Bones Will Keep by Gladys Mitchell, First Edition (6 results)

Condition: NEAR FINE. First printing. The 35th book in this series featuring Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, a polymathic psychoanalyst and author. Mitchell was - along with other female members of the Detection Club - Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers - one of the most prominent authors of that era, as well as one of the most long-lived and prolific. She was unique in having a professional woman as her detective. "Mitchell was a schoolteacher who believed in the idea of the professional, progressive woman. Her title character was controversial and emancipated, and even considered murder justifiable if the occasion demanded. , , Her murder cases have ambiguous solutions, and an air of the supernatural is never entirely banished from them. Her plots are on the farthest side of credulity, but to worry about realism is to miss the fun of her storytelling." (Christopher Fowler) This novel begins on a nostalgic note as her assistant Laura, who has accompanied Dame Beatrice to a conference in Edinburgh, remembers scenes from her childhood in Scotland. 254 pp. Near fine in black boards with silver gilt lettering on the spine, no dust jacket.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. Kenneth Farnhill Dust Jacket Art (illustrator). 1st. 1st British edition; dj w/slilght were ar top edge, unclipped price, in mylar; black c w/lite gilt spine titlles; 254 clean, unmarked pages.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good+. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good+ dj. Illustrated by (dj design) Kenneth Farnhill (illustrator). First Edition. [good sound copy, minor shelfwear only, slight age-toning and very light staining to edges of text block, one-time owner's intials and date & place of purchase in ink along edge of rear pastedown (beneath jacket flap); the jacket shows just a touch of wear along the top edge and at the front corners, with some light soiling to the rear panel and a short closed tear at the lower rear hinge]. "Beatrice ADela Lestrange Bradley, D.B.E., is in Edinburgh to attend a Conference. On the first day of her stay, before the Conference opens, her secretary, Laura, sees a man killed in the street by a car and tells Dame Beatrice that she believes it was no accident but that he was pushed [but] she cannot identify the killers. It is arranged that during the Conference Laura shall take a fortnight's hliday. She hires a small car and sets out to tour the Western Highlands. Here another murder takes place -- an extremely bizarre affair in a house on a small island in a beautiful loch -- and Laura is pursued in her journeying by a young man who seems to think that he will be suspected and that she can provide him with an alibi. She returns to Edinburgh and enlists the help of Dame Beatrice, who [spoiler alert!] solves the affair with her usual sucess." This British author wrote 65 mystery novels featuring her intrepid and eccentric protagonist, a consulting psychiatrist to the Home Office ("Mrs. Bradley" in the earlier books, but re-styled and toned down as "Dame Beatrice" beginning in the mid-1950s), over the course of her career, which lasted from 1929 until her death in 1983. Once considered one of the "Big Three" of female writers of crime fiction (along with Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers), she never achieved the same level of international fame because her work was seldom published in the U.S. (not even in paperback) during her lifetime. Michele Slung, writing in the second edition of "Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers," calls her "a special taste," and sums up the appeal of her work (or, for some, the lack thereof) thusly: "To put it mildly, eccentric goings-on are Mitchell's hallmark. And although some critics have felt that her plots suffered from too much attention paid to witchcraft, the supernatural, and folklore esoterica, this proclivity is what gives her work a consistent flavor, fine for those who like it and to be avoided by those who don't." Posthumously, the entire Mrs. Bradley/Dame Beatrice oeuvre has been published in trade paperback format, but even those can be hard to come by, a testament to her enduring appeal; many of her first editions, however, are quite scarce.

Hard Cover. Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket. First Edition. First UK Edition. Publisher's black boards with gilt spine lettering. Toning to the page block edges and a couple of foxing spots to the fore-edge overall a VG copy in like D/W with shallow wear at the head and tail of the spine and with small chips to the extremities of the front panel (not affecting any lettering). Looks nicer than it sounds. Photographs/scans available upon receipt.

Hard Cover. Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket. First Edition. First UK Edition. Publisher's black boards with gilt spine lettering. A VG copy in like dustwrapper. Photographs/scans available upon request.

First Edition. UNCORRECTED PROOF COPY. A softback. Publisher's tan wrappers with black lettering to the front cover and spine. The front cover has a label (PROOF COPY for inspection announcing a Provisional publication date of 3rd Sept 1962. A really VG++ copy. Laid in is a Publisher's Compliments Slip from Peter Hebdon (the Joint Managing Director of Michael Joseph from 1957). Gladys Mitchell proofs of this vintage are seemingly uncommon. Rare in proof state. Photographs/scans available upon request.