DEATH RIDES THE AIR LINE **INSCRIBED COPY**

1st US edition. Spine faded, as well as edges else a very good or betted copy of this scarce title. INSCRIBED and dated by the author (using his real name John M. Cooper) at front endpaper. "As Sutherland writes in his preface: "I have endeavored, moreover, by the use of a somewhat unusual structural design, to help the reader see the people concerned in it as they really were, rather than as the conventional, puppet-like characters of works of fiction." After only fifty-three pages--in which Sutherland assembles the crew and passengers on a plane taking off from Boston, murders one of the passengers over New York (stabbing), and brings Detective-Inspector Grady in to investigate--Sutherland leaves the present in order give us flashbacks into the lives of the murder victim, ruthless newspaper publisher Walter Schlaf, and four passengers: Russell DeWitt, New York judge, Marguerite Rose, good time gal, Timothy Cowley, gangster, and August Jensen, pilot. Sutherland notes that the events depicted in the novel occur "during the final days of Prohibition" and he hopes that this fact will "add some special interest, as well as throw some more light on the conditions which that unfortunate law produced in America." The Rose and Cowley sections take particular advantage of this setting." -- 'The Passing Tramp' blog. Check out the blog for a more detailed review.