Donald E. Westlake, Richard Stark, James Mitchell, Victor Canning, Anthony Price, Cornell Woolrich and Harry Carmichael on eBay

What do Donald E. Westlake, Richard Stark, James Mitchell, Victor Canning, Anthony Price, Cornell Woolrich and Harry Carmichael all have in common? Aside from the fact that they're all blokes... and all crime/thriller writers of one sort or another... and indeed all wrote spy fiction at one time or another... and doubtless there are other commonalities besides, but the one that concerns us here is that presently I have eBay auctions running for books by all six of them (Westlake and Stark of course being the same person).

There are auctions for ten books in total, all of which finish on Sunday, and only one of which, as I type, has a bid in. The books are a mix of British and American first editions, mostly hardbacks (and one paperback), some quite scarce, all plucked from my personal collection (most having appeared previously on this very blog), all listed with relatively low starting prices. They are as follows:

A 1974 American first edition of Donald E. Westlake's Jimmy the Kid, the Dortmunder novel that features  excerpts from the 'missing' Parker novel Child Heist.

A 1974 American first edition of Richard Stark's Butcher's Moon, the sixteenth Parker novel and the explosive finale to the original run of Parkers.

A 1977 American first edition of Donald E. Westlake's Nobody's Perfect, the fourth Dortmunder novel.

A 1971 British first edition of Donald E. Westlake's Adios Scheherazade, his fictionalised account of his time as a sleaze paperback writer.

A 1966 British first edition of Donald E. Westlake's The Fugitive Pigeon, his first 'nephew' caper, featuring a fab Denis McLoughlin dust jacket.

A 1974 British first edition of James Mitchell's Death and Bright Water, the third Callan spy novel.

A 1972 British first edition of Victor Canning's The Rainbird Pattern, second novel in the 'Birdcage' spy series and believed by many to be the author's best book.

A 1974 British first edition of Anthony Price's Other Paths to Glory, the fifth novel in his David Audley spy series.

A 1958 British first edition of Harry Carmichael's A Question of Time, with a great William Randell dust jacket.

And a 1946 first American paperback edition of Cornell Woolrich's classic noir thriller The Black Path of Fear.

London Paperback and Pulp Book Fair 2016

Absence, they say – and who am I to naysay 'they' – makes the heart grow fonder, which was why I was delighted to see the return on Sunday, after a three-year absence, of the London Paperback and Pulp Book Fair – as were a good many others judging by the crowds at the 2016 event. Now at a new venue – the Royal National Hotel in Russell Square, tacked onto the monthly Bloomsbury Ephemera Fair – this year's fair was a busy, bustling, er, affair, with the likes of Jamie Sturgeon, David Hyman and others purveying fine selections of vintage paperbacks and pulps (as one might expect, given the name of the thing). I came away with this little lot:

Top row, three Cornell Wooolrich paperbacks: The Black Curtain (Dell, 1948), The Black Path of Fear (Avon, 1946) and, ah, The Black Path of Fear again (Ace, 1968); middle row, three John D. MacDonald paperbacks: Death Trap (Dell, 1957); Deadly Welcome (Dell, 1959) and The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything (Frederick Muller/Gold Medal, 1964); bottom row: C. S. Forester's Payment Deferred (Guild Books paperback, 1950), Margaret Millar's Beast in View (Corgi paperback, 1960), Elmore Leonard's Hombre (Ballantine paperback, 1967 reprint) and John Fowles' The Collector (Pan paperback first printing, 1965) – that last one actually bought from a paperback dealer in the main Ephemera Fair. A pretty good haul, all told. Here's hoping the wait between fairs isn't quite so long next time.