Fallen Angel

First edition. vi, 181 pp. Publisher's yellow cloth with navy spine lettering. Near Fine with light foxing to edges, in a bright dust jacket designed by Lew Keller, a little dust-soiled with a hint of wear at the head, else Fine. The jacket's vivid colors are completely unfaded. A splendid copy of a scarce book. At the height of Red Scare, Howard Fast, an outspoken Communist best-known as the author of Spartacus, penned this suspense novel under the pen name Walter Ericson, afraid that it would be censored under his real name; his fears were not without justification as he had been imprisoned in 1947 for contempt of Congress. In his memoir Being Red Fast calls it "a sort of antifascist mystery." The book was later retitled The Darkness Within. In 1965 it was made into the neo noir Mirage, directed by Edward Dymytryk.