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First edition, so stated. Previous owner's name at inside cover. Some mnor rubbing at spine edges and along bottom edges with corners bumped. Some loss of white lettering at spine otherwise a very good near fine copy in a beautiful dust jacket, no tears or creases and with the very rare wrap-around band for the Harper Sealed Mystery. "Philip Nixon is the president of American Motors, the biggest auto concern in the world. On the eve of cornering the US automobile market, his corpse is found on the train tracks. Sgt. Gilmore had been asked to act as a bodyguard to the financier. Fortunately, Gilmore was a passenger on the train that hit Nixon s body.Milton M. Propper (1906-62) was an American devotee of Freeman Wills Crofts and Lynn Brock. The book is the American equivalent of Crofts: a methodical policeman, Detective Sergeant Gilmore and Tommy Rankin of the Philadelphia police-- not brilliant, [but] capable and thorough--, testing discrepancies and checking alibis; finance; transport (three different train and two cars thundering across New Jersey by night); and plenty of railway timetables. Like his British models, Propper handles a complex plot admirably, unfolding layer by layer, each mystery s solution opening new possibilities. The pure puzzle satisfies because there is no fat. But which character doesn t need to be in the book, has no motive, and hasn t been suspected when all the other characters have been eliminated? There s your murderer! With Audobon stock soaring under his skillful manipulation, with the money world aghast at the significance of the colossal "corner", the death of Philip Nixon was a calamity. Mangled on the steel rails of the East Shore Express, his body yielded no clues. Armed with knowledge of blackmail threats, Detective Sergeant Gilmore of the Philadelphia Police took the case with full confidence of pushing it to an obvious and rapid conclusion. But numerous motives appeared, and soon the list of potential murderers included gangsters thirsting for revenge, the brothers of a betrayed girl, a desperate bear speculator and the man s own secretary, once before convicted of manslaughter. Who threw the body on the tracks? By sheer doggedness and an intelligence that missed no single detail, Gilmore solved this thrilling mystery in a way that will delight the keenest reader." -- Nicholas Fuller at "The Grandest Game in the World" blog. This copy, although not marked as such, comes from the auction of the Gary Groton Crime Fiction collection of detective fiction.
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