The Boy Who Invented Bubble Gum.

Hardcover, Publisher : New York, Delacorte Press, (1974), FIRST (USA) EDITION. Publishers Original Oat-Coloured Boards, (Gilt Signature Front), Blue Cloth Spine, Gilt / Red Titles To Spine, 8.5" X 6", 255pp, (There is a 'neat' inked inscription on the Fep, Else Content is Clean & Tight). ISBN 0 440 01789 0, The Dust Jacket, (design by Paul Bacon / Photograph by Virginia Gallico), Is 'Chipped/Rubbed' at the edges, and small tears to edges / corners, (But Not Price Clipped, ($6.95). "The author of the great best seller 'The Poseidon Adventure' has written a new tale that is both suspenseful and beguiling. It involves international intrigue, a nationwide search for a run away nine-year-old boy, and a psychopath who holds the lives of a busload of people in his grenade-filled hand. The boy, Julian West, is a headstrong but endearing prodigy who decides to travel from San Diego to Washington, D.C.; in order to to patent his invention - a seemingly innocuous toy gun that shoots beautiful, luminous soap bubbles. Armed with the makings of tuna fish sandwiches, two changes of underwear and socks, a clean shirt, and a toothbrush but no toothpaste, Julian embarks on an adventure that will have reprecussions in the Kremlin and the Pentagon and that will make him the nations's most unlikely hero. En route, Julian encounters a high school couple masquerading as honey-mooners, a murderer on the lam, a cynical but congenial Vietnam veteran, a bungling Russian spy, a frustrated American counterspy, a passel of police, and two elderly British gun-toting sisters. And throughout this fast-moving story is interwoven a wise and heart-warming theme on the inviolability of innocence". …