Denis Healey's George V. Higgins Book Collection

Every year, the East Sussex village of Alfriston – not far from the East Sussex town of Lewes, where I live and work – holds a Summer Festival. Often as not I'll pop over there on the summer bank holiday, usually on the Monday when there's also a boot sale in the playing field as well as, on the beautiful village green beside the River Cuckmere, a selection of stalls and games and rides. Best of all – and this is something I'd completely forgotten until I got there this year – there's a secondhand book stall; more of a marquee really, with tables arranged in a circle, laden with boxes stuffed with fiction and non-fiction (hardback and paperback).

Rifling through the wares this year I started to notice a number of George V. Higgins books among the selection of hardback fiction. Higgins is an author I've tried once (The Friends of Eddie Coyle, his 1972 debut) and keep meaning to return to – a noted stylist whose novels, many of them of a crime fiction bent, others of a political persuasion, are largely comprised of long stretches of dialogue, with little if any description. The more I looked in the boxes of books, the more Higgins I found. Evidently someone in Alfriston was a fan... but then I started looking inside the books, at the ownership signatures on the front endpapers of one or two of the books and, in some cases, inscriptions on title pages from Higgins himself, and realised who that fan was: former Secretary of State for Defence (1964–70), Chancellor of the Exchequer (1974–79) and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party (1980–83) Denis Healey.

Healey, who passed away in 2015, and his wife Edna, who died in 2010, amassed a huge book collection over 40 years at their Alfriston home, much of which was bought by local bookshop Much Ado Books (a shop I've written about more than once on Existential Ennui), and some of which wound up in an Alfriston book sale in September (which, annoyingly, I didn't find out about until well after the fact). The collection ranged across a variety of subjects – art, photography, history, poetry, literature and, it seems, George V. Higgins.

Only a couple of the Higgins books I found on the stall had Healey ownership signatures in them, and just three were signed and inscribed by Higgins, but I bought the whole lot anyway (twelve books at a quid each) as it was almost certain they all belonged to Healey and it seemed right to keep the collection together (or at least as much of it as possible; there may have been other Higgins book bought by other folks before I got to them). According to the dated ownership signature in the earliest book I came across, a 1973 Secker & Warburg first of The Digger's Game (Higgins' second novel), Healey bought that one in 1977, and then at some point his and Higgins' paths must have crossed, judging by the warm author inscriptions in Victories (Henry Holt, 1990), Bomber's Law (Henry Holt/Owl paperback, 1994) and Swan Boats at Four (Little, Brown, 1995).

A couple of the books are association copies: a 1979 Harper & Row edition of A Year or So with Edgar, which is inscribed to Healey by Kit McMahon, former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England; and a 1987 Holt edition of Outlaws, which is inscribed by political scientist Graham Allison, with a compliment slip from Libor founder Milos Zombanakis.

And on a separate book stall in the boot fair field I found a 1974 Doubleday edition of Penelope Mortimer's Long Distance, inscribed by Mortimer to Edna Healey, thanking her for "a BBC birthday".

Quite the collection all told.

Andrew York, George V. Higgins, Brian Garfield and Charles McCarry in British Thriller Book Cover Design of the 1970s and 1980s

When I established Existential Ennui's new permanent page, British Thriller Book Cover Design of the 1970s and 1980s, at the end of last week, I did so partly with the purpose in mind that it would afford me the opportunity to blog about some of the many secondhand books I've collected but haven't yet found the time to read (and probably won't for a while), thus at least allowing me to clear them from my groaning 'to blog about' shelves and instead move them to boxes in the loft – my reasoning being that though they may be out of (direct) sight, I can always refer to their posts on Existential Ennui when I'm pondering what to read next. Of course, what will probably happen is I'll forget all about this and instead do what I usually do when pondering what to read next, which is to stand before my bookcases (often in my pants) and study the books therein; but that's the idea, anyway. Cases in point are the books below, all of them by authors already represented in British Thriller Book Cover Design of the 1970s and 1980s. And they are:

The Dominator by Andrew York – an alias of author Christopher Nicole – published in hardback by Hutchinson in 1969, jacket photograph by George Coral. This is the fifth novel in York's nine-book series starring Jonas Wilde, a.k.a. the Eliminator, and not only is it now in the British Thriller Book Cover Design of the 1970s and 1980s gallery, I've also added it to this Jonas Wilde cover gallery, where a number of other George Coral wrappers can be found (Coral's work can also be found on the jacket of the 1968 Jonathan Cape edition of Kingsley Amis's I Want it Now). Strictly speaking, as it was published in 1969 it really falls outside the purview of the former, but stylistically I'd say it's very much a child of the '70s rather than the '60s, so I'm bunging it in anyway, alongside the 1984 Severn House edition of York's non-Wilde novel The Combination, which sports a jacket photograph (of a mosque in Isfahan, Iran) by Michael Lancaster, and which I picked up on holiday in Suffolk.

The Digger's Game by George V. Higgins, published in hardback by Secker & Warburg in 1973, jacket design by Tom Simmonds. Higgins has made a few prior appearances on Existential Ennui, the last time being in 2011; The Digger's Game was his second novel, following 1970s's classic The Friends of Eddie Coyle, which I blogged about in its 1972 Secker edition back in 2010, and which also boasts a Tom Simmonds dust jacket, beneath which The Digger's Game now resides in British Thriller Book Cover Design of the 1970s and 1980s. And very fetching they both look too.

The Tears of Autumn by Charles McCarry, published by Hutchinson in 1975, jacket illustration by Ian Robertson (who also illustrated the wrappers of the Collins editions of Alistair MacLean's Ice Station Zebra and Where Eagles Dare). This is the spy novel sequel to McCarry's debut, The Miernik Dossier, which I wrote about in its 1974 Hutchinson edition in 2011 in relation to how plagiarist Quentin Rowan had nicked chunks of McCarry's – and other authors' – novels for his debut novel Assassin of Secrets – The Tears of Autumn being, I believe, one of the McCarry books Rowan lifted passages from. Rowan later turned his experiences as a plagiarist into, you guessed it, a book, which was published last year to little acclaim.

Death Sentence by Brian Garfield, published by Macmillan in 1976, jacket photograph by Steve Puplett. Another sequel here, this time to Garfield's 1972 classic Death Wish, which I wrote about last year in its 1973 Hodder & Stoughton edition. The wrapper of this one intrigues me, as in its styling and setting it seems to be playing on the Michael Winner-directed Charles Bronson-starring 1974 film adaptation of Death Wish. A natural thing for a publisher wishing to shift books to do, I suppose, even though Garfield's Death Wish is a far superior best to its movie offspring: challenging, nuanced and thought-provoking as opposed to undemanding, bludgeoning and ham-fisted. And by the sounds of this Pulp Serenade review, Death Sentence is just as good, "a desolate but distinguished suspense novel".

There'll be further additions to British Thriller Book Cover Design of the 1970s and 1980s over the coming days and weeks, including a couple of covers from books by the subject of my next post: Ross Macdonald.

Charing Cross Catch: A City on a Hill by George V. Higgins (Alfred A. Knopf First Edition, 1975)

From two Higgins novels – one by Jack, one by George V. – to another Higgins novel, which in this instance is by George V. rather than Jack:

This is the American hardback first edition of A City on a Hill, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1975. I bought this book only very recently – less than a week ago, in fact, on a sojourn to that there London. And to prove it, here's a picture of me riffling through some books outside one of the bookshops in Cecil Court:

Where, incidentally, the shop which used to house the late lamented Nigel Williams Rare Books is now inhabited by crime specialists Goldsboro Books, who've moved down from slightly further along the Court. But anyway, this copy of A City on a Hill didn't come from a Cecil Court shop; rather it came from the basement of Any Amount of Books on Charing Cross Road, a couple of minutes' walk from Cecil Court. The dustjacket, as you can see, is rather tatty (that missing piece at the top on the front was present when I bought it, but has since floated off somewhere), and it appears to be ex-library:

But considering I only paid two quid for the thing, I can't really complain. A City on a Hill was George V. Higgins's fourth novel, following The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1972), The Digger's Game (1973) and Cogan's Trade (1974), and it marked a change of direction for the former journalist/Assistant D.A. Whereas his previous novels were set in the Boston underworld, A City on a Hill moved the action to the political arena of Washington, D.C. – with mixed results, if this contemporaneous New York Times review is to be believed. Take a gander at the dustjacket flaps blurb if you'd like to know a bit more about the novel:

If you click on the back flap you should be able to see that the jacket was designed by Paul Bacon, who, as luck would have it, I've blogged about before, in this post on James Jones's The Merry Month of May. Bacon is best known for his record sleeves for Blue Note and Riverside, but in book design he was the originator of the "big book look", whereby title and author name were featured very big on the front cover. His cover for A City on a Hill isn't a prime example of that style, but I do have another book waiting in the wings with a jacket designed by him – the novel that did, in fact, make his name as a book cover designer.

That's not the next post, however. The next post – indeed the next few posts – will be on Len Deighton's series of novels starring his unnamed British spy – all of which feature jackets designed by the legend that is Raymond Hawkey...

Sydenham Scores; Higgins x 2: Jack and George V., Solo and Victories (Collins / Andre Deutsch First Editions)

So, the random book blogging that's been going on round these here parts for the past week – basically playing catch-up on assorted unrelated books I've bought over the last month or three (with a Notes from the Small Press throw in for a bit of variety) – will take a turn for the slightly less random this week. I'll still be catching up on stuff I've purchased, but these books will be slightly more linked – largely by author name, but also by dustjacket designer. Three of 'em were written by Len Deighton, and all three of those books boast jackets designed by Raymond Hawkey; and the other three were written by a certain Mr. Higgins... although not, as we shall see, the same Mr. Higgins...

That said, while this first post does indeed deal with two novels written by two different men named Higgins, in an odd coincidence both books feature dustjackets created by the same designer... and both were bought in the same charity shop...

What we have here are British hardback first editions of Solo by Jack Higgins – published by William Collins in 1980 – and Victories by George V. Higgins, which was published by Andre Deutsch in 1991. I picked these two books up in the south London town of Sydenham, on the same excursion a few months back when I bought Len Deighton's Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy and Mark Gatiss's Black Butterfly. And despite being published over ten years apart and presumably (although not necessarily) arriving at the charity shop from different donors, both books are wrapped in dustjackets designed by Donald – or Don, as Victories has it – Macpherson. I haven't been able to find out much about him, but his illustrations appeared on at least three other Jack Higgins covers – 1981's Luciano's Luck, 1982's Touch the Devil and 1985's Confessional (those last two starring Liam Devlin from perhaps Higgins's most famous novel, The Eagle Has Landed) – as well as on the cover of Derek Lambert's The Judas Code (Hamilton, 1983) and, in the form of maps, inside the UK first edition of Paul Theroux's The Kingdom by the Sea (also Hamilton, 1983).

Jack Higgins – real name Harry Patterson – hasn't cropped up on Existential Ennui before, but he is an author I've been meaning to try at some point, so unless and until a first edition of The Eagle Has Landed turns up in my immediate vicinity, Solo strikes me as a good a place to start as any. Mind you, the plot sounds slightly bizarre. It features a concert pianist named Mikali who also happens to be a ruthless assassin. Fleeing from the police after murdering a prominent Zionist, Mikali runs over and kills a young girl – who just happens to be the daughter of Asa Morgan, a colonel in Northern Ireland and something of an efficient killer himself. As the dustjacket flap blurb puts it (offering its own unique spin on a well-known paradox): "When an irresistible force meets an immovable object, trouble usually ensues. When Mikali met Asa Morgan there could only be one solution. Death."

George V. Higgins, on the other hand, has appeared on this blog before, although I must admit I still haven't read the book I blogged about back then: his debut – and best-known – novel, The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Victories is a companion novel to his 1989 book Trust, and is a political tale set in Vermont in 1968. I'm not sure I'll get round to reading it anytime soon – for one thing I've got The Friends of Eddie Coyle to get through first – but this contemporaneous New York Times review is pretty positive. And it's to George V. that we return in the next post, with another politically inclined novel from rather earlier in his career...

New Arrival: The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins

This one was recommended to me by Katy, my former boss at Titan Books, who sent me a very excited message on Facebook directing me to this obituary of the author. I took one look and straight away snapped up a very inexpensive copy of the book that commands the lion's share of that obit:

A UK hardback first edition of The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins, published by Martin Secker & Warburg Limited in 1972, with a jacket design by Tom Simmonds – who also provided UK covers for such classics as Peter Benchley's Jaws and Sylvia Plath's (originally published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, of course) The Bell Jar:

I'd seen the great Peter Yates film version of The Friends of Eddie Coyle, starring a marvellously beat down Robert Mitchum, years ago, but I'd never come across the book before, or indeed any other of Higgins' close to thirty novels. Eddie Coyle was his debut novel – or at least the first to be published – and set the template for his dialogue-rich style. Apparently it got to the stage with his later novels that they pretty much consisted only of dialogue, but even in Eddie Coyle you get great swathes of conversation and comparatively little description – much like Gregory Mcdonald's underrated Fletch and Flynn books.

Eddie Coyle actually started life as a short story, or at least part of it did; a different version of the sixth chapter in the book was first published under the title "Dillon Explained That He Was Frightened" in the North American Review in autumn 1970. Higgins sent the story to a friend of his, who asked if it was part of a novel he knew Higgins was working on; it wasn't, but Higgins was thus inspired to turn it into one. The Friends of Eddie Coyle was the result, a brutal, bleak depiction of the Boston underworld, informed by Higgins' day job as assistant attorney general for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

So, an unexpected – but very welcome – addition to the pile. Thanks Katy!