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Stated at copyright: "First published in Great Britain, 1967 by Hamish Hamilton Limited. Third impression October 1973" Matches first UK impression in design, quality, and dust jacket. Dark bluish-green cloth boards, gilt spine titles with fingerprint vignette, moderate shelf wear, adhesive residue wrapping to pastedowns. Pages generally very good; few stamps, library marks from Suffolk County Library in England. Good green top-stain. Bind good, moderate cant; intact. Rare original pictorial wrapper with black titles on green fields, moderate shelf wear, toning, rub; unclipped 2.00 net, protected in new clear sleeve. Classic '60s wrap-around jacket design in stark b&w of older woman sipping wine with spiral candle in holder at back. Near reminiscent of a character from Rosemary's Baby. Scarce, good early UK printing in very good original wrapper. Raymond Chandler's hard-boiled Detective Philip Marlowe is back in a shocking and thrilling murder mystery! It started with some business about a rare coin. Everybody knew who had stolen it, but nobody was excited to do anything about it. Marlowe couldn't understand why the old lady had hired him. She didn't seem to like detectives and didn't want to tell him much. So he started to think about her, and then about the pale, fragile, frightened little girl who was her secretary, and then about her son - which led him the the gambler, then to the gambler's luscious and lustful wife, and then to the elegant blackmailer! And so, this case became a study of character, for even when murder was done, even after the second murder, character was the root of eveything. Because he understood that, Marlowe went step-by-step to a solution in the case. Sardonic, quietly cynical, cold and merciless when he has to be, but gruffly compassionate to the victims of evil, Philip Marlowe steps out of these scintillating pages as one of the greatest detectives of modern murder-mystery fiction! Printed in Great Britain by Lowe & Brydone (Printers) Ltd., Thetford, Norfolk. 222 pages. Insured post. Size: 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" Tall.
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