The Wolf in the Garden

New York/Toronto: Longmans, Green and Co.. Fair. 1931. First Edition. Hardcover. (no dust jacket, but encased in a nice-looking facsimile reproduction of the original first edition jacket; see 2nd image posted with this listing) [considerable shelfwear, bumping and fraying at all corners, external soiling, red spine lettering dulled, light staining along right side of front cover]. (pen & ink frontispiece drawing) A werewolf thriller set in a small village in New York's Hudson Valley in the late 18th century. The trouble starts when a mysterious French count, said to be fleeing the Revolution's guillotine, moves into the village, shortly after which there commences a series of grisly killings perpetrated by a mysterious wolf-life creature -- which eventually turns out to be the Count himself, in his lycanthropical form. (First clue: his name is the Comte de Saint Loup.) A parallel narrative thread involves a romantic triangle that develops around another newcomer to the village, the beautiful Felicity Paige, as the Count and a local swain compete for her affections. This erstwhile young fellow enlists the help of the local minister (an occult buff) and Felicity's Haitian maid (well-versed in werewolf-fighting folklore, it seems) to track down and kill the murderous beast. NOTE again that this book bears a FACSIMILE dust jacket, which has not been factored in to our pricing. .