Hardcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket featuring a retro-style illustration by Paul Mann. In the late 90s, the producers of the James Bond movies hired legendary crime novelist Donald E. Westlake to come up with a story for the next Bond film. The plot Westlake dreamed up--about a Western businessman seeking revenge after being kicked out of Hong Kong when the island was returned to Chinese rule--had all the elements of a classic Bond adventure, but political concerns kept it from being made. Never one to let a good story go to waste, Westlake wrote an original novel based on the premise instead--a novel he never published while he was alive. Hard Case Crime gives that novel its first publication ever, together with a brand new afterword by one of the movie producers describing the project's genesis, and to give fans their first taste of the Westlake-scripted Bond that might have been.
Hardcover. New York, Doubleday, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 342 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Beautiful copy in clear mylar sleeve.
Hardcover. NY, Delacorte, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. It's 9:00 A.M. in an unnamed Midwestern city. Bank Arbaugh and Mack Steiner have just come off a typical night shift--patrolling the city, scaring off prostitutes, shaking up the usual suspects. Sitting in Denny's, waiting for bacon and eggs, they get a call over the radio: A teenage girl is missing. With a glance, the two cops--best friends since childhood, as close as brothers-- know their lives have shifted off balance, because seven years before, Bank's own daughter went missing and has not been found to this day. Two parallel stories: two girls from opposite sides of town, seven years separating them. As evidence mounts, one case begins to illuminate the other, until finally, the inevitable conclusion is revealed. Craig Holden takes us on a harrowing journey into the night, and exposes not only the heart of a tattered American city, but also of two men whose lives are intertwined in loss, envy, and love.
Hardcover. London, Collins, 1st UK, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Small red ink heart top front end paper, otherwise VG. Dust jacket w/edgewear, chips.
Softcover. New York, Pocket Book, rep, 1947, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Non-paginated. Paperback. Pocket Book #71. Laminate starting to peel on wrappers, gutter cracked, and moderate edgewear. Ink "X" on spine.
Hardcover. NY, William Morrow, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. At the funeral of his Peace Corps buddy, John Morgan, only Kinky notices that the body in the casket is not that of John, leading him to solve a mystery with origins in the jungles of Borneo twenty years ago. Bright. clean copy.
Softcover. NY, Hard Case Crime, reprint, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 254 pages. A man. A woman. A kiss in the dark. That is how it begins. But before his nightmare ends, Prescott Marshall will learn that kisses and darkness can both hide evil intent - and that the worst darkness of all may be lurking inside him. Lost for more than half a century and never before published under Cornell Woolrich's real name, FRIGHT is a breathtaking noir crime novel worthy of the writer who has been called "the Hitchcock of the written word" and "one of the giants of mystery fiction." Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in Fright, a novel set in 1915. A year from Woolrich's childhood but one he recreates with an astonishing attention to detail. (Slang, music, fashion, the distant echoes of the war being waged in Europe, etc.) Fright is very much a period piece albeit one that is timeless in its treatment of guilt and paranoia. Two emotional states the author had more than a passing familiarity with. Clean copy.
Hardcover. London, Constable & Co., 1st UK, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bight, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page ("Rodney Wingfield 1990"). The first of the author's Inspector Frost mysteries, originally written in 1972 at the prompting of Macmillan (and spurred on by a non-refundable advance of GBP50), the manuscript was promptly rejected, before eventually being published in Canada in 1984. This UK edition followed some five years later and the Yorkshire Television adoptions staring David Jason appeared soon after. Bright, clean copy.
Hardcover. New York, Mysterious Press, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 295 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Lovely copy with only minor edgewear to dust jacket spine.
Hardcover. New York, Mysterious Press, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 295 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. Lovely copy with only minor edgewear to dust jacket spine.
Hardcover. NY, Scribner, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Pizzolatto, author of the short story collection Between Here and the Yellow Sea (2006), delivers a taut first novel suffused with a strong noir sensibility. Roy Cady is working as a strong-arm man for a low-level New Orleans gangster when two events change his life: he's diagnosed with terminal cancer, and his boss puts out a hit on him. Soon enough, Roy and a young prostitute, Rocky--thrown together after a blood-spattered encounter with the would-be hit men--are on the run, traveling from New Orleans to Galveston. "Nothing ends well," Roy muses at one point, and, of course, we know from the start that this road trip is on a collision course with disaster.
Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Gregory Manchess. So this girl walks into a bar...and when she walks out there's a man with her. She goes to bed with him, and she likes that part. Then she kills him, and she likes that even better. On her way out, she cleans out his wallet. She keeps moving, and has a new name for each change of address. She's been doing this for a while, and she's good at it. And then a chance remark gets her thinking of the men who got away, the lucky ones who survived a night with her.She starts writing down names. And now she's a girl with a mission. Picking up their trails. Hunting them down. Crossing them off her list... Like new.
Hardcover. New York , Delacorte Press, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 386 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. White covers with grey band and silver lettering on spine. Dust jacket pristine. Comes with an acrylic cover for jacket.
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.
Softcover. New York, Dell Publishing, 1st, 1957, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 192 pages. Paperback. Dell Book #A133. Minor wear to paper wrappers. Creasing to covers and spine. Cover art by Victor Kalin. Ink notation on first page.
Softcover. New York, Dell Publishing, 1st, 1960, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 192 pages. Paperback. Dell Book #D338.Minor wear to paper wrappers. Creasing to covers and spine. Cover art by Robert McGinnis. Ink notation on first page.
NY, Random House , 1st, 1967, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 209 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, tight copy with minor wear to cover edges.