Day: August 23, 2024

SOLOMON’S VINEYARD. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., [1941]. Octavo, pp. [1-6] [1] 2-218, publisher’s light blue cloth stamped in black. First edition. Hard-boiled mystery novel republished later as THE FIFTH GRAVE, a 1950 American paperback with drastically expurgated text. “SOLOMON’S VINEYARD is a genuine hard-boiled classic … It has everything! A private eye; a shoot-out at a roadhouse; necrophilia; a shoot-out in a steam bath; mobsters; a crooked police chief; a bizarre religious cult; a knife fight in a whorehouse; kidnapping; a mystery woman with a taste for kinky sex; human sacrifice; crypt-robbing — you name it, detective Karl Craven has to deal with it … For this book … [Latimer] indulges in his taste for Grand Guignol with evident relish. SOLOMON’S VINEYARD is clearly Latimer’s homage to the classic hard-boiled detective story … As such it is a brilliant success …” (Art Scott). Pronzini and Muller, 1001 Midnights, pp. 465-466. Owner’s inked signature at top edge of front free endpaper. A very good copy in nearly fine dust jacket priced 7/6 on the front flap. From the library of a well-known mystery writer with his library stamp on the front paste-down. Rare in dust jacket.

November 1988 IPL first print reissue

Often referred to as a lost classic, this novel was thought to be so hardboiled and unrelenting that it no American publisher would touch it. First published as a British hardcover in 1941, it was edited to align with UK spelling and slang. The first US appearance, in 1946, was a modified and edited (read ‘softened’) version entitled The Fifth Grave. That version was released as a Popular Library paperback in 1950. [cover art by Rudolph Belarski, from the November 1949 issue of Popular Detective]

Though there was a limited collector’s edition printed in 1982, this IPL paperback is the true thus US trade edition first printing of the full text of the novel.

With Paul Cain’s Fast One, Solomon’s Vineyard is considered to be the hardest of the hardboiled of the great era of crime writing. Here’s the opening paragraph as narrated by private eye Karl Craven:

“From the way her buttocks looked under the black silk dress, I knew she’d be good in bed. The silk was tight and under it the muscles worked slow and easy. I saw weight there, and control, and, brother, those are things I like in a woman. I put down my bags and went after her along the station platform.”

1953 Mercury digest/Jonathan Press abridged edition – cover art by George Salter

This classic is now available from the Stark House Press imprint Black Gat Book. Though it has Latimer’s original title, that was used for the edited version, the new edition contains the “unexpurgated text”.

cover art by Rudolph Belarski

[post updated 6/30/25]