Right Kill by Ryan (1 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Very good. Dust Jacket Condition: Good. First Edition. The author's first book as Ryan (and second novel overall, after Tyranny of Virtue by "Noel Despard"). The novel, with its dreamlike third-person narration, explores the idea of justifiable homicide and the sexual mores of the 1920s. A contemporary review described the book: "The Right to Kill is more of a problem than a detective story, but the situation it presents?that of a detective who when sent to investigate a crime finds that it involves a former mistress and his own illegitimate daughter?is developed with skill and ingenuity" (quoted from the Liverpool Daily Post, July 1, 1936). Ryan's many books mostly drifted into obscurity until the 1980s when genre fiction critics began to rediscover him. The works of R. R. Ryan have been attributed to a number of people, most commonly Evelyn Bradley, a minor British author. In the Ramble House reissue of Freak Museum, another Ryan novel, the author is identified as Bradley's daughter, Denice Jeanette Bradley-Ryan, who also wrote as Kay Seaton. I am going to go with Evelyn Bradley, who was commonly known as Rex Ryan (his wife took the surname Ryan and Evelyn's daughter used both). James Doig, who blogs under the Wormwoodiana site, reports obtaining documents from Random House (which acquired the publisher Herbert Jenkins) showing correspondence with the author going to the Ryan household after Denice left home and married. First edition (states "First published 1936" on the copyright page, with no indication of later printings). A very good copy in the publisher's orange cloth-covered boards (hardcover). This copy is one of the few surviving copies with a dust jacket, here restored to reattach the front panel at the spine, some infill along the top edge, and a long repaired tear on the front panel. There is also skillful infill and repainting of the spine ends. An attractive copy of a vanishingly scarce jacket, correctly priced on the spine at 7'6.