Ferman, 1943–6212 works, octavo. Original coloured wrappers. Housed in a blue slipcase edged with black morocco. Contents toned, a little rubbing to extremities and some very minor wear to spine ends; an excellent set in the bright wrappers.First editions, first printings, as well as the reissues of the first two volumes in the series: The Big Knock-Over (reissue of $106,000 Blood Money), and They Can Only Hang You Once (reissue of The Adventures of Sam Spade). A lovely set of Hammett’s first twelve books of collected short fiction.

[ 94 424] £3,250

click on the image above to go direct to our website

HAMMETT, Dashiell. The Maltese Falcon. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930Octavo. Original grey cloth, falcon motif to upper board in blue, titles and geometric design to spine in black and blue, top edge stained blue. With the pictorial dust jacket. Housed in a black quarter morocco solander box. Hollywood bookseller’s ticket to front pastedown, a superb copy in the very lightly tanned and marked dust jacket with very minor loss at the tips. In common with all issued copies the jacket is price-clipped by the publishers who apparently revised the price at the time of publication. Only a couple of examples of unclipped jacket are extant both would seem to be file or proof copies.First edition, first printing. An exceptionally nice copy of one of the greatest thrillers ever written.

[ 80717] £60,000

click on the images above to go direct to our website

HAMMETT, Dashiell, ed. Modern Tales of Horror. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1932Octavo. Original black cloth, titles to spine in orange. With the dust jacket. Cloth a little mottled, spotting to edges of text block, contents tanned. A very good copy in the rubbed and partially tanned jacket with some nicks and short splits and a small chip from the head of the spine panel.First UK edition, first impression, originally published in the US under the title Creeps By Night. Uncommon in the dust jacket. This volume, edited and with an introduction by Dashiell Hammett, collects eighteen stories including “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, “The House” by André Maurois, and “Mr. Arcularis” by Conrad Aiken, “The Music of Erich Zann” by H. P. Lovecraft.

[ 86452] £875

HEPPENSTALL, Rayner, & Michael Innes. Three Tales of Hamlet. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1950Octavo. Original orange cloth, titles to spine in black. With the dust jacket. Very lightly rubbed at bottom edges and tail of spine. An excellent copy in a faintly rubbed jacket.First edition, first impression, of the authors’ three short pieces original written as radio plays and intended to “solve the Hamlet problem in orthodox detective fashion” (front flat blurb).

[ 89897] £175

HIGHSMITH, Patricia. The Talented Mr Ripley. New York: Coward-McCann, 1955Octavo. Original black cloth, titles to spine in green. With the dust jacket. Spine ends and corners slightly rubbed and bumped, rear board gently bowed. An excellent copy in a bright jacket with lightly sunned spine panel and a few minor nicks.First edition, first printing of the first Ripley book.

[ 103849] £2,500

click on the images above to go direct to our website

[BERKELEY, Anthony; as] ILES, Francis. Before the Fact. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1932Octavo. Original black cloth, titles to spine in green. With the dust jacket. A few very faint marks to cloth, mild partial tanning to endpapers. An excellent copy in the spine-tanned and dust soiled but remarkably intact jacket with two very small sections of loss from the top edge (one 3×65mm and one 2×40mm) and otherwise only very light rubbing to ends and corners.First edition, first impression; rare in the jacket, which prints Gollancz’s sensational list of the possible identities of “Francis Iles”, including: E. M. Forster, R. Austin Freeman, Patrick Hamilton, Aldous Huxley, Mrs. Belloc Lowndes, Eden Phillpotts, Osbert Sitwell, Hugh Walpole and H. G. Wells.

[ 86219] £7,500

[BERKELEY, Anthony; as] ILES, Francis. Malice Aforethought.The Story of a Commonplace Crime. London: Mundanus Ltd, Victor Gollancz Publisher, 1931Octavo. Original orange cloth, titles to spine in black. With the dust jacket. Sine somewhat rolled, very faint fading along top edge of boards, spotting to edges but internally clean; an excellent copy in the mildly spine-tanned jacket with very faint dust-soiling, some creasing, and small chips to ends and corners.First edition, first impression; the rare hardback issue (shortly after, but much scarcer than, the paperback issue of the same year). Dennis Wheatley’s copy, with his illustrated bookplate to the front pastedown.

[ 86220] £6,250

INNES, Michael. Death at the President’s Lodging. London: Gollancz, 1936Octavo. Original black cloth, titles to spine in red. With the dust jacket. Some trivial spotting to the fore edge, spine cocked but an excellent copy in the little tanned and faded dust jacket with a few short tears and a little chip at the foot of the spine panel.First edition, first impression. of Innes’s landmark first detective novel which introduced his long serving detective John Appleby.

[ 62085] £3,250

click on the images above to go direct to our website

JAMES, P. D. Cover Her Face. London, Faber and Faber, 1962Octavo. Finely bound by The Chelsea Bindery in royal blue morocco, titles and decoration to spine, raised bands, single rule to boards, inner dentelles, marbled endpapers, gilt edges. A fine copy.First edition, first impression. The author’s scarce first book, introducing Detective Inspector Dalgliesh.

[ 60586] £1,650

JAMES, P. D. Innocent Blood. London: Faber and Faber, 1980Octavo. Original red boards, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. Contents a little toned. An excellent copy in the jacket.First edition, first impression. Inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “to Daphne from Phyllis with love. P. D. James”. Daphne was the wife of George Spicer, Faber’s chief representative for the South of England and a stalwart of the company for many years.

[ 69587] £500

(KELMSCOTT PRESS.) SWINBURNE, Algernon Charles. Atalanta in Calydon:A Tragedy. Hammersmith: Kelmscott Press, 1894

Quarto. Original limp vellum, title to spine gilt, silk ties (broken). Printed in red and black with elaborate woodcut title page and woodcut initials and borders throughout. Bookplate of the celebrated book collector William Harris Arnold. Lightly rubbed, a very good copy.One of 250 copies on paper. Swinburne was a warm admirer of the Kelmscott Press books. “When Atalanta (which was first published in 1865) was reprinted by Morris, Swinburne wrote to him that it was ‘certainly one of the loveliest examples of even your incomparable press’” (quoted in Peterson). The Greek type used for the quotations and dedicatory poems was designed by Selwyn Image, with the technical assistance of Emery Walker, the only instance in the Kelmscott Press books of Morris using a type not designed by himself.

[ 82368] £3,750

click on the images above to go direct to our website

LE CARRÉ, John. The Looking-Glass War. London: Heinemann, 1965Octavo. Original black cloth boards, titles to spine in silver. With the dust jacket. Spine bumped, owner’s name to front free endpaper, dust jacket faded to spine, nicked and torn to corners. First edition, first impression. Inscribed on the title page by the author “For Gwen Davis, with my warmest wishes, John Le Carré 13 ii 99, London.”

[ 79370] £500

LE CARRÉ, John. A Perfect Spy. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1986Octavo. Original blue cloth-backed blue boards, titles to spine gilt, red endpapers. With the dust jacket. A fine copy.First edition, first impression. Presentation copy inscribed on the dedication page from the dedicatee of the book: “To R. with love from R. (as above).” A Perfect Spy is le Carré’s most autobiographical book. As the author himself has admitted, a large part of the novel is a thinly disguised account of his own early life.

[ 107030] £150

LE CARRÉ, John. Smiley’s People. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1980Octavo. Original cream wrappers, titles to front cover black. With the trial dust jacket. Spine rolled, contents toned. A very good copy in the rubbed wrappers and slightly faded jacket.Uncorrected proof copy. The final novel of the Karla trilogy, following Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy.

[ 101700] £500

click on the images above to go direct to our website

LE CARRÉ, John. The Spy Who Came In From the Cold. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1963Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine gilt. With the dust jacket. Small patch of fading to head of spine, a little spotting to edges of text block, internally clean. An excellent copy in the bright jacket with a hint of rubbing to extremities. First edition, first impression of Le Carré’s third book. The definitive Cold War novel, it won Le Carré the 1964 Somerset Maugham Award and secured his reputation as a master of the spy thriller.

[ 108225] £2,250

LEROUX, Gaston. The Phantom of the Opera. London: Mills and Boon Limited, 1911Octavo. Finely bound by the Chelsea Bindery in black morocco, onlay of a mask to front board, title to spine in silver, black marbled endpapers, silver edges. Housed in a black flat cloth solander box by The Chelsea Bindery with the spine lettered in silver. An excellent copy.First UK edition, first printing in English of this mystery thriller which formed the basis for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical and several film adaptations. In his day Leroux was considered “the foremost of the modern French writers of detective fiction.”

[ 93931] £3,750

LOWNDES, Mrs. Belloc. The Lodger. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1913Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine and front board gilt. Spine rolled and toned, extremities rubbed, bottom corner of rear board bumped, a few scattered spots to endleaves and endpapers. An excellent copy.First edition, first impression. Mary Belloc Lowndes’s classic novel, which tells the story of a couple in 1880s London who suspect that their lodger is Jack The Ripper, has long been ranked amongst the finest of detective fiction, earning it several stage and screen adaptations, most famously by Alfred Hitchcock in 1927.

[ 92881] £875

click on the images above to go direct to our website

MACDONALD, Philip. The Link. London: W. Collins Sons & Co Ltd 1930Octavo. Original blue cloth, titles to spine and front board in black. In the dust jacket supplied from the second edition. Ownership inscription to front free endpaper. Spine gently rolled, faint finger-marks to front board, edges slightly foxed, very mild spotting to endleaves. A very good copy in the toned dust jacket. First edition, first impression. A detective story, published under the Crime Club imprint.

[ 97290] £125

MARSH, Ngaio. Black Beech and Honeydew. An Autobiography. London: Collins, 1966Octavo. Original green cloth, titles to spine gilt, brown endpapers. With the dust jacket. With 13 photographic illustrations. An excellent copy in a jacket with a few tiny chips at tips of spine panel and minor silverfish damage to flap folds.First edition, first impression. Inscribed by the author to Australian broadcaster Gerald Lyons on the front flyleaf: “For Gerald Lyons, from Ngaio Marsh”. Lyons interviewed Marsh for Australian television while the author was promoting her autobiography. Laid in are his notes for the interview, typed on four leaves.

[ 104289] £225

[FREEMAN, Kathleen.] Mary Fitt. Death Starts a Rumour. London: Nicholson and Watson, 1940Octavo. Original blue cloth, spine lettered in black. With the dust jacket. Small portion of pale mottling to head of spine, narrow strip of tanning along bottom edges of boards, light spotting to top edge of text-block. A very good copy in the slightly toned and rubbed jacket with a few small nicks.First edition, first impression. Kathleen Freeman was a classical scholar who used the pseudonym Mary Fitt for her Inspector Mallet series of detective novels; she also wrote fiction under the names Stuart Mary Wick, Clare St. Donat and Caroline Cory while retaining her own name for her academic publications.

[ 10724 4] £475

click on the images above to go direct to our website

MITCHELL, Gladys. Dead Men’s Morris. A Detective Story. London: Michael Joseph Ltd, 1936Octavo. Original red cloth, titles to spine silver, yellow patterned endpapers. With the dust jacket. Spine rolled, edges lightly foxed; an excellent, bright copy in the superb, unclipped jacket, slightly nicked and with sunned spine.First edition, first impression of one of Mitchell’s earlier books, with the jacket in exceptionally good condition.

[ 99248] £3,750

(NABOKOV, Vladimir.) NABOKOFF-SIRIN, Vladimir. Despair. Translated from the Russian by the author. London: John Long, Limited, 1937

Octavo. Original black cloth, titles to upper board and spine gilt. With the pictorial dust jacket. Housed in a quarter morocco black solander box by the Chelsea Bindery. Endpapers somewhat browned, spine very gently rolled but an excellent copy in the frayed and rubbed dust jacket with loss at the ends of the spine panel and a small triangular chip from the centre of the spine panel. With some neat professional repair to the folds.First UK edition, first impression, first issue in the black cloth. Nabokov’s second English publication was put out by the small imprint John Long who specialized in unconventional, quirky books, especially mystery, fantasy, and crime novels. They had previously published Nabokov’s Camera Obscura with very little success and fared no better with this. Both titles were remaindered in cheaper bindings and copies of either in dust jacket are rare. Of Despair there are thought to be a mere handful. With the ownership signature of Karin de Laval, dated 1937. Laval was a Swedish writer

who notably translated works by Tolstoy, Moravia, and others. There are very light pencil annotations to one page which would appear to be explication of idiomatic phrases.

[ 76068] £15,000

NEWMAN, Bernard. Second Front-First Spy. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1944Octavo. Original blue cloth. With the dust jacket. In the dust jacket with fading to the spine. A very good copy. First edition, first impression.[ 108639] £65

click on the images above to go direct to our website

PHILLPOTTS, Eden. My Adventure in The Flying Scotsman. A Romance of London and North-Western Railway Shares. London: James Hogg and Sons, 1888Small octavo. Printed wraps laid down on card boards, as issued. Housed in a brown cloth folding case. Covers lightly rubbed and soiled, half title and rear endpapers tanned. A relatively sound copy in good condition.First edition, first impression, of the author’s scarce first book. Queen’s Quorum 13 says; “In 1888, Eden Phillpotts’s first book marked the beginning of one of the most prolific writing careers of our time. . . the cornerstone honour should be accorded to Mr. Phillpott’s maiden mystery, the thin, fragile book with the ‘rainbow’ stamping which is seldom found even in the so-called complete collections of Eden Phillpott’s work. Modern readers will undoubtedly agree that MY ADVENTURES IN THE FLYING SCOTSMAN is an old fashioned

tale of theft and attempted murder, relying a bit too strongly on the long arm of coincidence, but peopled with richly Victorian characters caught in the fell clutch of melodramatic circumstance.”

[ 79769] £1,500

QUEEN, Ellery [pseud. of Frederic Dannay & Manfred Bennington Lee]. The Roman Hat Mystery. New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1929Octavo. Original red cloth, titles to upper board and spine in black. With the dust jacket. Housed in a red quarter morocco solander box by the Chelsea Bindery. Ownership inscription to front pastedown but a superb copy in the dust jacket.First edition, first printing of the authors’ first book. Of all the first books by American golden age crime writers (Stout, Carr, Gardner, Chandler, Hammett, etc.), this has been, in

common experience, the scarcest. We have handled just one other copy in a slightly defective dust jacket. This example is the best we know. A Haycraft Queen Cornerstone.

[ 95260] £22,500

QUEEN, Ellery [pseud. of Frederic Dannay & Manfred Bennington Lee]. Ellery Queen Omnibus. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1934Octavo. Original black cloth, spine lettered in red. With the dust jacket. Slightly foxed to edges, a superb copy jacket that has a sunned spine.First UK edition, first impression of this collection of detective stories. First published in the US in 1930. The publisher’s retained copy with their stamp to the front panel of the dust jacket, the front pastedown and the front free endpaper.[ 93717] £475

click on the images above to go direct to our website

QUEEN, Ellery [pseud. of Frederic Dannay & Manfred Bennington Lee]. The Dragon’s Teeth. A problem in deduction. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1939Octavo. Original black cloth, spine lettered in red. With the dust jacket. An excellent copy in the jacket with a sunned spine. First UK edition, first impression of this mystery novel featuring Ellery Queen. First published in the US earlier the same year, and reissued in 1954 under the title The Virgin Heiresses. The publisher’s retained copy with their stamp to the title page. [ 93713] £375

QUEEN, Ellery [pseud. of Frederic Dannay & Manfred Bennington Lee]. The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1944Octavo. Original black cloth, titles to spine and upper board in black on red ground, top edge dyed red. With the dust jacket. Frontispiece. Just a little rubbed and faded at the extremities, upper corner bumped, partial toning to free endpapers. An excellent, fresh copy in the lightly rubbed jacket with a few tiny nicks and toning to the spine panel and lower panel.First edition, first printing. A collection of thirty-three stories about Sherlock Holmes written by writers other than Conan Doyle. The contributors include Vincent Starrett, Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, J. M. Barrie, Mark Twain, and O. Henry.

[ 88943] £750

[COOK, Robert William Arthur.] RAYMOND, Derek. He Died With His Eyes Open. London: Secker & Warburg, 1984Octavo. Original black cloth, titles to spine gilt. With the price-clipped dust jacket. Contents lightly toned. An excellent copy in the jacket with mild rippling to lamination, a contemporary price sticker to the front flap and faint foxing to edges of flaps.First edition, first impression, of the author’s first novel in the Factory series. The Factory novels are narrated by an unnamed sergeant detective working for the Factory, a fictional branch of the London Metropolitan Police, which investigates crimes deemed too lowly for Scotland Yard. Raymond Derek (1931–1994), who also wrote under the name Robin Cook, is generally considered as one of the fathers of British noir fiction.

[ 88971] £375

click on the image above to go direct to our website

REEVE, Arthur B. The Exploits of Elaine. A Detective Novel. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1915Octavo. Original red cloth, titles to spine in black, publisher’s logo and stripes to spine and upper board in blind. With the dust jacket. Cloth bright, contents tanned. An excellent copy in the lightly rubbed and nicked jacket with a few short closed tears.First UK edition, first impression. Originally published in the US in the same year. This was one of a series of novels (including The Forty-Nine Steps) that were formatted to fit into the breast pockets of British soldiers’ uniforms. A rare book in dust jacket.

[ 73108] £2,750

click on the images above to go direct to our website

SAYERS, Dorothy L. Whose Body? London: T. Fisher Unwin Ltd., 1923Octavo. Original purple cloth, titles to spine and upper board in black. Cloth tanned and rubbed, with dampstain and loss of size, and a circular ring to the cover, spine rolled, spotting to edges of text block and scattered through contents. A good copy.First UK edition, first impression of Sayer’s first detective novel, in which she introduces Lord Peter Wimsey. Preceded only by the US edition published in the same year. A fantastically uncommon edition.

[ 78761] £1,250

SAYERS, Dorothy L. The Five Red Herrings. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1931Octavo. Original red cloth, spine lettered in black, map endpapers. An excellent copy, with a little foxing to edges.First edition, first impression of this Lord Peter Wimsey detective story. It was retitled Suspicious Characters for its publication in the US later the same year, but reverted to the original title in subsequent printings. From the publisher’s archive.

[ 93732] £750

SAYERS, Dorothy L. Unnatural Death. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1935Octavo. Original red cloth, spine lettered in black. With the dust jacket.    Neat ownership inscription on front free endpaper, spine slightly rolled and lightly sunned, a few nicks and chips at head, otherwise a very good copy.First Gollancz edition, with “some corrections and amendments from Miss Sayers [and adding] for a Preface a short biography of Lord Peter Wimsey, brought up to date (May 1935) and communicated by his uncle Paul Austin Delagardie” (publisher’s note). Sayers’s third book, Unnatural Death was originally published in 1927 by Ernest Benn.

[ 109061] £375

click on the images above to go direct to our website

STATHAM, S. M. Hephzibah. London: Arthur H. Stockwell, [1922]Octavo. Original red cloth, titles to spine and upper board in black. With the dust jacket. Two small white spots to lower joint, light partial tanning to free endpapers, spotting to edges of contents. An excellent copy in the lightly rubbed and nicked jacket with closed tears to the folds repaired with tape to the verso.First edition, first impression. An uncommon detective novel set in Jewish London during the golden age of crime fiction, in lovely condition with the attractive dust jacket. Not in Hubin or Locke.[ 72910] £375

[STEWART, Alfred Walter.] J. J. Connington. The Two Tickets Puzzle.

London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1930Octavo. Original black cloth, spine lettered in red. With the dust jacket. Edges and endpapers slightly foxed; an excellent copy in the slightly soiled jacket that has sunned spine and edges, and a few nicks to extremities.First edition, first impression. A detective story, published in the US later the same year under the title The Two Ticket Puzzle. The publisher’s retained copy with their ink stamp to the title page.

[ 93596] £1,750

WALLACE, Edgar. The Four Just Men. London: Tallis Press, 1905Octavo. Original orange cloth, titles to spine and upper board in black. Bookseller’s blind stamp to front free

endpaper. Cloth very slightly rubbed at the tips, some spotting to endpapers and early leaves and occasional small spots to margins of contents thereafter, as often. A lovely, bright copy in excellent condition with the competition slip intact.First edition, first impression. This famous piece of detective fiction is notable for being an early example of interactive media, as the identity of the murderer was withheld pending the result of the competition between readers to solve the mystery. Cash prizes were on offer totalling the huge sum of £500. By some accounts the mystery was no such thing and the publishers were inundated with correct entries and disappointed customers. A particularly beautiful copy with the mail-in slip intact and still attached to its stub at the back of the book.

[ 804 40] £750

click on the images above to go direct to our website

WHITECHURCH, Victor L. Murder at the College. London: The Crime Club Ltd, W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd, [1932]Octavo. Original red cloth, titles to spine and front board in black. With the pictorial reminder issue dust jacket. Spine a touch rolled, pastedowns, occasional ligth foxing, chiefly to pastedowns, prelims and edges of text block, cloth bright and fresh. A very good copy in the very lightly rubbed jacket.First edition, first impression.

[ 89373] £375

WILLS CROFTS, Freeman. The End of Andrew Harrison The London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1938Octavo. Original blue cloth, spine and front board lettered in black, blue endpapers. With the dust jacket. Housed in a custom brown cloth solander box with a gilt-lettered brown morocco spine-label.    Bookplate of Lawrence Solomon, noted American physician and collector of detective fiction, to solander box front panel verso. Printed sheet of borrowing rules for Hays’ Circulating Library of Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania (150 × 100 mm) laid in within taped acetate jacket; library bequest plate to front pastedown. Spine gently rolled and sunned, corners very faintly rubbed, contents slightly toned, small portion of damp-staining to rear free endpaper. An excellent copy in the dust jacket slightly nicked on the spine and a touch rubbed along the joints.

First edition, first impression. An Inspector French mystery, published in the US as The

Futile Alibi later the same year. Scarce in the dust jacket. The bequest plate, dated August 1938, identifies the donor as Mrs Cole Porter and the institution as the public library at Dark Harbor, Maine, though neither the composer nor his wife Linda Lee Thomas appears to have had any connection with the area.

[ 107919] £975

WOOLRICH, Cornell. Black Alibi. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1942Octavo. Original black cloth, titles to spine gilt, red top-stain. A fine copy in the price-clipped jacket.First edition, first printing of the book that was filmed as “The Leopard Man” in 1943.[ 50811] £2,400