first edition Hardcover
1947 · Garden City NY
by Ryan, Jessica
Garden City NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc. for The Crime Club. Near Fine in Very Good dj. 1947. First Edition. Hardcover. [book is nice and clean with minimal shelfwear; the jacket puts up a good external appearance, but checking the verso reveals some internal tape-repairs, and also the fact that the black areas at the spine ends and along the top and bottom edges of the front panel have been "touched up" to improve the jacket's appearance to the eye -- and despite being an amateur job, it was pretty effective]. Mystery novel, set in San Francisco, about a professor of Slavic languages at UC-Berkeley who doubles (of course) as an amateur sleuth, in this case trying to solve the murder of a famous comedian who's been found knifed to death on the stage of an empty theater. The professor has the fanciful name of Gregory Sergievitch Pavlov ("better known as Grischa"), and to help solve the crime he enlists "the aid of his old friend, Shaughnessy the cop." (This was actually the second "Grischa and Shaughnessy" mystery -- the first was "The Man Who Asked Why," published two years earlier -- but if the idea was a more extended series than that, it seems to have petered out after this book.) The author was the wife of actor Robert Ryan from 1939 until her death in 1972; the couple was among the co-founders of the noted Los Angeles progressive Oakwood School. . (Inventory #: 27090)