Rare, spookily-inscribed first printing of McCloy's disquieting locked-room mystery, set in motion by a teenager's evocation of a poltergeist.
Near fine in very good jacket.
Price: $750.00
"Everyone who has ever slept in that room has been found dead in the morning."
Like many of McCloy's better-known novels, MR. SPLITFOOT derives its power from McCloy's skillful construction of an uncanny atmosphere and the suggestion of paranormal as well as psychological explanations for events. Recurring detective-psychiatrist Basil Willing arrives to disperse the mystery in traditional rationalist ghostbusting fashion, but not before McCloy derives the maximum effect from her ambiguous haunting. Though "most Golden Age writers did their best work before 1945, and declined thereafter, McCloy did exactly the opposite [...] The later McCloy works are really dazzling, and the reader should run, not walk, to get hold of copies of them" (Grost). Scarce overall, rare signed.
Read more: Fuller & Grost, "Helen McCloy," Golden Age of Detection Wiki.
First edition. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, (1968). 8'' x 5.25''. Original red cloth stamped in black. In original unclipped ($3.95) pictorial dust jacket by Tim Gaydos. A Red Badge Mystery. 211, [1] pages. Inscribed on front free endpaper: "I hope this scares / you – it scared me / when I was writing / it – / Helen McCloy." Minor wear to boards, faint offsetting to endpapers. Rubbing and light edgewear to jacket.
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