The Virtue of this Jest. James Stuart Montgomery. New York: Greenberg. (1929). First edition. Original dust jacket.
Crime novel of “full-blooded ruffians and lovable rogues…thieves, gamblers, highwaymen, swindlers, debauchees, with their schemes, trials, triumphs, and punishments in the spacious days of old London.”
First American Edition. A Clue Club Mystery. First Bulldog Drummond title to have been written, at least partially, by Fairlie. Mystery novel with horror elements involving ‘The Strangler’, “a phantom whose only trace is the dead left in the wake of nefarious deeds”.
“First Edition. Leonard Frank dustjacket art. “Harry Aston, the central figure of the story, gives his own account of his desperate effort to conceal Bannatyne’s death, describes his hopes and fears in his struggle against the limitless resources and ruthless persistence of the police’.”
“First Edition. M. V. Lee dustjacket art. Aviation adventure novel intended for young adults by this author best known for his hard-boiled detective fiction.”
Fingers of Fear. J. U. Nicolson. New York: Covici-Friede Publishers, (1937). First edition. Original dust jacket by Arthur Hawkins Jr.
“A dark tale of the mystery and horror that gathered over the vast pile of gables that was Ormesby, the ancestral home of the Ormes family, lost in one of the wildest and most isolated reaches of the Berskshires. Recluses in the great mansion, guarded by a pack of ferocious dogs, the family jealously nursed its secret. Gray, was at home with the ghosts, even jested about them with a kind of macabre humor.”
