MURDER IN MOUNT HOLLY

London: Alan Ross, 1969. Fine in near fine jacket.. Uncommonly attractive first edition of Theroux's novel about a worthless young man shipped off to a pointless war, and the elderly sentimentalists who set out to bloodily avenge him. Theroux's third novel is a grouchy Vietnam War-era satire concerning an unwilling draftee who talks himself into a measure of self-sacrifice for the only cause that really means anything: at least, he reasons, "my death will keep that television going." Meanwhile, his landlady sets out to do her part on the home front by murdering some local communists. The novel was written in 1966, following Theroux's expulsion from the Peace Corps and (as the jacket flap notes) during the state of emergency in Uganda, when a curfew kept the author perpetually indoors. Whether this suffices to satisfactorily explain the book is doubtful. 7'' x 5''. Original red cloth with gilt-lettered spine. In original unclipped (25s.) dust jacket. 160 pages. Light scuffing to jacket at extremities.