crime law

Hardcover. New York, American Book Exchange, reprint, 1880, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth stamped in black and gilt, 387 pages plus publisher's ads, color frontispiece depicting various organs of the body after drinking. This is an 1880 reprint of a book first published in 1879 as suggested by the author's postscript and the copyright date. Light fading to spine, small nicks to front cover otherwise clean, very good.

Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Chuck Pyle. On the mend after getting run out of Chicago, professional cardsharp Bill Maynard is hungry for some action--but not nearly as hungry as Joyce Rogers, the tantalizing wife of Bill's latest mark. Together they hatch an ingenious scheme to get rid of her husband. But in life as in poker, the other player sometimes has an ace up his sleeve.LUCKY AT CARDS is a major discovery: This is the book's first publication in 37 years, and first publication ever under Lawrence Block's real name! Lawrence Block has won more awards for mystery writing than almost any other living author: 4 Edgar Awards, 4 Shamus Awards, 2 Maltese Falcon Awards, the Nero Wolfe Award, and more. Like new.

Softcover. Cambridge UK, Cambridge University, 1st, 1930, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 57 pages, three page introduction by Freshfieil. Clean, tight copy in light blue wrappers. Covers 1341-1391.

Softcover. New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1st pbk, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 302 pages. Philip Jenkins argues that all concepts of sex offenders and offenses are subject to social, political, and ideological influences and that no particular view of offenders represents an unchanging objective reality. He examines the various groups (including mass media) who have been active in promoting particular constructions of the emerging problem, the impact of public attitudes on judicial and legislative responses to these crimes, and the ways in which demographic change, gender politics, and morality campaigns have shaped public opinion. While not minimizing sexual abuse of children, the book thus places reactions to the problem in a broad political and cultural context. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, reprint, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 217 pages. A chilling and brutally funny romp through the American South. As high sheriff of Potts County, Nick Corey spends most of his time eating, sleeping and avoiding trouble. If only people--especially some troublesome pimps, his foul-tempered wife, and his half-witted brother-in-law--would stop pushing him around. Because when Nick is pushed, he begins to kill . . . or to make others do his killing for him!The basis for an aclaimed French film noir, Coup de Torchon. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. This black, bleak comedy tells of parallel lives in Providence, R.I. The Dwyers are middle-class, settled, safe in their lives until the day that Adam, a lawyer, finds out he's going to die of leukemia. Skippy, Babe, and Lisa are young sociopaths on the lookout for fun and fortune. When the lives of these two "families" cross, no one survives without trauma. The result is a diverting gallery of grotesques and grotesqueries, a litany of sex, perversion, violence, crime, and corruption. Providence is a fairy tale with no Good Fairy. Virtue ensures no reward; neither merit nor normal precaution provides sufficient protection to the unfortunate Dwyers. This novel is breezy and entertaining, enjoyable even though it depicts a world that is chilling in the indifference it shows toward ordinary people's cares and concerns.

Softcover. London, W. Stewart & Co., 1st, 1881, Book: Fair, Dust Jacket: None, Scarce. 76 pages plus index, b&w illustrations. Covered in brown protective paper wrapper. Previous owner's signature inside original front cover. Top right corner torn from original title page; bottom right corners missing from index pages. Original rear wrapper missing. Else pages clean and tight.

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. Cloverdale CA, Buti Publications, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 355 pages illustrated with b&w drawings, not credited. GENERIC INSCRIPTION & SIGNATURE BY AUTHOR on the front fly leaf. Bruno Buti, (pronounced "booty") born to immigrant Italian parents May 23, 1922, in San Bruno, California, the youngest of three children. Nursed to an age he can still remember, then weaned on wine for lack of a cow, he was raised in an era when milk pails runneth over with fresh made alcohol. Growing up underfoot of tough bootleggers, he spent his childhood experiencing unpleasant run-ins between them and crooked lawmen. Haunted by memories of the involvement that his father, relatives and colleagues had in bucking prohibition, their ups and downs in the struggle to make it in a society hostile to immigrant minorities, the author finally dares to unload the burden he carried for so long. His tale attempts to bring out the characteristics and qualities of this particular group of people by depicting them the way they were during those fabulous Twenties. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1st, 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in an unclipped dust jacket. 297 pages, b&w photos, red spine faded, otherwise clean, tight copy.

Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Michael Koelsch. To escape punishment for a murder he didn't mean to commit, insurance man Don Barshter has to take on a new identity: Nathaniel Crowley, ferocious up-and-comer in the New York mob. But can he find safety in the skin of another man...a worse man...a sinner man...? Long before he became the award-winning creator of Matthew Scudder (A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES) and an MWA Grand Master, Lawrence Block penned this tough, unforgettable crime novel, his very first. But as he describes in a new afterword, the book wound up published only eight years later, under a different title and a fake name--and was then lost for half a century. Now appearing for the first time under Block's real name, with revisions by the author, SINNER MAN is revealed as a powerful work by a young novelist destined to become one of the giants of the mystery genre. Like new.

Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Michael Koelsch. To escape punishment for a murder he didn't mean to commit, insurance man Don Barshter has to take on a new identity: Nathaniel Crowley, ferocious up-and-comer in the New York mob. But can he find safety in the skin of another man...a worse man...a sinner man...? Long before he became the award-winning creator of Matthew Scudder (A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES) and an MWA Grand Master, Lawrence Block penned this tough, unforgettable crime novel, his very first. But as he describes in a new afterword, the book wound up published only eight years later, under a different title and a fake name--and was then lost for half a century. Now appearing for the first time under Block's real name, with revisions by the author, SINNER MAN is revealed as a powerful work by a young novelist destined to become one of the giants of the mystery genre. Like new.

Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Robert McGinnis. It begins on Death Row, with a condemned man refusing the services of the lawyer assigned to defend him. It begins with a beautiful woman dead, murdered--Vassilia Caroline Baird, known to all simply as V. That's where this extraordinary novel begins. But the story it tells begins years earlier, on a struggling farm in the shadow of the Great Depression and among the brawling "cat skinners" of Southern California, driving graders and bulldozers to tame the American West. And the story that unfolds, in the masterful hands of acclaimed author Oakley Hall, is a lyrical outpouring of hunger and grief, of jealousy and corruption, of raw sexual yearning and the tragedy of the destroyed lives it leaves in its wake. Unpublished for more than half a century, SO MANY DOORS is Hall's masterpiece, an excoriating vision of human nature at its most brutal, and one of the most powerful books you will ever read. Like new.

Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Robert McGinnis. It begins on Death Row, with a condemned man refusing the services of the lawyer assigned to defend him. It begins with a beautiful woman dead, murdered--Vassilia Caroline Baird, known to all simply as V. That's where this extraordinary novel begins. But the story it tells begins years earlier, on a struggling farm in the shadow of the Great Depression and among the brawling "cat skinners" of Southern California, driving graders and bulldozers to tame the American West. And the story that unfolds, in the masterful hands of acclaimed author Oakley Hall, is a lyrical outpouring of hunger and grief, of jealousy and corruption, of raw sexual yearning and the tragedy of the destroyed lives it leaves in its wake. Unpublished for more than half a century, SO MANY DOORS is Hall's masterpiece, an excoriating vision of human nature at its most brutal, and one of the most powerful books you will ever read. 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 Gregory Manchess. He'd been a promising piano prodigy, once. Now he was just an addict, barely scraping by, letting his hunger for drugs consume him. But a man's life can always get worse--as Ray Stone discovers when he wakes up beside a beautiful nightclub singer only to find her dead...and 16 ounces of pure heroin missing. On the run from the law, desperate to prove his innocence, Ray also faces another foe, merciless and unforgiving: his fierce and growing craving for a fix. Ed McBain was one of the most popular mystery writers of all time, creator of the 87th Precinct series and recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master Award. SO NUDE, SO DEAD was his very first crime novel--and this is its first appearance in print in more than half a century. Remainder line on bottom edge, otherwise very good.

Hardcover. Chapel Hill, N.C., Algonquin Books, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 295 pages, b&w photos. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on half title page with old photo of author taken just after WW2 mounted on front end paper. Light edgewear to dust jacket and faint foxing to top edge, else a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards, 231 pages in color. Before focusing on tales of justice via superheroes under the Marvel banner, the publisher covered ground-level crime across a range of comics titles and true-crime magazines. Under the Timely imprint from 1947, and Atlas from 1951, up to eleven graphic series including Justice Comics, Official True Crime Cases, All-True Crime, Crime Cases, Crime Can't Win, Crime Must Lose, and Crime Exposed all muscled each other and competitors for space on the newsstands. For the first crime-themed volume in Fantagraphics' ongoing project to restore and resurrect pre-Marvel pulp classics, the Atlas Library has selected a book that debuted as the genre peaked, just before a Senate hearing and the institution of the Comics Code banned the use of the word "Crime" from even appearing in a comic's title. Escaping that fate, Police Action had a seven-issue run of violent and noir-ish morality plays, pitting the officers of the law against the forces of urban malevolence, and was produced by the cream of the Atlas freelance roster, including Joe Maneely, Robert Q. Sale, Gene Colan, Art Peddy, Mort Lawrence, Werner Roth and Bob Powell. Rounding the volume off, also presented is a post-Code one-shot, Police Badge #479, a snapshot of the industry's attempts to adapt to new strictures on the genre: here we view "our boys in blue" in the fight against rank corruption, highlighting the work of Don Heck and Joe Maneely. Clean, like new.

Hardcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, colorful dustjacket with a retro-style illustration by Michael Koelsch. "Here, long after anyone would have expected it, is the voice of James M. Cain, as fresh and as relevant as ever. THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS will involve you, and then shock you with an ending you'll never forget. This is a true rarity: a reader's novel that's also a literary event."--STEPHEN KING "James M. Cain was one of the founders of American hard-boiled fiction, and it's not a stretch to say that it's his voice one hears echoed in most of the Gold Medal novels of the 1950s. That makes Hard Case Crime the ideal publisher for THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS. How considerate of the postman to ring a third time, delivering Cain's final gift to us thirty-five years after his death."--LAWRENCE BLOCK

Hardcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, colorful dust jacket with a retro-style illustration by Glen Orbik. Cashed out from the NYPD after 24 years, Doak Miller operates as a private eye in steamy small-town Florida, doing jobs for the local police. Like posing as a hit man and wearing a wire to incriminate a local wife who's looking to get rid of her husband. But when he sees the wife, when he looks into her deep blue eyes. He falls--and falls hard. Soon he's working with her, against his employer, plotting a devious plan that could get her free from her husband and put millions in her bank account. But can they do it without landing in jail? And once he's kindled his taste for killing...will he be able to stop at one? Like new.

Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Robert McGinnis. Johnny Hayden and Doug Rance had a scheme to take real estate entrepreneur Wallace Gunderman for all he was worth. But they needed a girl on the inside to make it work. Enter Evelyn Stone: Gunderman's secretary, his lover - and his worst enemy. Gunderman had promised to marry her, but never came through. Now she's ready to make him pay. Lawrence Block has won more awards for mystery writing than almost any other living author: 4 Edgar Awards, 4 Shamus Awards, 2 Maltese Falcon Awards, the Nero Wolfe Award, and more. Block was named a Grandmaster by the Mystery Writers of America, their highest honor. 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.

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. NY, Grosset Dunlap, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, red cloth covers stamped in black. In a dust jacket with light edgewear and chipping. A crime novel set in the Kentucky mountains involving lawless gangs and horse racing. A Hubin listed Mystery. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar & Rinehart, 1st, 1930, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth with red lettering. The acclaimed crime writer's last book (he died in 1930), a collection of courtroom stories featuring Colonel Braxton, "great lawyer, great detective, and gallant gentleman ", and set in Virginia in the 1850's. Both Howard Haycraft and Ellery Queen considered Post second only to Poe as an American writer of detective fiction. Clean, square copy.