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AUDEMARS, Pierre, 1909-1989 & OTHERS : PARIS INTERLUDE [COVER TITLE]. London : Bear, Hudson, (1944). First edition. “Humour, surprise, adventure, the prize ring, outwitting the Gestapo in Paris, a suggestion of the supernatural, a glimpse of the Spain of today, and a little dirty work at the cross-roads, are among the subjects of these eleven stories”. Apart from Audemars, the other authors are P. G. Allen, Edward Cranston, the Canadian Denys Davies, Herbert Harrison, the prolific Michael Hervey, Tristan Nelson (two stories), the film critic David Ockham, and Fabian Tanner (two stories). £40 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45907 – or simply click on the button
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BACHMANN, Lawrence P. (Lawrence Paul), 1911-2004 : KISS OF DEATH. London : United Anglo-American Book Co., [ca.1948]. First British edition. Brilliant but clumsy and absent-minded doctor divines from some Rorschach tests that someone is about to be killed and that another guest of nurse Judy Ford will be the murderer. An interesting debut murder mystery from the American film producer and maker of Agatha Christie movies in the UK. Originally published by Knopf in New York in 1946. £50 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45915 – or simply click on the button
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“BARONI, Nick” : NIGHT CLUB MOLL. London : Curtis Warren, [ca.1950]. First edition. “Gilda’s voice sounded as stonecold dead as Johnny Morgan was. She had just entered the room, The Midge hot on her tail. None of the boys screening the bloody mess on the couch moved. None of them met her grey eyes. Except Chummy Ricketts, and he didn’t like what he read there”. “Nick Baroni” was a Curtis Warren house-name, first used by Frederick Tom Foden (1907-1982) and subsequently by various other writers, but although over twenty “Baroni” titles are known, perhaps eight by Foden, just one has been located in major libraries worldwide. £40 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45621 – or simply click on the button
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“BUXTON, Raymond” : NO GENTLE LADY. London : Modern Fiction, [1948]. First edition. A “Postman Always Rings Twice” type of tale, the lovely Carol married to ghastly filling-station proprietor Lem Spelter, passing-by Peter Willmore taking a job with them to pay his way. The book featured in a legal dispute between the publisher Edwin Turvey and his author Frank Dubrez Fawcett over who held the rights to the “Ben Sarto” pseudonym. Turvey’s case was that he had invented the name and could use it on any book he wished, Fawcett’s that he had written all the original Sarto titles and the name was clearly his. It was evidently Turvey s original intention to publish this as by “Ben Sarto”, a name given in larger letters on the cover than Buxton’s. The court case revealed that Buxton’s real name was Marsh, that the book had actually been written some years earlier, and that the foreword by “Ben Sarto” was initially written by Turvey and then cleaned up by Buxton/Marsh. £75 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45702 – or simply click on the button
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“CAPELLI, Ace” : TRAPPED. London : Castle Books [ca.1954]. First edition. Published by Castle Books of Grays Inn Road, distributed by the Gaywood Press, and apparently the thirty-fourth “Ace Capelli” title – a writer (according to the publishers) being spoken of as a second Raymond Chandler. The Capelli name was originally used by Stephen Daniel Frances (Hank Janson), and later taken over by Geoffrey Pardoe, Norman Lazenby, and others. £75 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45715 – or simply click on the button
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“COSTELLO, Pete” : MARIA BE MINE. London : Edwin Self & Co., [ca.1951]. First edition. The sultry Maria Stanmore – “Sultry? You wouldn’t find a hotter dame anywhere ... not this side of hell” – turns her attentions to New York vice cop Johnny Hendrick. It does not end well. An early Pete Costello title, with publisher Edwin Self operating from his earlier Grays Inn Road address. The Costello house-name was used by a number of Self’s stable of writers, including George Bell and Frederick Foden. £50 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45670 – or simply click on the button
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“DRAYTON, Ricky” – [BARNES, Michael Lethbridge Gorell, 1926-1982] : HELL AND HIGH WATER. London : Scion, (1951). First edition. “Right then Marcelle was doing a good job of intoxicating me, sitting there in a Bikini that wouldn’t have made a moth’s hors d’oeuvre, singing a smoochy ditty in a voice that would have been a swell contralto if there hadn’t been so much gin in it”. Murder and mayhem in New Orleans. £50 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45904 – or simply click on the button
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“DRAYTON, Ricky” – [BARNES, Michael Lethbridge Gorell, 1926-1982] : ONE FALSE MOVE. London : Milestone Publications, (1954). First edition. “Frank Marlowe, high-ranking Government executive engaged on top-secret work in Washington’s Pentagon building, made his one false move when he met copper-haired Fran Waring – a move that landed him in a web of blackmail, espionage – and murder”. £60 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45914 – or simply click on the button
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FIRTH, N. Wesley (Norman Wesley), 1920-1949 : BROADWAY DOLL [COVER TITLE]. London : Hamilton & Co. (Stafford), [1946]. First edition. Sixteen-year-old girl who knows boys can be bad, but not quite how bad, is acquitted of murder. Twenty years on, she writes down “what really went on that night in the luxurious room above the Bexton Burlesque Theatre”. £75 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45945 – or simply click on the button
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“GORDON, Spike” – [FEARN, John Russell, 1908-1960] : UNHAPPY HOPHEAD. London : Modern Fiction (London), [ca.1951]. First edition. Gangster client of ruthless defence attorney Stab Kelly is shot dead through his office window – two beautiful but wholly contrasting women are immediately involved. “Spike Gordon” was one of the new set of fictitious authors introduced by the Turveys at the height of their success – it is believed to mask the identity of John Russell Fearn. £75 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45692 – or simply click on the button
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“GRIFF” – [McKEAG, Ernest Lionel, 1896-1974] : RACKETS INCORPORATED. London : Modern Fiction (London), [1949]. First edition. “Here, in a tale of romance in the underworld of New York, famous American ace crime reporter ‘Griff’ makes his début to British readers and tears aside the veil that cloaks the activities of the callous racketeers who batten on human frailties”. McKeag launches the highly successful “Griff” pseudonym, later used by a variety of other authors beside himself. Reporter Bill Truscott knows at once that the sight of high-stepper Susette Delaine sitting alone at the Regency Bar of the Ritz-Deauville can only mean trouble. £40 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45675 – or simply click on the button
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“GRIFF” – [McKEAG, Ernest Lionel, 1896-1974] : RUB-OUT SPECIALITY. London : Modern Fiction, [1949]. First edition. “When Jinx Engels got a glim of the blonde in the mink coat in the foyer of the Blue Orchid he stopped dead on the sidewalk and took another gander through the plate-glass swing doors. It was Marilou all right. Then his grey matter side-stepped and took an eight-year flash-back. He remembered her when last he had seen her ...”. McKeag with a lively early title in the “Griff” series. £75 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45673 – or simply click on the button
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“GRIFF” : TRADING WITH BODIES. London : Modern Fiction (London), [1950]. First edition. One of the most successful of the Griff titles – at least three different editions are known: the present copy, with 160 pages, the name and address of the printers (Craig Mitchell & Co.) given only in abbreviated form, and with advertisements consonant with a publication date of 1950, would appear to pre-date both the 128pp edition and the 110pp one. Chapter headings include Blondes Mean Trouble, White Slave Racket, When Crooks Fall Out, etc. £75 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45677 – or simply click on the button
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“GRIFF” – [FAWCETT, Frank Dubrez, 1891-1968] : GOODBYE TOMORROW. London : Modern Fiction (London), [1951]. First edition. “I’m surprised you didn’t join the police force,” she said. I’d squatted on that springy, tubular metal chair she’d indicated. “I was always bottom of my class. But that ain’t low enough for the I.Q. the dicks insist on. And I couldn’t match up to their high standard of dishonesty and corruption”. Rich private eye for kicks Don Danby takes on an insurance case. £50 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45681 – or simply click on the button
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“GRIFF” – [FAWCETT, Frank Dubrez, 1891-1968] : CROOKED COFFINS. London : Modern Fiction (London), [1952]. First edition. “If a guy is a private eye, which is the other word for private detective or inquiry agent, he oughta keep his hands off his lady clients, if any. Tonio Folari didn’t do that” – and Maria Speratta is quick to teach him a lesson. “You just can’t leave off, once you start. You go hurrying, thirsty. You lose sleep. You miss your love-date. But you get forgiven when you say: ‘I’ve been reading Crooked Coffins’. Yes, folks – this book does that to you – and everybody”. £50 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45682 – or simply click on the button
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“GRIFF” : DEVIL’S DAUGHTER. London : Modern Fiction (London), [1952]. First edition. “They say that the Devil was in cahoots with Uncle Sam at the time when Pittsburg got built. I’d not know, but I’m not denying that the gory, upleaping flames of the great blast furnaces, and writhing, unearthly-yellow glows of the steel ovens look mighty like it”. Well-off private eye Don Danby has a body fall on him soon after he arrives. £40 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45758 – or simply click on the button
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“GRIFF” : YOU PAY THE PRICE. London : Modern Fiction (London), [1952]. First edition. Man hits an abandoned parked car on his way to Chicago – it’s riddled with bullets and a dead blonde falls out. Then a spray gun is planted in his car. £40 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45674 – or simply click on the button
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“GRIFF” – [NEWTON, William (William Simpson), 1923-2009] : BULLETS FOR SNOOPERS. London : Modern Fiction (London), [1953]. First edition. Con-men, pimps, gamblers, gun-men and their women gather in a bar in San Francisco and talk of an escape from Alcatraz. The “Griff” house-name was used by at least half a dozen authors, but the present title is attributed to William Simpson Newton. £50 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45679 – or simply click on the button
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“GRIFF” : THE SILVER KEY. London : Modern Fiction (London), [1953]. First edition. “The chronicle of three days of terror in the life of the District Attorney’s Chief Investigator, Shaun O’Riordan. Murder gone mad aptly describes that searing melodrama of the law-and-order brigade’s fight against one of the most indecent corruptions that ever polluted a fair city ... In the process he met some people of very curious characteristics, including several very lovely ladies”. £40 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45678 – or simply click on the button
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“HORGAN, McCall” : THE NIGHT FEELS AWFUL LONELY. London : Editorial Services, [1957]. First edition. Horgan is hired by Motion Picture International to buy off a scandal magazine which has a sizzling story on their million-dollar actress – then the man who runs the magazine is found dead. Number 11 of a dozen or so McCall Horgan “Glamour Mysteries” published in 1957-1958. £25 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45668 – or simply click on the button
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JAGGER, Arthur : MURDER INTENDED. Glasgow : McKenzie Vincent & Co., [ca.1950]. First edition. Murder on the outskirts of St Albans – Scotland Yard is called in. £20 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45916 – or simply click on the button
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“LAVELLE, Marc”- [WILLIS, Ernest Lister Hale (Lisle), 1919-1988] : CALL ME SUGAR! London : Edwin Self & Co., [ca.1953]. First edition. Raven-haired Belle Marsden wants to leave one strong, muscular and powerful man, for another, even more brutal, who has just come out of prison. £25 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45667 – or simply click on the button
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“MADISON, Rick” : LOOK OUT FOR LOUELLA. London : John Spencer & Co., [ca.1952]. First edition. “Her body is her meal ticket ... and she never goes hungry”! “Rick Madison” was a house-name used by both Sydney James Bounds (1920-2006) and Lisle Willis (1919-1988). £50 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45663 – or simply click on the button
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“SARTO, Ben” – [FAWCETT, Frank Dubrez, 1891-1968] : SOHO SPIVS. London : Modern Fiction, [1948]. First edition. “These ‘spivs’, as they are named, have no identity cards, no ration books, no clothing or other coupons of legal acquisition. They are, in a civic sense, outlaws”. Post-war London memorably evoked as swell-looking “Yorkshire Alice”, popular with thieves and con-men, is knifed to death in a Soho alley. Correspondence from 1947 between Fawcett and his publisher, Edwin Turvey, reveals that the original manuscript was mislaid for a time, but that Fawcett was paid £33 for this “very good Sarto indeed” and Perl probably £5 for the cover. £50 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45699 – or simply click on the button
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“SAXE, Baron de” : THE DEMI-MONDE OF PARIS. London : Camden Publishing Co., [ca.1930]. An undated reissue of typical Camden Publishing fare, apparently first issued in 1916 and perhaps written, or at least edited, by the Australian author William Nicholas Willis (1858-1922). Dora Stuyvesant, quiet daughter of the leader of the American community in Paris, is introduced to society – somewhat in the shadow of her flamboyant older sister Sybil. £40 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45898 – or simply click on the button
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“SHANE, Mark” – [NORWOOD, Victor (Victor George Charles), 1920-1983] : THEY KILL TO LIVE. London : Alexander Moring, [ca.1956]. [Second edition]. “It’s close to sundown, and way ahead lights are winking up along the sprawling sucker-trap that is the Hellfire Strip, wide open merry-go-round of the good-time dolls and the sugar-daddies ...” – a pacy tale set in Las Vegas. Originally published under Reginald Carter’s earlier Comyns imprint in 1953. £40 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45933 – or simply click on the button
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“SHANNON, Brad”- [HANSON, Victor Joseph, 1920-2001] : SO MANY DEAD. London : Scion, [1950]. First edition. “I had one hand on the wheel and the other on Annette. I was plastered and the feel of her made me crazier still ... then there was a sudden note of alarm in Annette’s cries as the car did a buck and a wing on the edge of a ditch ...”. £50 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45661 – or simply click on the button
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“STORME, Michael” – [DAWSON, George Herbert, 1916-1980] : SATAN BUYS A WREATH. Stoke-on-Trent : Archer Press, [1951]. First edition. “The steady mumble jumble of the speeding train vibrates every nerve in my noggin just as if some wise-guy had shoved a juke-box down my earhole ... All that unfaithfulness had brought me to the bottle”. A Nick Cranley tale. £75 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45658 – or simply click on the button
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“STORME, Michael” – [DAWSON, George Herbert, 1916-1980] : TIPTOE THRO’ A GRAVEYARD. London : Harborough Publishing Co., [1953]. First edition. Ambulance chasing and insurance fraud with Molly Pykeron and a Cadillac in Miami. £40 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45934 – or simply click on the button
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“VALOIS, Jean-Paul” – [WILLIS, Ernest Lister Hale (Lisle), 1919-1988] : COLETTE CHÈRIE. London : Edwin Self & Co., [ca.1952]. First edition. “A fascinating story of the modern Paris underworld with all the romantic and glamorous aspects of life with artist’s models and midinettes” from “one of the newest successes in modern French literature”. This and the rest of the authorial biography – poor boy from Montmartre, served with the Maquis, imprisoned by the Gestapo – is all a complete fiction. Valois was the pseudonym of Lisle Willis, ex-RAF English school-teacher, local councillor and prospective parliamentary candidate. Both he and his publisher, Edwin Self, were tried on bizarre obscenity charges in 1954 and, even more bizarrely, found guilty. Self went to prison, Willis heavily fined and barred for life from teaching (he went into television). For an excellent account of the whole affair see Steve Holland’s “The Big Panic : The Story of Edwin Self and Pedigree Books”. £40 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45944 – or simply click on the button
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“VANE, Brett” : ALWAYS A DAME. London : Curtis Warren, [ca.1950]. First edition. Set in Los Angeles – Dulcie Friede, “a well-bred girl with a background of dough ... a girl in a million – like Cleopatra, Juliet and Betty Grable”, falls in with a man just out of jail and looking for recompense. “Brett Vane” was a Curtis Warren house-name, first used by Frederick Tom Foden (1907-1982) and subsequently by various other writers, including Norman Lazenby (1914-2003). Although fifty or so Brett Vane titles are known, over half by Foden, only six are to be found in major libraries worldwide. £50 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45619 – or simply click on the button
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“VANE, Roland” – [McKEAG, Ernest Lionel, 1896-1974] : THE DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND. London : Modern Fiction, [1949]. First edition. Pretty secretary Claire Norton, orphaned in the war, sexually harassed from her last job, lands a new position with celebrated author “John Mallory” – who turns out to be a Joan Mallory, with a handsome artist nephew. Passport required for a new world of Biarritz, Cauterets, Pau and the Pyrenees. £50 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45704 – or simply click on the button
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“ZORÉ, Hyman” : OLD NEW YORK. Glasgow : Muir-Watson, [1951]. First edition. Small-town beauty Topaz Gellhart surrenders herself to an itinerant artist and now knows she must experience little old New York. Meanwhile, Jek Arminos, New York gang boss, drives pretty Sally Armour to suicide. £75 To purchase, call us or e-mail us at books@ashrare.com quoting stock number 45666 – or simply click on the button
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