Constantine K C Carl Kosak (6 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good +. Dust Jacket Condition: very good +. First UK edition. 1st printing. Black cloth boards stamped in gilt on the spine. A clean, unmarked copy in a tight binding and unclipped dust jacket.

Hardcover. Condition: As New. Dust Jacket Condition: As New. 1st Edition. This is the final novel in Constantine's celebrated Rocksburg series featuromg Chief Mario Balzic and other members of the Rocksburg, PA. Police Department. Published in 2023, ten years after iits author's death in 2003, a small mystery in itself. First edition, first printing with complete numberline. Hardcover, 232 pages, about 6 1/4 x 9 1/4 inches in plain black paper-covered boards with gold lettering on spine. The dustjacket's front panel features an illustration by Andy Ross of the back of a police patrolman who provides safety and security for a hillside dotted with houses. The back panel contains four blurbs of praise. This is a very fine, unread copy with no known flaws or damage, a fitting copy for a collector's Constantine collection.

Condition: FINE. First printing. The fifth mystery featuring Police Chief Mario Balzic, set in the fictional town of Rocksburg, Pennsylvania - a small coal mining town where most of the coal has run out. The NY Times called his books "The most poignant studies of post-Industrial Age depression in modern crime literature." 177 pp. Very near fine in a like dustjacket (a hint of toning to the spine of the dj).

First edition. Octavo, Hardcover. Fine in fine dust jacket with a touch of shelf wear to base of spine panel. (5380).

First edition. Octavo, Hardcover. The second Mario Balzic mystery. ".written in a readable, literate style, tightly plotted and with believable, very human characters in familiar settings." - Pronzini and Muller: 1001 Midnights, pp. 160-61. Fine, top corners very slightly bumped, in an about fine dust jacket with a touch of rubbing, slight shelf wear to top corners. (5284).

Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. Illustrated by Roy Kuhlman (illustrator). 1st Edition; 1st Printing. Cover Art; This book is in Fine condition and has a Fine dust jacket. The book and its contents are in clean, bright condition. The top edge of the book cover (both front and rear) has the faintest hint of sunning. The text pages are clean and bright. The dust jacket is crisp and clean with only some beginning fading / toning to the spine. This is the third book in the Chief Mario Balzic mysteries, set in Rocksburg, PA, and of the books in the series, this is one of the most difficult to find. "It was hot. The temperature on Memorial Day had tied the record set in 1910. In the five days since, the weather report was notable for its sameness. When Miss Cynthia Summer called to say that she hadn't seen one of her student roomers, Police Chief Mario Balzic was glad to stop working on the budget report. But then he saw Janet Pisula's body on the floor of her room." "Little is known about Kosak, as he prefers anonymity and has given only a few interviews. He was born in 1934 and served in the Marines in the early 1950s. He lives in Greensburg, Pennsylvania with wife Linda. He is an alumnus of Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania and claims that he "flunked freshman composition twice" because he "did not know how to make an English sentence." (As reported in the bulletin of that college's "Friends of the Library" Autumn, 1990.) Other than that, information is sketchy. He may have been a minor league baseball player (some had even been suggesting that Kosak was a pseudonym for former Major League baseball player Phil Rizzuto) and he may have studied at the University of Iowa's writers' program in the 1960s. Other evidence suggests he never got near a baseball and instead was a journalist at a western Pennsylvania newspaper.".