WHO IS CATO?

First Edition Thus. Hardback. Dust Jacket. Large print edition. 8vo. pp. [viii], 219. Original publisher’s illustrated paper-covered boards spine lettered black and white upper cover lettered white, red and black. Presentation copy: ‘For the Bowden sisters from their friend George S. 21.3.95.’ An interesting typed initialled letter loosely inserted from Sims to ‘Dear both’ written on headed notepaper from Peacocks, Hurst, Berkshire, RG10 0DR dated April 19 no year noted and consisting of about 115 words in which he recalls that during the war he wrote down ‘some things I heard from a Sergeant in the Phantom Signals and a wireless operator working with Section Eight’ which he used when writing Cato. He sold the notebook along with other material to Dartmouth College Library so to check it out he says he would have to go there. A thriller whose hero, a rich but disillusioned art dealer named William Marshall, becomes involved in espionage. Through his connection to Intelligence in WW2 he finds himself working against the KGB many years later while on holiday in Majorca. George Sims (1923 -1999) was a successful and much admired dealer in rare books, something of a poet and a novelist with several of his books being about the book trade (bibliomysteries.) Nancy Bowden and her sister, Jill-Anne both worked at Cyril Beaumont's bookshop at 75 Charing Cross Road. Margins slightly tanned, very good. ISBN: 0745100570 Slight tanning, otherwise very good.…