Vintage & Collectible Mystery Books - pg. 22 including The Ones You Doby: Woodrell, Daniel

Hardcover. NY, Henry Holt, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket. Author's fourth novel, set in the steamy bayou town of St. Bruno. Woodrell reunites the three Shade brothers with their dissolute father. Aged rake and reprobate John X. Shade returns to his native Louisiana bayous, where he reviews his checkered past. Vengeful sociopath Lunch Pumphrey is hot on his trail, bent on recovering $47,000 stored in John X.'s safe, but Shade's young wife has absconded with the money in order to launch her singing career, leaving their daughter, toughly precocious Etta, in her father's care. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Mysterious Press, Ltd. Ed., 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth. Limited Issue, one of 100 numbered copies specially bound and signed by the author, this being copy #40. Titles stamped in gilt on spine; publisher's matching cloth slipcase with a small bump/nick to the top corner.

Hardcover. NY, Scribners, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. An English mystery Introducing Alison Hope and Nick Trevellyan. Rural Hop Valley plays host to a small group of well-drawn characters, most of whom gather at Hope's open house only to find themselves suspect in the bludgeon murder of Hope's cousin late that night. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Minotaur Books, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY MAYOR on the title page. Across Brattleboro, Vermont, rich people (some with dark secrets) are waking up in their high-security, alarm-equipped homes to find a Post-it note stuck to their bedside tables reading, "You're it." There is little sign of disturbance anywhere, nothing stolen (that anyone admits), and only a bit of expensive food eaten as a signature. The local press loves the story and they have collectively dubbed the burglar the Tag Man. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Minotaur Books, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY MAYOR on the title page. Ben Kendall was a troubled man. Coming back from Vietnam with PTSD and scars that no one else could see, he hid away from the world, filling his house with an ever-increasing amount of stuff, until finally, the piles collapsed and he was found dead, crushed beneath his own belongings. But what at first glance looks to be a tragic accidental death of a hoarder, may be something much more-and much deadlier. Ben's cousin, medical examiner Beverly Hillstrom, unsettled by the circumstances of his death, alerts Joe Gunther and his Vermont Bureau of Investigation team. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Minotaur Books, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY MAYOR on the title page. Joe Gunther and his team at the Vermont Bureau of Investigation are alerted to a string of unrelated burglaries across Vermont. Someone, in addition to flatscreens, computers, and stereos, has also been stealing antiques and jewelry. Meanwhile, in Boston, an elderly woman surprises some thieves in her Beacon Hill home and is viciously murdered. The Boston police find that not only is the loot similar to what's being stolen in Vermont, but it may have the same destination. Word is out that someone powerful is purchasing these particular kinds of items in the "Paradise City" of Northampton, Mass. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Minotaur Books, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY MAYOR on the title page. Joe Gunther and his team-the Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI)-are usually called in on major cases by local Vermont enforcement whenever they need expertise and back-up. But after the state is devastated by Hurricane Irene, the police from one end of the state are taxed to their limits, leaving Joe Gunther involved in an odd, seemingly unrelated series of cases. In the wake of the hurricane, a seventeen year old gravesite is exposed, revealing a coffin that had been filled with rocks instead of the expected remains.At the same time, an old, retired state politician turns up dead at his high-end nursing home, in circumstances that leave investigators unsure that he wasn't murdered. And a patient who calls herself The Governor has walked away from a state mental facility during the post-hurricane flood. It turns out that she was indeed once "Governor for a Day," over forty years ago, but that she might have also been falsely committed and drugged to keep her from revealing something that she saw all those years ago. Clean copy.

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."

Hardcover. NY, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Rostnikov has been ordered to go on holiday to Yalta. While he is away, rumor has it that he will be demoted. He's so good at his job, he makes the bureaucrats look bad. However, not only do Rostnikov and his associates keep their jobs, they manage to solve a kidnapping, robbery, and murder in the process.

Hardcover. NY, Pocket Books, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Nominated for the Edgar award, and basis of the Michael Douglas film. New York City psychiatrist Nathan Conrad possesses everything required for a good, normal life--a successful practice on Central Park West, an adoring wife and a lovely daughter. He also has a reputation for dealing with the hard cases that most of his uptown colleagues prefer to pass on: catatonics, schizophrenics, the criminally insane. In this taut, superbly plotted thriller, Klavan, an Edgar-winner also writing as Keith Peterson, interweaves Dr. Conrad's disparate worlds to riveting effect. Soon after he begins treating a young woman accused of a particularly brutal murder, Conrad receives a chilling phone call at home. Suddenly his safe private life becomes a nightmarish game board, with Sport and Maxwell, two vividly drawn psychopaths, key players in his terrifying ordeal. Maxwell smiles and hums when he hurts people; Sport finds this a handy behavior in an accomplice. And the reader, meanwhile, roots for Dr. Conrad all the way to this brisk novel's heart-stopping conclusion. SIGNED BY KLAVAN on the half-title page. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Mysterious Press, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 32 Cadillacs is the fourth novel in Joe Gores' delightful series about the San Francisco private eye firm Dan Kearny Associates. This time the squad must recover 32 Cadillacs stolen from their largest client by Gypsies to be a casket for their dying king. The result is a fast, furious, funny, nonstop action tale with esoteric Gypsy lore and hard-edged investigation. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, William Morrow & Company, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Author's fourth book. Basis for the movie by the same name starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike. The Dorchester neighborhood is no place for the innocent, the young, the defenseless or the pure. This is a territory of broken families, bitter cops, whacked out ex-cons, and a mother who watches herself on the nightly news as her missing child floats further and further into the unkown. Boston private investigators, Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, don't want this case. But after pleas from the child's aunt, they embark upon an investigation and ultimately risk losing everything- their relationship, their sanity, and even their lives-to find this little-girl-lost. Capturing the voices that echo within blue collar Boston, Dennis Lehane is a master storyteller, who weaves together embittered people, tattered emotions, and brutal crime to create relentless, heart-pounding novels of suspense. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, William Morrow, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A homicide detective investigates the murder of an old friend's daughter, and when a third friend is suspected all must confront their haunting past. Stated first edition. First printing with correct full number line sequence. Basis for the 2003 Academy Award winning film starring Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, and Kevin Bacon. Clean copy.

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, William Morrow, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The 3rd of his tough gritty mysteries featuring private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angelo Gennaro - in a search that takes them from Boston to Florida's Gulf Coast. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, William Morrow & Company, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. World War I Battlefield nurse Bess Crawford's career is in jeopardy when a murder is committed on her watch, in this absorbing and atmospheric historical mystery from New York Times best-selling author Charles Todd. Home on leave, Bess Crawford is asked to accompany a wounded soldier confined to a wheelchair to Buckingham Palace, where he's to be decorated by the King. The next morning when Bess goes to collect Wilkins, he has vanished. Both the Army and the nursing service hold Bess negligent for losing the war hero, and there will be an inquiry. Then comes disturbing word from the Shropshire police, complicating the already difficult situation: Wilkins has been spotted, and he's killed a man. If Bess is to save her own reputation, she must find Wilkins and uncover the truth. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY/Boston, Little Brown , 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Sherlock Holmes comes to South Central Los Angeles. Only he's black, never finished high school, and can't seem to hold on to a regular job. Instead Isaiah Quintabe- or IQ, as he is known - spends his time and uses his formidable intelligence to help others. He's a loner and a high school dropout, his unassuming nature disguising a relentless determination and a fierce intelligence. He charges his clients whatever they can afford, which might be a set of tires or a homemade casserole. To get by, he's forced to take on clients that can pay. This time, it's a rap mogul whose life is in danger. The first book by this Japanese-American writer who grew up in the same kind of neighborhood as IQ, this was nominated for the Edgar for best first novel, for the Anthony Award, selected as one of the best books of the year by the NY Times and more. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Scribner, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. McKinty's second novel is a brutal tale of revenge starring a young illegal immigrant from Ireland who chooses a criminal career in New York over unemployment in Belfast. Arriving in the city in the early 1990s, the antihero Michael Forsythe lands a spot as an enforcer for Irish mobster Darkey White. Though Forsythe at first keeps his hands relatively clean, he soon racks up a significant number of kills in skirmishes with rival crews as well as with Dominican gangs warring for control of the streets. An affair with his boss's girlfriend leads to a setup: he and his mates are trapped in a drug sting in Mexico and abandoned in a remote prison. "If someone grows up in the civil war of Belfast in the seventies and eighties, perhaps violence is his only form of meaningful expression," McKinty writes early in the novel, and the bulk of the story recounts Forsythe's grisly efforts to escape and avenge himself, including a stint with a Dominican group seeking to oust Darkey White. The pace is brisk and energetic, but Forsythe remains a cipher-a self-educated intellectual who listens to Tolstoy on tape during a stakeout but exhibits puzzlingly little interest in finding an alternative to the gun and the knife. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 256 pages. In this unique blend of historical fiction and cutting-edge suspense, author Diane Wei Liang succeeds in delivering an incredible mystery veiled behind the red curtain of contemporary Chinese life and culture. Set in Beijing "The Eye of Jade" introduces readers to the enigmatic Mei Wang, the country's first successful female private investigator, and her struggle to uncover the location of a rare and treasured artifact that is believed to have been absconded from the Luoyang Museum during the Cultural Revolution. For Wang this is a task of special importance, and can only stand to make her later life and reputation glimmer, but as she soon finds in the back alleys, this is not going to be easy. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. This installment in the delightful, internationally acclaimed series featuring Chief of Police Bruno will take all of Bruno's resolve and quick thinking to untangle a mystery that will reach its deadly denouement at the chateau of an aging rock star. But in true Bruno fashion, at least lunchtime is never in danger. It's summer in the Dordogne and the heirs of a modest sheep farmer learn that they have been disinherited. Their father's estate has been sold to an insurance company in return for a policy that will place him in a five-star retirement home for the rest of his life. But the farmer dies before he can move in. Was it a natural death? Or was there foul play? Chief of Police Bruno Courreges is soon on the case, embarking on an investigation that will lead him to several shadowy insurance companies owned by a Russian oligarch with a Cypriot passport. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Library of America , 4th pr., 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 990 pages. James M. Cain's pioneering novel of murder and adultery along the California highway, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), shocked contemporaries with its laconic toughness and fierce sexuality. Horace McCoy's They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1935) uses truncated rhythms and a unique narrative structure to turn its account of a Hollywood dance marathon into an unforgettable evocation of social chaos and personal desperation. In Thieves Like Us (1937), Edward Anderson vividly brings to life the dusty roads and back-country hideouts where a fugitive band of Oklahoma outlaws plays out its destiny. The Big Clock (1946), an ingenious novel of pursuit and evasion by the poet Kenneth Fearing, is set by contrast in the dense and neurotic inner world of a giant publishing corporation under the thumb of a warped and ultimately murderous chief executive. William Lindsay Gresham's controversial Nightmare Alley (1946), a ferocious psychological portrait of a charismatic carnival hustler, creates an unforgettable atmosphere of duplicity, corruption, and self-destruction. I Married a Dead Man (1948), a tale of switched identity set in the anxious suburbs, is perhaps the most striking novel of Cornell Woolrich, who found in the techniques of the gothic thriller the means to express an overpowering sense of personal doom. Clean copy.

Softcover. Sydney AU, Angus & Robertson, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wrappers. INSCRIBED BY SAYER on the title page. An inner-city community is under threat from the developers and their crooked friends. One woman leads the battle against them, a battle fought in nightclubs and council chambers, in hotel rooms and high on rooftops. Juanita Neilson disappeared from Kings Cross 20 years ago and became part of an urban legend. This is a fictionalized account of what might have happened to this beautiful woman, campaigner, political journalist and society heiress. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY CLARK on the title page. Kevin Moore, once a high-flying Virginia attorney, hits rock bottom after a tumultuous summer leaves him disbarred and separated from his wife. Short on cash and looking for work, he lands in the middle of nowhere with a job at SUBstitution, the world's saddest sandwich shop. Kevin's determined to set his life right again, but the troubles keep coming, including a visit from a mysterious stranger who wanders into the shop armed with a threatening "invitation" to join a multimillion-dollar scam. Before long, Kevin will need every bit of his legal savvy just to stay out of prison. Clean copy.

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. NY, Henry Holt, 3rd pr., 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 333 pages. First novel written by Price using this pseudonym. Story of a "New York City police detective under siege - by an unsolved murder, by his own dark past, and by a violent stalker seeking revenge. . . in the mid-1990s, when a young Billy Graves worked in the South Bronx as part of an aggressive anti-crime unit known as the Wild Geese, he made headlines by accidentally shooting a ten-year-old boy while struggling with an angel-dusted berserker on a crowded street. Branded as a loose cannon by his higher-ups, Billy spent years enduring one dead-end posting after another." Now he finds himself involved in a murder investigation that will tear apart old friendships. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Mysterious Press, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 372 pages, b&w illustrations. There has never been a full-length biography of Mickey Spillane, the most popular and influential mystery writer of his era--until now. Beginning in 1947 with I, the Jury, and continuing with his next six novels, Spillane quickly amassed a readership in the tens of millions, becoming the best-selling novelist in the history of American publishing. Surrounded by controversy for the overt violence and suggestive sexual content of his iconic Mike Hammer private eye novels, Spillane was loathed by critics but beloved by his readers. There is, however, more to Spillane's life than the books. He also starred as Hammer in a movie, was a circus performer, worked with the FBI in capturing a notorious criminal, and starred in Miller Light beer commercials that were so popular they ran for a quarter of a century. Max Allan Collins became Spillane's friend and collaborator, continuing the Mike Hammer series for years after the author's death, building upon unfinished manuscripts the writer left behind. Now, with co-author James Traylor, Collins has produced the first comprehensive and authoritative profile of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Penzler Publishers, reprint, 2020, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 342 pages. When New Orleans coffee merchant Louis Durand first meets his bride-to-be after a months-long courtship by mail, he's shocked that she doesn't match the photographs sent with her correspondence. But Durand has told his own fibs, concealing from her the details of his wealth, and so he mostly feels fortunate to find her so much more beautiful than expected. Soon after they marry, however, he becomes increasingly convinced that the woman in his life is not the same woman with whom he exchanged letters, a fact that becomes unavoidable when she suddenly disappears with his fortune.

Hardcover. NY, Penzler Publishers, reprint, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 266 pages. When Quinn first meets Bricky, she's working as a partner-for-hire at a dance hall and he's struggling to shake the anxiety of his guilty conscience. Earlier that day, the young man took advantage of a found key and used it to rob a stranger's home. Now, with the purloined money in his pocket, Quinn is unable to escape the memory of his wrongdoing-and not even a night spent dancing is enough to silence his nagging thoughts. When the dance hall closes, he and Bricky-linked, after many intimate hours, by a budding romance-return to the scene of the crime intending to restore the stolen fortune and begin a new life together, only to discover, upon arrival, that the owner of the property has been murdered. There's evidence present that easily links Quinn to the crime, and he expects that, as soon as day breaks and the authorities learn of the gruesome scene, he will be arrested straight away. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 2nd pr., 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 432 pages. James Ellroy--Demon Dog of American Letters--goes straight to the tragic heart of 1962 Hollywood with a wild riff on the Marilyn Monroe death myth in an astonishing, behind-the-headlines crime epic. Ellroy dissects 1960s LA, the failing Hollywood studio system, the American addiction to porn and drugs, our willingness to defame and dethrone and murder, and in doing so writes his most relevant novel in years. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 2nd pr., 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 270 pages. The final Lew Archer mystery, in which the detective investigates a missing painting and uncovers buried secrets that echo the violence of the past. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, William Morrow, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 284 pages. The fifth novel in the "Madoc Rhys and Janet Rhys" series. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Woodstock VT, Foul Play Press, 1st, 1999, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 284 pages. Previous owner's light marking on front fly leaf. "Possibly she even realized, or half-realized, that there was something wrong with her life.... She wondered whether what had happened to the park had happened to her: a dark, rushed change that would never change back." This is England's mystery writer Bill James describing a 13-year-old girl known as Noon, soon to be shot dead while working as a drug courier near a rundown park. Her death sets off a series of explosions in James's latest book in his wonderfully dark and exquisitely written Harpur & Iles series.

Softcover. NY, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, reprint, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 263 pages. Larry Dolman is a rather literal minded ex-cop who now works private security. Eddie Miller is an airline pilot who's studying to get his real estate license. Don Luchessi is a silver salesman who's separated from his wife but too Catholic to get a divorce. Hank Norton is a drug company rep who gets four times as many dames as any of the other guys. They are all regular guys who like to drink, play cards, meet broads, and shoot a little pool. But when a friendly bet goes horribly awry, they find themselves with two dead bodies on their hands and a homicidal husband in the wings--and acting more like hardened criminals than upstanding citizens. Mild shelf wear, clean copy.

Softcover. Ann Arbor MI, University of Michigan Press, reprint, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 316 pages. The first known mystery written by an African-American, set in 1930s Harlem. Rudolph Fisher, one of the principal writers of the Harlem Renaissance, weaves an intricate story of a native African king, who, after receiving a degree from Harvard University, settles into Harlem in the 1930s. He becomes a "conjure-man," a fortune-teller, a mysterious figure who remains shrouded in darkness while his clients sit directly across from him, singly bathed in light. It is in this configuration that one of these seekers of the revelation of fate discovers he is speaking to a dead man. Thus a complex mystery begins, involving suspects and characters who are vividly and richly portrayed, and who dramatically illuminate for the reader a time, a place, and a people. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Morrow, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 292 pages. Light wear to pictorial dust jacket protected by a clear brodart cover. A very nice, tight, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Love and crime may prove too much for Gabe Wager, whose relationship with policewoman Jo Fabrizio is interrupted by old friend Tommy Sanchez's request that he search out Tommy's aloof sons on their secluded ranch. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Crown, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 339 pages. INSCRIBED BY CAUNITZ on the half-title page. A tale of high-level international art smuggling machinations which involve a copy of Homer's Iliad that belonged to Alexander the Great. A planned assassination outside Athens that turns into a massacre and the simultaneous murder of a shady Greek dealer send Major Andreas Vassos of the Greek police off to New York to pursue leads that involve a brutal Irish gang and some smooth operators with ties to the State Department and the wartime OSS. Throw in a tough New York police lieutenant, a beautiful art historian and a villainous collector, and you have the makings for a fast-moving thriller. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY PARKER with his usual scrawl on the title page. Spenser and his sidekick, Hawk, become entangled in the affairs of the Mafia and in an internecine struggle for control of the Boston underworld when they set out to find the errant spouse of the daughter of big-time Boston hoodlum Julius Ventura.

Hardcover. NY, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY PARKER with his usual scrawl on the title page. When Lisa St. Claire, the beautiful young bride of a Boston police detective vanishes mysteriously, Spenser joins the search for the missing woman, following a dangerous trail that leads him to a sociopathic Latino ex-lover and into a deadly confrontation with Lisa's dark past. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Fawcett Columbine, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY PERRY on the title page. As Police Superintendent Thomas Pitt investigates the leak in the Colonial Office, he quietly looks into the tragic death of his childhood mentor, Sir Arthur Desmond. Pitt believes he was murdered, and that the crime is connected with the treachery in the government. He makes little progress...until a second murder reverberates through London. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY COOK on the title-page. As two separate cases begin to merge, private detective Frank Clemons finds the lives of two very different women--Puri Dai, an accused killer and gypsy queen, and an elegant society matron with a secret past--also intertwining. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Delacorte Press, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Returning to her South Side alma mater for a reunion, private detective V.I. Warshawski becomes involved in the search for a former classmate's long-lost father, a quest that uncovers a web of corruption, danger, and murder. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st Collected Ed., 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Omnibus of three previously published Lew Archer novels, The Galton Case, The Chill and Black Money. New introduction by the author. 627 pages, clean copy. Large chip gone from top of dust jacket spine.

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1st, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. A provocative British Secret Service agent called Cadbury uses her sex the way James Bond uses a gun, with equally devastating results. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Little, Brown, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 422 pages. Moving their family to a safe and tranquil suburb, Lynn and Barry Schulman are horrified to discover the town's sinister side, which is revealed after an old friend is murdered and an old boyfriend begins to stalk Lynn. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Library of America , 4th pr., 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 990 pages. James M. Cain's pioneering novel of murder and adultery along the California highway, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), shocked contemporaries with its laconic toughness and fierce sexuality. Horace McCoy's They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1935) uses truncated rhythms and a unique narrative structure to turn its account of a Hollywood dance marathon into an unforgettable evocation of social chaos and personal desperation. In Thieves Like Us (1937), Edward Anderson vividly brings to life the dusty roads and back-country hideouts where a fugitive band of Oklahoma outlaws plays out its destiny. The Big Clock (1946), an ingenious novel of pursuit and evasion by the poet Kenneth Fearing, is set by contrast in the dense and neurotic inner world of a giant publishing corporation under the thumb of a warped and ultimately murderous chief executive. William Lindsay Gresham's controversial Nightmare Alley (1946), a ferocious psychological portrait of a charismatic carnival hustler, creates an unforgettable atmosphere of duplicity, corruption, and self-destruction. I Married a Dead Man (1948), a tale of switched identity set in the anxious suburbs, is perhaps the most striking novel of Cornell Woolrich, who found in the techniques of the gothic thriller the means to express an overpowering sense of personal doom. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st, 1935, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 311 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Rose color cloth with blue design. Previous owner's signature on front end paper. Tight copy. Soil on rear cover.

Hardcover. Boston, Little Brown, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. SIGNED ( MORE LIKE INITIALED) BY CONNELLY. Like new condition.

Hardcover. New York, Crown, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 389 pages, very good in a bright, unclipped jacket.

Hardcover. London, Orion, reprint, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 205 pages, Hardcover with dust jacket. A reissue of the auhor's first novel issued in 1986. SIGNED BY RANKIN on title page.