Hunt the Man Down (First Edition)

New York: Simon & Schuster, 1956. First edition. Hardbound. Very good in a very good dust jacket. Boards lightly rubbed at extremities; top edge faintly bumped; spine slanted slightly; jacket shows modest wear with light edge creasing and a few tiny chips. Publisher's price of $2.75 intact on front flap. Comes with archival-quality mylar jacket protector. Smoke-free. Octavo. 278 pages. Issued as part of Simon & Schuster s Inner Sanctum Mystery line, "Hunt the Man Down" is a midcentury noir featuring Carol Malden, a cool and calculating femme fatale at the center of a murder-for-insurance scheme. The novel mixes psychological tension with hardboiled pacing and courtroom drama, set against the backdrop of a working-class American city. First edition copies are uncommon in jacket and have become increasingly collectible among enthusiasts of postwar pulp and Inner Sanctum completists. Pearson's debut novel, a taut crime narrative following an insurance investigator entangled in a complex scheme of murder and fraud. Pearson later became noted for his suspenseful, tightly constructed mysteries, but this first book is scarce.…