801. Vickers, Roy introduces A Crime Writers Association Anthology: Some Like Them Dead

Published by Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1960

1st edition hardback. Boards bumped at the bottom corners and foxed at the page edges otherwise very good. Clean, no previous owner names or marks and gilt titles at the spine nice and bright. Dust wrapper, present and complete. Slightly foxed but unclipped and generally very good. Stories by Roy Vickers, Margery Allingham, Anthony Gilbert, Ngaio Marsh and others.

1282. Vine, Barbara: A Dark-Adapted Eye

Published by Viking, London. 1986

1st edition hardback in fine/as new condition. There are no previous owner names or marks. The dust wrapper is not price clipped. Barbara Vine is a pseudonym used by Ruth Rendell. When Faith Severn's aunt was hanged for murder, the reason behind her dark deed died with her. For 30 years, the family hid the truth--until a journalist prompts Faith to peer back to the day when her aunt took knife in hand and entered a child's nursery.

1283. Wainwright, John: The Take-Over Men

Published by Collins (Crime Club), 1969

Hardback 1st edition. Very good in a very good unclipped d/w. Jacket is a little rubbed at the edges and the front board has had a slight knock to the top corner. A book in the Lewis series.

128. Walters, Minette: The Ice House

Published by Macmillan, London. 1992.

1st edition hardback in near fine condition. There is a slight lean to the book otherwise fine. There are no previous owner names or marks and the dust wrapper is not clipped. This is the scarce one, a Macmillan Crime Case and it is not an ex-library copy!!!. Green boards with gilt titles at the spine in the white jacket with only one face under the ice. Walters' rare first award winning crime novel.

1285. Walters, Minette: The Scold's Bridle

Published by Macmillan, 1994

Hardback, 2nd Printing. Very good condition, both book and dust wrapper. I wonder if I should keep these diaries under lock and key. Jenny Spede has disturbed them again . . . What does she make, I wonder, of an old woman, deformed by arthritis, stripping naked for a young man? The pills worry me more. Ten is such a round number to be missing . . . Mathilda Gillespie's body was found nearly two days after she had taken an overdose and slashed her wrists with a Stanley knife. But what shocked Dr Sarah Blakeney the most was the scold's bridle obscuring the dead woman's face, a metal contraption grotesquely adorned with a garland of nettles and Michaelmas daisies. What happened at Cedar House in the tortured hours before Mathilda's death? The police assume that the coroner will return a verdict of suicide. Only Dr Blakeney, it seems, doubts the verdict. Until it is discovered that Mathilda's diaries have disappeared . . .

1286. Walters, Minette: The Breaker

1st edition hardback, fine in a fine dust wrapper. When she revisited, always with astonishment, what had happened to her, it was the deliberate breaking of her fingers that remained indelibly printed on her memory . . . Twelve hours after a woman's broken body is washed up on a deserted shore, her traumatized three-year-old daughter is discovered twenty miles away wandering the streets of Poole. But why was Kate killed and her daughter, a witness, allowed to live? And why weren't they together? More curiously, why had Kate willingly boarded a boat when she had a terror of drowning at sea? Police suspicion centres on both a young actor, whose sailing boat is moored just yards from where the toddler is found, and the murdered woman's husband. Was he really in Liverpool the night she died? And why does their daughter scream in terror every time he tries to pick her up?

982. Walters, Minette: The Dark Room

Published by Macmillan, 1995

1st edition hardback in fine condition with a fine dust wrapper. Jinx Kingsley, fashion photographer and heiress, tried to kill herself after being jilted by her fiancé, who has since disappeared. When she wakes from her coma, she recalls nothing about the suicide attempt. Then the memories begin to surface, memories of utter desperation and absolute terror.

2176. Walters, Minette: The Shape of Snakes

Published by Macmillan, London. 2000

Hardback UK edition in fine condition. Macmillan designated this limited edition as the second printing of the book. Bound in blue cloth with gilt titles and decoration in a matching slipcase. A limited edition of 600 signed & numbered copies, this being #66. November 1978. And in a London suburban street, a disturbed West Indian woman is apparently the victim of a road accident. Yet the young married woman who narrates this mesmerising tale and found her dying at the roadside, is strangely convinced that she was murdered. This leads to her spending the next 20 years doggedly digging out the truth from what turns out to be a cesspool of intrigue and lies from which some terrible truths finally emerge. Letters and photographs are intermittently inserted into an insidiously spellbinding narrative that culminates in a shockingly believable climax.

1021. Watson, Hilary (Editor): Winter's Crimes 14

Published by Macmillan, 1982

1st edition hardback, near fine d/w and book with slight browning to edges. All the stories in this volume are new and have been specially written for the collection. Contributions by Simon Brett, Peter Lovesey and others.

1287. Wesson, Marianne: Render Up the Body

Published by Headline, 1997

1st edition hardback fine in a fine dust wrapper. After 10 years as a lawyer Cinda Hayes knows she no longer believes in the legal system the way she used to. Now in a new job, Cinda finds herself inveigled by her old law professor into agreeing to defend a death row murderer also convicted of rape.

1288. Westbrook, Kate: Secret Servant: The Moneypenny Diaries

Published by John Murray, London. 2007

1st edition paperback in near fine condition and signed by the author. Front cover corners very slightly curled otherwise fine and signed at the title page by Westbrook AKA Miss Moneypenny. Jane Moneypenny may project a cool, calm and collected image but her secret diaries reveal a rather different story. In the grip of an uncertain love affair and haunted by a dark family secret, the last thing she needs is a crisis at work. But the Secret Intelligence Service is in chaos. One senior officer is on trial for treason, another has defected to Moscow and her beloved James Bond has been brainwashed by the KGB. Only a woman's touch can save them. Moneypenny soon finds herself embroiled in a highly-charged adventure infused with the glamour of the Cold War espionage game. Alone on a dangerous Russian mission she turns, with breathless intimacy, to writing a truly explosive private diary.

1289. Whalley, Peter: The Allegation

Published by Ringpull, 1994

1st edition hardback book very good. Very good d/w, slightly edge worn with a small tear to the edge.

310. Whelan, Hilary: Dead Cow

Published by Constable, London. 1994.

1st edition hardback. The book is very fine in a like unclipped dust wrapper. There are no previous owner names or marks. The authors first novel, featuring Anglo-French lawyer Zoe Chavanac ('sexiest shoulders in Oxford. Mind like a steel trap. Could freeze molten lava')

1291. Williams, David: Treasure Up In Smoke

Published by Collins (Crime Club), 1990

Hardback 1st thus. A crime club diamond jubilee edition. Vg-unclipped d/w. Near fine book. One of 12 selected crime story reprints bound in white Linson with silver blocking on front and spine. This book was originally published in 1978 and is the third novel to feature Mark Treasure.

Published by Penguin/Michael Joseph, London. 2012

1st edition paperback in fine condition. Large format paperback in a dust wrapper. The dust wrapper is not clipped and is also fine. There are no previous owner names or marks. Catherine Sorgeiul lives with her Uncle in a rambling house in London's East End. She has few companions and little to occupy the days beyond her own colourful imagination. But then a murderer strikes, ripping open the chests of young girls and stuffing hair into their mouths to resemble a beak, leading the press to christen him The Man of Crows. And as Catherine hungrily devours the news, she finds she can channel the voices of the dead ... and comes to believe she will eventually channel The Man of Crows himself. But the murders continue to panic the city and Catherine gradually realizes she is snared in a deadly trap, where nothing is as it first appears ... and lurking behind the lies Catherine has been told are secrets more deadly and devastating than anything her imagination can conjure.

1292. Williams, Timothy: The Puppeteer

Published by Gollancz, 1985

1st edition hardback. Small inscription to the front endpaper and a small nick at the bottom corner of the dust wrapper otherwise very good. In a cafe on the shores of Lake Garda Commissario Trotti is enjoying a solitary breakfast when a masked man springs from a passing Mercedes. Shots are fired, and the man at the next table falls dead. But were the bullets meant for Trotti?

1293. Wilson, Barbara: Murder in the Collective

Published by The Women's Press, 1984

1st edition hardback. Dusty top edge to book and wrapper else fine. Author's scarce first crime novel. Introducing Pam Nilsen, her twin sister Penny and the Best Printing collective, a print-shop hovering on the brink of a merger with lesbian-owned B. Violet Typesetting. When sabotage and murder erupt, Pam follows a trail of suspects.

1294. Winn, Dilys: Murder Ink: The Mystery Readers Companion

Published by Westbridge, 1978

1st U.K. paperback, near fine condition & complete, with the (ending) envelope intact & unopened.

1295. Winn, Dilys: Murderess Ink: The Better Half of the Mystery

Published by Bell Publishing, 1981

1st thus US hardback, very good+ condition. The book is marked at the front endpaper/pastedown hinge but nothing too nasty, possibly occurred at the time of binding. Large red cloth boards with black titles to spine and upper. The dust wrapper is not clipped but has some small nicks to the edges and a couple of bigger tears have been tape repaired. A very presentable copy.

1151. Winslow, Pauline Glen: The Brandenburg Hotel

Published by Macmillan, 1976

Hardback 1st edition. Very good book and unclipped d/w. Just a small dent to the bottom front board. An early case for Capricorn (Detective Sergeant)

1297. Wood, Ted: When the Killing Starts

Published by Collins (Crime Club), 1989

Hardback 1st edition. A couple of small closed tears to rear panel of dust wrapper otherwise fine book & jacket. Police Chief Reid Bennett agrees to find and restore a rich woman's son now training with a band of mercenaries in the wilds of Ontario. But success spells the start of trouble for Reid and his Alsatian Sam.

1298. Woods, Sara: My Life Is Done

Published by Firecrest, 1988

1st thus, hardback in very good condition in a very good dust wrapper. One of the Anthony Maitland series of books.

1299. York, Andrew: The Predator

Published by Hutchinson, 1968

Hardback 1st edition. Very good book and unclipped d/w. Wrapper laminate is starting to lift at the edges, nothing major. An American agent dies whilst on an undercover mission in Rome but before he does he gives away the location of the headquarters of British Security's `Elimination Section' thus setting in motion a runaway train of violent events steered by The Eliminator himself, the professional assassin Jonas Wilde. Acting alone and without official sanction, Wilde infiltrates a strange multi-national paramilitary gang with Mafia connections, seemingly masterminded by the enigmatic and utterly ruthless Glorious Torrio. Yet the gang's plans spread far beyond Italy and far beyond conventional criminal activity. As an outrageous conspiracy to destabilise the USA takes shape it seems nothing can stop the awesome Miss Torrio. But there is a chink in her armour: she's never met Jonas Wilde before.

1303. York, Andrew: The Eliminator

Published by Hutchinson, 1966

Hardback near fine 1st edition in a very good d/w. Jacket has a 1/2 inch nick at the top of the front panel and very slight wear at the edges. The book has a previous owner name to front endpaper. Jonas Wilde is self-reliant and supremely confident. In his job he has to be, as he is the official assassin of the British security service with 32 successful 'missions' to his credit. Returning from the West Indies after one such mission, he decides to quit whilst he is ahead - but will his secretive masters let him?If he wants to retire from his dangerous life, Wilde has to agree to one last job: the elimination of a defecting Czech scientist currently being held in England by the American CIA. The only problem is that the CIA and British Security are supposed to be on the same side.....aren't they?

2341. Yorke, Margaret: Devil's Work

Published by St Martin's Press, New York, 1982

US 1st edition hardback, second printing. Very near fine in condition. The un-clipped dust wrapper is only very slightly rubbed at the edges and tips. There are no previous owner names. When Alan Parker is suddenly made redundant, he can't bring himself to tell his wife. With time on his hands while secretly and desperately looking for a job, he meets a waif-like little girl, Tessa, and her lonely, widowed mother. Alan discovers he can confide in Louise, and feels protective towards her and her daughter. But then Tessa disappears. Alan, once utterly respectable, is now unemployed and living a life of deception and adultery. To the police, he is the prime suspect of a hideous and sordid crime.

1300. Yorke, Margaret: Almost the Truth

Published by Little Brown, 1994

Hardback reprint very good book and dust wrapper. During a burglary, a young woman is raped. The fact that her father made no attempt to protect her shatters the family more than the actual violation. When the rapist is freed, one of the family decides to apply their own justice.

1301. Yorke, Margaret: Act of Violence

Published by Little Brown, 1997

1st edition hardback very good book and dust wrapper. The facade of the quintessentially English market town of Mickleburgh has successfully hidden the secrets of its inhabitants for generations but the casual murder of a man trying to prevent some vandalism shatters the peaceful veneer. Parents are forced to consider that their children might be involved in the killing and the aftermath of violent death reveals unexpected reactions and emotions between partners and friends. And moving with the community is someone who has a very close relationship with murder, a part of their history they thought they had buried successfully but which now threatens to resurface and damage a great many people.

1622. Yorke, Margaret: Dangerous to Know

Published by Hutchinson, 1993

1st edition hardback. Slightly darkened page edges otherwise very good in a very good unclipped dust wrapper. There are no previous owner names or marks. For years, Hermione has been oppressed by her husband, Walter. She has become his domestic slave, forced to account for every penny of her housekeeping allowance and forced to submit to him whenever he demands his conjugal rights. Hermione however tentatively tries to acquire a measure of independence but her husbands desire to dominate women is becoming pathologically dangerous.