skeleton – SMB Noir

December 1949 issue ~ cover art by Albert Drake

December 1949 issue

cover art by Albert Drake

better image than previously posted

November 1943 Canadian edition

November 1943 Canadian edition

January 1933 issue

January 1933

cover art by Sidney Riesenberg?

1949 Dell mapback – cover art by Gerald Gregg

1949 Dell mapback

cover art by Gerald Gregg/map by Ruth Belew

better image than previously posted

Fire will Freeze x 4

1944 Tower hardcover reissue

cover art by H.J. Hanschel (?)

1947 Dell mapback

map by Ruth Belew

1967 Signet reissue

1987 International Polygonics reissue

cover art by Roger Roth

1958 Avon reissue – cover art by Robert Maguire

1958 Avon paperback original

republished in 1968 by Walker as A Whiff of Death, Asimov’s preferred title

1968 Walker hardcover reissue

1970 Sphere edition from the UK

November 1945 issue ~ cover art by Samuel Cherry

cover art by Samuel Cherry

November 1945 issue

better image than previously posted

G.T. Fleming-Roberts, “Medium Dead” (Jeffrey Wren )

T.T. Flynn, “Murder in the Saddle” (Mr. Maddox)

D.L. Champion, “A Toast to the Killer” (Mariano Mercado)

Fergus Truslow, “The Corpse in a Golden Shay”

Jean Prentice, “The Perfectionist

WOOLRICH, Cornell (1903-68). The Bride wore Black. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940.

8o. Original cloth (slight lean); pictorial dust jacket by Charles Coleman (price-clipped, tiny chip to back panel, slight rubbing to joints and folds). Provenance: Nina Kelly Bruce (bookplate, signatures on front and back endpapers).

FIRST EDITION of Woolrich’s first mystery and a landmark of noir. “There are no suspects, no clues, yet the reader is tensely aware of mystery. There is only the woman, her victims, and the relentless drama of her life–a pale shadow that comes gradually into focus and is seen at last in brilliant outline” (dust jacket). The basis for François Truffaut’s film starring Jeanne Moreau. A Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone.