Badge of Evil (Touch of Evil)

New York: Dodd, Mead, 1956. First Edition, First Printing. Signed by the author: “Bob Wade, aka Whit Masterson.” Very good copy with some minor edge wear, with a small moisture stain (flat not rumpling kind) to the upper right hand corner of the front free endpaper, and with more extensive stains to the rear endpaper. In a very used and dust soiled price-clipped dust jacket with dampstaining the rear flap and showing in the interior of the jacket’s interior blank area, with some fading to the spine and a few small chips and tears.The literary basis of the (truncated) Orson Welles film masterpiece ‘Touch of Evil’ starring Orson Welles, Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Joseph Calleia, Akim Tamiroff, Marlene Dietrich, and Dennis Weaver, with uncredited cameos by Joseph Cotten, Ray Collins, and Mercedes McCambridge. The front panel of the dust jacket is a graphic illustration of a man in a trench coat and hat running from a bundle of a half dozen lit sticks of dynamite. (Inventory #: 18167E)