Where Town Begins

New York: Greenberg: Publisher. Near Fine in Very Good dj. (c.1951). First Edition. Hardcover. NOISBN . [nice clean copy with just a touch of wear to extremities; jacket shows a bit of wear at edges and corners, a few small tears at edges and corners but no significant paper loss]. Michigan author's first novel (following a volume of poetry published in 1947), a noir-ish tale of a Navy veteran who returns to his family and his prosperous small-town business after the war. Everything's going along swimmingly, it seems, until the husband of an alcoholic woman with whom he was involved during the war shows up to remind him of his broken promise to the woman, who is now in a sanatorium. The result: "turmoil, violence and tragedy descend upon peaceful little Miltsburg." Werry published one more mystery/suspense novel, with the terrific title "Hammer Me Home," in 1955, then apparently went creatively dormant until the mid-1980s, when he came out with a pair of mysteries featuring a Michigan-based lady gumshoe named J.D. Mulroy -- a sort of "easy-going, grown-up version of Nancy Drew," according to one blurb -- and then really went dormant, by dying shortly after the publication of the second. .