A Season In Purgatory (from Dominick Dunne's estate)

Dominick Dunne

Verlag: Crown Publishers, New York, 1993

This book, along with some others I purchased some years ago, came from the estate of Dominick Dunne. It appears to be the original manuscript of his novel A Season In Purgatory (take a look at the photograph of the copyright page) which was inspired by the 1975 murder of Martha Moxley, for which Ethel Skakel Kennedy's nephew Michael Skakel was eventually convicted. 'The novel's protagonist and narrator is Harrison Burns, who received money contributing to his boarding school education courtesy of Gerald Bradley, the patriarch of a large, wealthy, and politically well-connected Irish Catholic family who has links to organized crime. Twenty years after Bradley's neighbor, Connecticut teenager Winifred Utley, is bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat, her murder remains unsolved, and Burns, now a successful true- crime writer who is haunted by the secret he has kept for the past two decades, steps forward to accuse Gerald's son Constant of the crime. Constant, who is being groomed to be President of the United States! What ensues is a widespread investigation that threatens to tear apart one of the most powerful families in the state, unless they manage to destroy Burns first.' In The New York Times, Maureen Dowd observed, 'In his latest cafe-society roman a clef Dominick Dunne takes all the most chilling character flaws of three generations of Kennedys and compresses them into one creepy plot line. If you can bear to read one more word, even with a gossamer veneer of fiction, about America's royal and sorrowful Irish Catholic clan, and if you like Mr. Dunne's dishy style of society vivisection, then you will probably enjoy his new tour of the toxic side of a golden American family.' As you can see in the photos, there is spotting/foxing on the front cover as well as on the last page of the book. That spotting can be seen to a lesser degree (just off the top corner) on the nine pages preceding the last page. At the front of the book it continues on to the title page, the copyright page, and the dedication page, but is mostly (an occasional small spot here and there) gone after that until you reach those last nine pages. It is also visible on the middle page edge, although from there it doesn't migrate on to the pages themselves. Scrolling through the pages I'm not seeing any other kind of soiling. They are very clean and also bright. The print looks perfect, nicely dark and clear. I saw an occasional top corner crease, actually only a couple over the first 480 pages or so. From that point to the last page, page 546, there is a light, fairly small, top corner crease, which was likely created by a bump to the top corner of the rear cover which is the last page of the book and also sports a crease at its top corner. There are no markings in the book. No attachments of any kind. There's one little tiny pen mark next to the author's name on the 'Also by Dominick Dunne' page. There is no other writing to be found anywhere in the book. The spine has a forward lean, but the binding of the book, in the main, is quite solid. There are two instances where I saw a crack/space at the juncture between facing pages. In the first, between pages 57 and 58, the crack is over only over the top half of the juncture, and both facing pages are tightly bound from top to bottom. The other instance was between pages 280 and 281. Here the space at the juncture is only over the top inch or so, and again both facing pages are tightly bound from top to bottom. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 004876

Bibliografische Details

Titel: A Season In Purgatory (from Dominick Dunne's...
Verlag: Crown Publishers, New York
Erscheinungsdatum: 1993
Einband: Soft cover
Zustand: Good
Auflage: 1st Edition