Softcover. New York, Pocket Book, 6th, 1945, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 203 pages. Paperback. Pocket Book #263. Light soil to rear wrapper, spine creasing and fading. Rear wrapper abrasion to first layer of paper wrapper.
Softcover. New York, Dell Publishing, 1st, 1963, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 192 pages. Paperback. Dell Book #5932. Minor wear to paper wrappers. Cover art by Robert McGinnis.
Softcover. New York, Dell Publishing, 1st, 1947, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 192 pages. Paperback. Dell Book #168. Minor wear to paper wrappers. Cover art by Gerald Gregg. Light crease and fade to spine and front cover. Map on back.
Softcover. New York, Dell Publishing, 1st, 1955, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 223 pages. Paperback. Dell Book #833. Minor wear to paper wrappers. Light crease to front cover. First page partially separated.
Softcover. New York, Dell Publishing, 1st, 1961, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 192 pages. Paperback. Dell Book #B191. Minor wear to paper wrappers. Creasing to covers and spine. Cover art by robert McGinnis.
Softcover. New York, Dell Publishing, 1st, 1944, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 192 pages. Paperback. Dell Book #104. Minor wear to paper wrappers. Creasing to covers and spine. Frot wrapper is separated from spine. Pencil notation to first page.
Hardcover. NY, HarperCollins, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR to fellow mystery author Barry Estabrook on title page. Author's first book, a mystery introducing Long Island detective Joe LaLuna, a "great cop who has hit a bad spot." And then he discovers that the wealthy husband of his former high school sweetheart has been murdered - and she is the most likely suspect. Clean copy
Hardcover. NY, Charles Scribner's Sons, reprint, 1929, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, frontis. with tissue guard., 277 pages. Original blind decorated black cloth with embossed illustration to front board. A mystery novel by the author of The Phantom of the Opera, one of the first in the 'locked room' sub-genre, first published in 1908 by Daily Mail (UK) and Brentano's (US) (Adey [Locked Room Murders] 1201). It has been adapted to film several times. The S.S. Van Dine Detective Library edition. Name and address on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
Softcover. NY, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, reprint, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 244 pages. Tough, hard-boiled, and brilliantly suspenseful, The Last Good Kiss is an unforgettable detective story starring C. W. Sughrue, a Montana investigator who kills time by working at a topless bar. Hired to track down a derelict author, he ends up on the trail of a girl missing in Haight-Ashbury for a decade. The tense hunt becomes obsessive as Sughrue takes a haunting journey through the underbelly of America's sleaziest nightmares. aclean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Harmony Books, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Louie the loan-shark's life is a big nothing until he becomes caught up in his uncle's scheme to rig the state lottery, and then he has more excitement than he can handle.
Hardcover. NY, William Morrow, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The fifth mystery featuring tough Boston PI Patrick Kenzie, his 'connected' partner Angie Gennaro and sometimes sidekick Bubba. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Morrow, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY BLOCK on title page.
Hardcover. NY, Harmony Books, 1st US, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 281 pages. Ruth Rendell writes as Barbara Vine.
Hardcover. NY, Bantam Books, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, SIGNED AND DATED BY DAVIDSON on the half-title page. Goldy Bear is the bright, opinionated, wildly inventive caterer whose personal life is a recipe for disaster, with bills taking a bite out of her budget and her abusive ex-husband making tasteless threats. Determined to take control, Goldy moves her business to the ritzy Aspen Meadow Country Club. Soon she's preparing decadent dinners and posh society picnics--and enjoying the favors of Philip Miller, a handsome local shrink, and Tom Schulz, her more-than-friendly neighborhood cop. Until, that is, the dishy doctor drives his BMW into an oncoming bus. Convinced that Philip's bizarre death was no accident, Goldy begins to sift through the dead doc's unpalatable secrets. But this case is seasoned with unexpected danger and even more unexpected revelations--the kind that could get a caterer killed. Clean copy
Hardcover. New York, Delacorte Press, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket, 414 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR ON TITLE PAGE. Clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. NY, Berkley Prime Crime, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. The 6th mystery set in the small town of Pecan Springs, Texas, featuring former attorney and now herbalist, China Bayles. Bayles investigates the murder of retired Texas Ranger Roy Adcock which hits surprisingly close to home. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. In Earthly Remains, the twenty-sixth novel in this series, Brunetti's endurance is tested more than ever before. During an interrogation of an entitled, arrogant man suspected of giving drugs to a young girl who then died, Brunetti acts rashly, doing something he will quickly come to regret. In the fallout, he realizes that he needs a break, needs to get away from the stifling problems of his work.
Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Robert McGinnis. It's normal to see bodies on the set of an adult film. But when they're dead bodies--and the cast and crew discover they're trapped in a house with a serial killer--Quarry's got his work cut out for him. Like new.
Hardcover. NY, Dutton, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A cultured, upper-class man finds himself drawn to the beautiful, helpless plaintiff in an assault case for which he is juror, only to be lured into a world in which nothing is what it seems. Clean copy.
Hardcover. New York, Mysterious Press, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 278 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR ON FRONT FLY LEAF. Beautiful copy in clear mylar sleeve.
Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A humorous mystery set in the hills of Tuscany. Clean copy.
Hardcover. London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1st US, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 433 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY FORBES on title page. Clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. London, Orion, 1st UK, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 295 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.
Softcover. Berkeley, Black Lizard, reprint, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Paperback, tight and square, clean and bright. Unread mass market reprint of the 1954 Goodis classic. A nice copy of this Black Lizard reprint.
Softcover. Ashland OR, Blackstone Publishing, reprint, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, pictorial wraps. Fletch's newfound son Jack has just heard from an old flame who's about to marry a billionaire's son -- that is until her future father-in-law suffers several near-fatal accidents. The potential victim -- the inventor of the perfect mirror, which allows people to see themselves exactly as others do -- lives in his own secluded compound, so Jack gets a job as pool hand on the estate to get closer to the action. Now Jack's life may be in danger, and he will need his inimitable father's help to discover -- before it's too late -- whose reflection hides a killer's heart.
Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Ken Laager. Mavis St. Paul had been a rich man's mistress. Now she was a corpse. And every cop in New York City was hunting for the two-bit punk accused of putting a knife in her. But the punk was innocent. He'd been set up to take the fall by some cutie who was too clever by half. My job? Find that cutie--before the cutie found me. The MWA Grandmaster's first novel--published for the first time ever under the title he originally intended it to have! When originally published as THE MERCENARIES, the book was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel Westlake has won three Edgar Awards and received numerous other honors, including an Academy Award nomination for the screenplay of "The Grifters". Like new.
Hardcover. NY, Donald I. Fine, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The second mystery featuring maverick lawyer Steve Winslow. Clean, like new. This is the sequel to THE BAXTER TRUST, continuing the story of New Yorker Steve Winslow, a lawyer with only one client.
Hardcover. NY, Little, Brown and Company, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Francis X. Loughlin is an aging police detective haunted by a twenty-year-old homicide involving a young female doctor. A man named Julian Vega was put away for that crime, possibly without sufficient evidence, when he was seventeen. As Blauner's novel opens, Vega has just been released from prison, on a technicality, when Loughlin is called to investigate a crime that bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the earlier murder. Though the book sometimes takes the easy way out (the climactic twist feels both generic and arbitrary), it is elevated by Blauner's surefooted characterization of Julian. Newly free, struggling to find his way, dependent on the (somewhat tenuous) kindness of strangers, he is both sympathetic and tough; his portrait has a complexity that few authors could achieve. Clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. NY, Bantam Books, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Like new. Investigating the mysterious death of the local librarian, Ellie Haskell is entranced by the arrival of romance cover model Karisma, whose muscle-bound fund-raiser is upended by second and third murders.
Hardcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket featuring a retro-style illustration by Michael Koelsch. On the border between El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico, five lives are about to collide--with fatal results. You'll meet MARTY--the professional gambler who rolls the dice on a night with...MEG--the bored divorcee who seeks excitement and finds...LILY--the beautiful hitchhiker lured into a live sex show by...CASSIE--the redhead with her own private agenda...and WEAVER--the madman, the killer with a straight razor in his pocket, on the run from the police and determined to go down swinging! This is MWA Grand Master Lawrence Block at his rawest and most visceral, a bloody, bawdy, brutal story of passion and punishment--and of lines that were never meant to be crossed. Small remainder dot on bottom edge otherwise like new.
Hardcover. Boston, Little, Brown and Company, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. $8.95 on front flap; Higgins 5th novel; minor shelf rubbing at extremities of dust jacket. Deke Hunter is a Massachusetts State Police plainclothesman. He proves that through hard work, bumbling and pure luck, he can sometimes, surprisingly, produce justice. Clean copy.
Hardcover. New York, Mysterious Press, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 181 pages. Minor wear to dust jacket protected by mylar cover. Overall, a tight clean copy.
Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Robert McGinnis. At the time of his death, Erle Stanley Gardner was the best-selling American author of the 20th century, and world famous as the creator of crusading attorney Perry Mason. Gardner also created the hardboiled detective team of Cool and Lam, stars of 29 novels published between 1939 and 1970--and one that's never been published until now.Lost for more than 75 years, THE KNIFE SLIPPED was meant to be the second book in the series but got shelved when Gardner's publisher objected to (among other things) Bertha Cool's tendency to "talk tough, swear, smoke cigarettes, and try to gyp people." But this tale of adultery and corruption, of double-crosses and triple identities --however shocking for 1939--shines today as a glorious present from the past, a return to the heyday of private eyes and shady dames, of powerful criminals, crooked cops, blazing dialogue, and delicious plot twists. Like new.
Hardcover. New York, Mysterious Press, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 339 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Lovely copy with only minor edgewear to dust jacket.
Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Paul Mann. It isn't easy going to jail for a practical joke. Of course, this particular joke left 20 cars wrecked on the highway and two politicians' careers in tatters--so jail is where Harold Kunt landed. Now he's just trying to keep a low profile in the Big House. He wants no part of his fellow inmates' plan to use an escape tunnel to rob two banks. But it's too late; he's in it up to his neck. And that neck may just wind up in a noose. HELP I AM BEING HELD PRISONER is Donald E. Westlake at his funniest and his most ingenious, a rediscovered crime classic from the MWA Grand Master returning to stores for the first time in three decades. Like new.
Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Glen Orbik. When last we saw Max Fisher and Angela Petrakos, Max was being arrested by the NYPD for drug trafficking and Angela was fleeing the country in the wake of a brutal murder. Now both are headed for eye-opening encounters with the law--Max in the cell blocks of Attica, Angela in a quaint little prison on the Greek island of Lesbos. Like new.
Hardcover. Tucson AZ, Dennis McMillan, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Firmly rooted in the hard-boiled tradition, these 13 stories from Phillips showcase the cool exuberance of black Los Angeles PI Ivan Monk, whose family connections tend to prod him into taking cases no one in his right mind would investigate. Nostalgia is a recurrent theme, as in "Through the Fog Softly," which introduces Monk's father, Josiah Monk, as a soldier in Korea, and in Monk's love of 1950s and '60s cars. Some tales verge on fantasy, such as "The King Alfred Plan," which imagines a scheme to round up blacks into concentration camps. A pseudo-screenplay, "Bring Me the Head of Osama Bin-Laden," is the weakest effort in an otherwise strong collection. At his best, Monk displays something of the cockiness of Robert Parker's Spenser and the racial awareness of Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins. Monk has a toughness all his own, however, and a noir sensibility shines brightly in stories like "Lowball" and "The Raiders." Clean copy.
Hardcover. New York, Norton, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 272 pages. in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The third Easy Rawlins mystery.
Softcover. NY, International Polygonics, reprint, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 312 and 302 pages, two mystery novels in one volume. Clean, like new. Reprint of two mysteries first published in the 1930s.
Hardcover. Boston, Little, Brown and Company, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 403 pages. Light shelf-wear to dust jacket and light foxing to edges, else a clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. NY, Random House , 1st, 1963, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust wrapper. Previous owner's initials front end paper.
Hardcover. NY, Mysterious Press, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The sixth Joe Gunther mystery.