Tag: signet paperback

1950 Signet reissue

Signet Books (September, 1950), first publication with this title

1944 Jefferson House hardcover, Hue and Cry

1951 published in the UK by Dakers as The Murder of Marion Mason

the author’s debut novel

1st in his series with Singer Batts, Shakespearean scholar, hotel owner and armchair detective assisted by his hotel manager Joe Spinder

better image than previously posted

1960 Signet paperback original – cover art buy Barye Phillips

1960 Signet paperback original

cover art by Barye Phillips

3rd with Aloysius Algernon Steele, a private eye who prefers to be called “Rocky”

West was a black physician who lived in Liberia and specialized in tropical diseases, and who wrote hardboiled pulp about a white shamus in NYC

Clean Break into The Killing

New York: E.P. Dutton, 1955. First Edition. In publisher’s trial dust jacket, date stamped March 1, 1955, on the bottom of the front flap.

Basis for Stanley Kubrick’s breakthrough 1956 film “The Killing,” starring Sterling Hayden in one of his defining roles.

1956 Signet reissue – cover art by Robert Maguire

1988 Black Lizard reissue – cover art by Kirwin

1956 United Artists – written and directed by Stanley Kubrick