Mysteries

Hardcover. New York, Henry Holt, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 286 pages. Hardcover with a bright dust jacket. SIGNED BY GRAFTON. Clean, tight copy with minor wear to edges.

Softcover. New York, Ace Books, 1st, 1960, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Paperback. Double Novel. 149/107 pages. Ace Double Novel #D-415. Previous owner's markings on first page of each novel. Light to moderate wear to pictorial wrappers. Pages lightly tanned. Creasing and wear to spine.

Softcover. New York, Avon Book, 1st, 1961, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 144 pages. Paperback. Avon Book #T-491. Previous owner's ink notation on first page. Light wear to paper wrappers. Spins cocked lightly.

Softcover. New York, Pocket Book, 2nd, 1946, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 186 pages. Paperback. Pocket Book #385. Moderate edgewear on paper wrappers. Small notation on first page. Light creasing to wrappers.

Softcover. New York, Popular Library Mystery, 1st, 1947, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 219 pages. Popular Library Mystery # 103. Moderate wear to paper wrappers. Pages tanned. Moderate soil on rear.

Softcover. New York, Dell Publishing, 1st, 1963, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 192 pages. Paperback. Dell Book #5386. Minor wear to paper wrappers. Cover art by Robert Stanley. Light crease and fade to spine and front cover.

Softcover. New York, Dell Publishing, 1st, 1952, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 224 pages. Paperback. Dell Book #683. Minor wear to paper wrappers. Light crease to corners. Light soil to front cover. Cover art by Mike Ludlow.

Softcover. New York, Dell Publishing, 1st, 1945, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 240 pages. Paperback. Dell Book #96. Minor wear to paper wrappers. Creasing to covers and spine. Cover art by Gerald Gregg. Map on rear.

Softcover. Greenwich, CT, Fawcett Gold Medal Publishing, 1st, 1960, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 140 pages. Paperback. Gold Metal Book #948. Cover art by Robert Abbett. Light creasing to paper wrappers, gutters fragile.

Softcover. Greenwich, CT, Fawcett Gold Medal Publishing, 1st, 1958, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 121 pages. Paperback. Gold Metal Book #740. Small ink notation on 1st page.Light creasing to paper wrappers.

Softcover. New York, Dell Publishing Company, 1st, 1958, 160 pages. Paperback. Dell Mystery Book #991. Cover art by Victor Kalin. Light creasing to paper wrappers.

Softcover. New York, New American Library of World Literature, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 154 pages. Paperback. Signet Book #G5794. Water stain to page block, moderate creasing along spine. Edge wear to paper wrappers.

Softcover. New York, Avon Books Comapany, 1st, 1946, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 193 pages. Paperback. Avon Book #112. Light creasing to paper wrappers. Rubbing to spine.

Hardcover. NY, William Sloane Associates, 2nd pr., 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, 256 pages. Bright, clean copy in a lightly soiled dust jacket. A man crossing a London street is killed. He is carrying four blackmail letters. Mostly set in France, the basis for the 1968 MGM film directed by Richard Thorpe.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday Doran, 1st, 1936, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in an orange cloth binding. Light shelf wear, soil. By the author of the Fu Manchu stories, this novel is a mixture of romance & secret-service intrigue set amidst the milieu of a vaudeville troupe of the East.

Hardcover. NY, Holt, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Norton, 1st US, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright unclipped dust jacket. This political thriller set in Ireland was a bestseller there and caused some apprehension in political circles.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Clean hardcover in an unclipped dust jacket with fading to spine. Racetrack announcer/amateur sleuth Jerry Brogan tries to find the killer of the horseracing world's most hated man.

Hardcover. NY, Crown, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 305 pages, in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. In A.D. 71, the Emperor Vespasian sends his reluctant agent Marcus Didius Falco to Germany to bring a rebel chieftain into line and to find a missing legate whose battle-worn legion had surrendered him to a druidic sorceress.

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Row, 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A thriller set in the world of big business and high finance featuring the murder of a bridegroom-to-be on New York's upper west side.

Hardcover. NY, E.P. Dutton, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 251 pages. A story of murder and family intrigue set in Ireland.

Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Paul Mann. Formerly a Marine sniper in Vietnam, the man known professionally as Quarry has spent the past decade killing for money, first in the service of an agent called the Broker, and then as a freelance hitman. But he's always been on the right side of those contract kills--until now It seems someone has taken out a contract on Quarry himself. But who? And why? And how does a mysterious figure from his past figure in? Quarry will find the answer--or die trying. Since his first appearance in 1976, Quarry has been the star of a Cinemax TV series, a graphic novel (Quarry's War), and a dozen other novels. But he's never faced an assignment deadlier or more personal than this... Like new.

Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Laurel Blechman, Robert Maguire. Erle Stanley Gardner was not just the creator of PERRY MASON--at the time of his death, he was the best-selling American author of all time, with hundreds of millions of books in print. Among those books were the 29 cases of the brash, irresistible detective team of Bertha Cool and Donald Lam. In 2016, Hard Case Crime brought out the first new Cool and Lam novel in decades, THE KNIFE SLIPPED, lost for 77 years after Gardner's publisher refused it. Now here's the book Gardner wrote to replace it, often considered the best in the series: TURN ON THE HEAT. Hired by a mysterious "Mr. Smith" to find a woman who vanished 21 years earlier, Donald Lam finds himself facing a sadistic cop, a desperate showgirl, a duplicitous client, and one very dogged (and beautiful) newspaper reporter--while Bertha Cool's attempts to cut herself in on this lucrative opportunity land them both hip-deep in murder. Like new.

Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Chuck Pyle. When Lee Scarborough came upon the brunette sunbathing topless in her back yard, getting involved in a heist was the last thing on his mind. But somehow that's where he found himself--sneaking through a stranger's house, on the hunt for $120,000 in embezzled bank funds. It looked like an easy score. But one thing stood between him and the money: the beautiful and deadly Madelon Butler. Like new.

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. The assignment was simple: stake out the man's home and kill him. Easy work for a professional like Quarry. But when things go horribly wrong, Quarry finds himself with a new mission: learn who hired him, and make the bastard pay. The longest-running series from Max Allan Collins, author of Road to Perdition, and the first ever to feature a hitman as the main character, the Quarry novels tell the story of a paid assassin with a rebellious streak and an unlikely taste for justice. Once a Marine sniper, Quarry found a new home stateside with a group of contract killers. But some men aren't made for taking orders--and when Quarry strikes off on his own, god help the man on the other side of his nine-millimeter. Like new.

Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Gregory Manchess. American radiologist Peter Ross just wanted a vacation. But when he meets the beautiful Angela Locke on a Spanish beach, he soon finds himself caught in a murderous crossfire between rival gangs seeking a precious artifact. From Barcelona to the rain-swept streets of Paris, from the towers of the Alhambra to its darkest catacombs, Peter Ross is an ordinary man in desperate circumstances: racing to uncover a secret lost for centuries, before he becomes its next victim. Remainder dot bottom edge, otherwise like new.

Softcover. NY, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, reprint, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 244 pages. Lou Ford is the deputy sheriff of a small town in Texas. The worst thing most people can say against him is that he's a little slow and a little boring. But, then, most people don't know about the sickness--the sickness that almost got Lou put away when he was younger. The sickness that is about to surface again.

Softcover. Berkeley CA, Black Lizard Books, reprint, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, mass market paperback, 125 pages. A teenage girl is raped and murdered. A father turns his back on his son. A vicious press lord turns justice into a carnival. A terrified boy is railroaded. In the twisted world of Jim Thompson, everyone is guilty, and the worst crimes are unpunishable. Bookseller's stamp on inside front cover, price stamp on first page.

Hardcover. NY, Bantam Books, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The first novel in the 'Detroit Crime Series' in which the city is treated as an organic entity through various decades of the 20th century, "WHISKEY RIVER" spans from the Prohibition Era to the late 1930s. Constantine ("Connie") Minor is a Detroit-based journalist who has made a name for himself covering the crime beat in the late 1920s/early 1930s. This was a time in which bootleggers and mobsters carved out Detroit into spheres of influence over which they exerted and established firm control over, not only, the illegal importation of alcohol, but also the numbers rackets, and prostitution. Many of the city's cops often looked the other way, picking and choosing what crimes to solve or ignore (courtesy of a bribe). All the while, Detroit's industrial might (as evidenced by the auto industry) continued to grow, giving the city a dazzling prosperity soon to be tempered by the ravages of the 1929 stock market crash and resulting Depression. Clean copy.

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. London, Allison & Busby Limited, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY MARSTON on the title page. It's 1855. As the Cardiff-bound trai puffs out of Paddington Station, young Hugh Kellow wraps a protective arm around his large valise. He has been entrusted with a priceless silver coffee pot, designed in the shape of a locomotive, by his elderly silversmith employer. But two of Hugh's fellow passengers are taking an enormous interest in the young man and his precious cargo. When a dead body is discovered in a room at the Cardiff Railway Hotel, beside an empty valise, the great railway detective Detective Robert Colbeck and his trusty sergeant Victor Leeming are called in to investigate; and face awhole host of unexpected problems. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's Press, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 1948 is a leap year and a good one for Harry S. Truman. The second-hand book dealers on Manhattan's Fourth Avenue are in full swing. Howard inherits his father's shabby bookshop, but Howard isn't a true bookman, and he knows how little money there is in the business--until a seemingly priceless manuscript falls into his lap. But there's something odd about it. Howard decides to check out his treasure with an acerbic fellow in Baltimore, a man Howard's late father believed could solve all literary problems: H. L. Mencken. The results are deadly. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Like new. Ellie Haskell and husband Ben live in Chitterton Fells, where he runs a restaurant and she keeps house, tends their three-year-old twins, and occasionally investigates local murders. While attending a club meeting, Ellie discovers the fallen body of her new chairwoman, immediately suspects murder, and begins some insistent interrogating. The ninth Ellie Haskell mystery.

Softcover. Ashland OR, Blackstone Publishing, reprint, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, pictorial wraps. Fletch, as unbridled as ever and still living the good life in Italy on his ill-gotten fortune, gets a surprising visit from two surly FBI agents. The pair offers him a deal: either he attend the American Journalism Alliance convention and work as an undercover spy for them, or be shipped back to headquarters and face jail time for tax evasion. Reluctantly agreeing to the scheme, he catches a red-eye flight back to the States. But just as rubber hits tarmac in Virginia, news breaks on a murder at the convention. The victim -- a newspaper tycoon and former employer of I. M. Fletch -- was no stranger to enemies. And at a hotel full of reporters who'd all had their dealings with the tyrannical leader, everyone's a suspect.

Hardcover. NY, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. "Narrator Kyle Malachi, writing as Stokes Moran, is a syndicated mystery reviewer working on his first mystery novel. His "beautiful agent, " Lee Holland, convinces him to take a $25, 000 assignment from Playboy to find and interview a reclusive bestselling mystery author. The only clue to Seymour Severe's whereabouts is the New Orleans setting of his books. Kyle goes there, spends some time in a dark gay bar, passes out and wakes up in bed next to a naked, dead boy. He flees back to Connecticut, but Lee convinces him he's been hoaxed and must return to the Crescent City where the puzzle finally assembles itself--without any help from Kyle". Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Thames & Hudson, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, still in publisher's shrink wrap. Celebrates the height of Weimar cinema through images and commentaries on more than seventy of its finest filmsBetween the First and Second World Wars, Germany under the Weimar Republic was the scene of one of the most creative periods in film history. Through the silent era to the early years of sound, the visual flair and technical innovation of its filmmakers set an international standard for the powerful possibilities of cinema as an art form, with movies such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu, Metropolis, and M building a legacy that shaped the world of film.Here is a showcase of more than seventy films, selected to give a wide-ranging overview of Weimar cinema at its finest. Every genre is represented, from escapist comedies and musicals to gritty depictions of contemporary city life, from period dramas to fantastical visions of the future, with themes such as sexuality and social issues tackled by iconic stars like Marlene Dietrich and Louise Brooks. A wealth of film stills captures the bold vision of great directors like Fritz Lang and Ernst Lubitsch, while the text sets the historical scene and gives intriguing insights into what the films meant to the society that created them.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday and Co., 1st, 1954, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Poor, Hardcover, gray cloth with orange stamping on spine. Tommy Hambledon, a British secret agent, investigates a case that includes stolen jewels, secret airplane plans, gangsters, and international assassins. Cheap paper tanned, dust jacket worn with chipping but no markings. Despite dj, a sound copy. One of the scarcer title by this author (actually a married couple).

Hardcover. Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott , BC Ed., 1952, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket. A Book Club printing of the first (and only) Dr. Coffee full length mystery. Doctor Daniel Webster Coffee, pathologist demonstrates that scientific knowledge is deadly to crime. 222 pages, no marking.

Hardcover. Roslyn NY, Walter J. Black, Book Club Ed., 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards. Three mystery novels in one volume. Detective Book Club Series. Clean, bright copy. No markings.

Hardcover. Roslyn NY, Walter J. Black, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, illustrated boards. Three complete unabridged mysteries in one volume. Detective Book Club Edition. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. A Scotland Yard procedural with the New York Mafia moving in on a pair of psychotic London supercriminals, the Magnus cousins, modeled on the infamous real-life Kray twins, Ronnie and Reggie. The lead is Detective Inspector Derek Torry, a lapsed Catholic whose fiancee dumps him because of his guilts (he hasn't bedded her once in their two-year engagement). Soon Torry is making it with Jenny, a suspect in a triple bomb-murder, whose former boyfriend was arrested at Dover for smuggling 150 pounds of heroin into the country in his Bentley (she tipped the coppers). Vendettas explode left and right. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Dutton, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The sixth novel, and one of the best, in the award-winning Block's bestselling mystery series featuring Bernie Rhodenbarr, New York City bookseller and burglar. Bernie's second-hand bookstore is turning a small profit until his new landlord wants to raise his rent $10,000 per month. So going back to his former profession of burglar, he slips into a supposedly un-tenanted apartment, steals a very large amount of untraceable cash and spots a naked man, dead, in the bath. The apartment just happens to be his new landlord's brother-in-law's, and, not only is the cash missing, but a million-dollar baseball collection is also missing and Bernie's been framed for it. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Little, Brown & Company, reprint, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 204 pages. Originally published by Lion Books as a paperback in 1954. By the time Jim Thompson was sixteen years old, he had been a newspaper boy, a burlesque show hawker, a plumber's helper, a comedian in two-reel pictures, a night bellboy in a luxury hotel and over a dozen other occupations. By the time he was eighteen, he was driving across America in a broken-down Ford without a penny to his name and his mother and his kid sister Freddie in tow, looking for just one more paycheck to keep them all alive. A bittersweet comedy of a hard-won American life, ROUGHNECK chronicles the many jobs, near-criminal escapades, and downright unlawful grifts of the man who would become one of crime fiction's most enduring writers, in a larger-than-life literary memoir--or wildly entertaining tall tale--as only Thompson could tell it. Hard times have never sounded so good. Clean, unread copy.

Hardcover. London, The Folio Society, 1st illust. thus, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, decorated blue cloth in a slipcase. 254 pages, 10 b&w illustrations by Paul Hogarth. Introduction by Antonia Fraser. First published in 1948. This is the story of an investigation of a kidnapping of a young woman and the abuse by a mother and daughter who live in a house called The Franchise. The young woman gives a detailed description of the attic room where she was supposedly kept and abused, but, Inspector Alan Grant of the Scotland Yard is not so sure.

Hardcover. NY, Grove Press, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. "In transposing to an Iranian setting the conventions of the thriller--the hard-drinking detective, the threatened heroine, the frantic escape from a brutal adversary--Koenig invests his story with unusual resonance. Here the familiar figure of the honest cop plays his role in the unfamiliar milieu of Teheran's fundamentalist Islamic society, as he becomes a threat to the government itself. Conducting a routine murder investigation to solve the death of a sexually mutilated young woman, chief homicide detective Darius Bakhtiar discovers the existence of a state-sponsored terrorist group, the Brides of Blood. This secret sorority of virgins, fanatical in their religious devotion, are trained to martyr themselves in terrorist aggression. After Bakhtiar uncovers evidence of sanctioned efforts to arm Iran with biological weapons, he and Maryam Lejavardi, the beautiful former Bride he has begun to protect and love, are tortured in Iran's feared Evin prison. The unimaginable horrors of Iran's torture factory might have overwhelmed a lesser novelist, but Koenig artfully blends assiduous research and superbly maintained suspense as he builds to the thrilling, unrelenting--and very cinematic--final pages."

NY, St. Martin's Press, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A young New York illustrator leaves behind a promising career and returns to her hometown in the Florida panhandle to help the great-aunt who raised her resolve a puzzling series of events suddenly plaguing their decaying family home. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Hodder & Stroughton, 1st, 1935, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 312 pages, light blue cloth covers with dark blue lettering. Previous owner's signature on front fly leaf, otherwise clean. Eleven stories featuring detective Baroness Clara Linz.

Hardcover. New York, Van Nostrand, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 320 pages, illustrated throughout with numerous charts, illustrations and photos in b&w. Cream cloth, pictorial dust jacket. A very nice, tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Viking, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 247 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY AUTHOR. "Signed copy"-sticker on front cover. Beautiful copy in clear mylar sleeve.

Hardcover. New York, Putnam , 1st, May 31, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR. Hardcover, 286 pages. Small stain on top edge. Else a clean, tight copy.