strangle hold (DAMAGED COPY OF THE FIRST TRADE EDITION)
McMullen, Mary
Verkäufer Cat's Curiosities, Pahrump, NV, USA
Verkäuferbewertung 5 von 5 Sternen
AbeBooks-Verkäufer seit 20. Juni 2007
Verkäufer Cat's Curiosities, Pahrump, NV, USA
Verkäuferbewertung 5 von 5 Sternen
AbeBooks-Verkäufer seit 20. Juni 2007
Beschreibung
"Strangle Hold," a murder mystery (the victim strangled with a client's tweed necktie) set in the world of New York's late 1940s advertising agencies, was originally serialized in the Saturday Evening Post as "Who Killed Miss X?," which explains the "Curtis Publishing Co." copyright. Now of interest in part due to its first-hand depiction of women in American business circa 1950, this novel won the Edgar award for best first mystery in 1952, after which author McMullen did not publish again for 23 years. 189-page book-club editions in gray plastic "composition" boards are relatively common; 206-page trade editions (such as this one) in gray FABRIC seem to be highly elusive. This copy is fair in fair -- the front free endpaper has been torn out and discarded; the sheet comprising pp. 61-62 was once torn out and has been restored with a nasty piece of brown nitrate "Scotch" tape (three words of text to top corner of pg. 61 now missing); "Hallway Bookshop pay at circulation desk" is stamped to top of title page, and the dust jacket -- which is missing the bottom half of its spine -- has had its flaps glued to the pastedowns. Jacket not price clipped; original $2.50 price showing. No topstain. "First Edition" stated, followed by Harper's code F-A for June 1951. Not a thing of beauty, but this IS the elusive true first. In his contemporary review, influential mystery critic Anthony Boucher called Strangle Hold "surprisingly successful -- as a novel, if not as a detective story." (The solution of the case requires no masterful feats of deduction.) Boucher contrasted McMullen's handling of the subject of "murder in an adverting agency" with that of Dorothy Sayers' "Murder Must Advertise" and Julian Symons' "The Thirty-First of February," ruling that while Sayers and Symons sacrificed realism to a "faint element of parody and exaggeration," McMullen to her credit had here played it "dead straight," making "'Strangle Hold' . . . even more chilling than its predecessors." Oddly, McMullen did not publish another crime novel for 23 years, "The Doom Campaign" finally appearing in 1974. 1950s mystery, offered with all faults, here reduced from $300. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 007646
Bibliografische Details
Titel: strangle hold (DAMAGED COPY OF THE FIRST ...
Verlag: Harper & Brothers, New York
Erscheinungsdatum: 1951
Einband: Hardcover
Illustrator: Jacket design by Bruno Lorenzini
Zustand: Fair
Zustand des Schutzumschlags: Fair
Auflage: 1st Edition
Anbieterinformationen
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