Category: hardcover

Killer in the Rain x 2

London: Hamish Hamilton, 1964. First UK Edition, preceding all others. The first collection of these stories.

“Killer in the Rain” (Black Mask Magazine, Jan. 1935)

“The Man Who Liked Dogs” (Black Mask Magazine, Mar. 1936)

“The Curtain” (Black Mask Magazine, Sept. 1936)

“Try the Girl” (Black Mask Magazine, Jan. 1937)

“Mandarin’s Jade” (Dime Detective Magazine, Nov. 1937)

“Bay City Blues” (Dime Detective Magazine, June 1938)

“The Lady in the Lake” (Dime Detective Magazine, Jan. 1939)

“No Crime in the Mountains”(Detective Story Magazine, Sept. 1941)

introduction by Philip Durham

1st Pocket edition, December 1965

June 1973 Bantam reissue

cover art by Tom Adams

July 1977 Ballantine mass market, 3rd print

cover art by Whistlin’ Dixie

August 25, 2013

[post reworked 7/4/25]

Build My Gallows High/Out of the Past

1946 William Morrow, first edition.

Geoffrey Homes, Build My Gallows High, 1946 Morrow hardcover

1956 Ace Double paperback reissue

cover art by Harry Barton

basis for the 1947 film noir classic Out of the Past

better image than previously posted

[post updated 7/3/25]

1978 Random House first edition hardcover

1978 Random House first edition hardcover, a modern classic

cover illustration by Stan Zagorowoski

1st novel with private eye C.W. Sughrue with begins with the masterful and oft-quoted sentence: “When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.”

Elizabeth Short ~ The Black Dahlia

1943 mugshot of Elizabeth Short, destined to be known throughout history as The Black Dahlia

Short in 1946

Her remains found on January 15, 1947

39th St and Norton. The body dump site of the Black Dahlia

September 1987 Mysterious Press hardcover

cover art by Stephen Peringer

©Seattle Mystery Bookshop

1932 Covici Friede hardcover

1932 Covici Friede hardcover

cover art by Charles H. Alson

credited as being the first mystery published by a black American writer as well as the first mystery to have only black characters and feature the first black detective.

published in 1932 during the great Harlem Renaissance, Fisher was a man of many talents: physician, radiologist, orator, musician and writer. He died far too young, in 1934, after unsuccessful surgery.