J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World and Other eBay Delights

I've got a bunch of new eBay auctions up and running, including something quite special:

Volume 4 No. 24 of Science Fiction Adventures, published in January 1962. What's so darn special about it? Well it features the first appearance of J.G. Ballard's dystopian classic The Drowned World, which debuted in this issue of Science Fiction Adventures months before it was published in hardback by Gollancz – making this effectively the true first edition. (See this post for more.) It's a pretty scarce publication, with lovely Brian Lewis cover art illustrating Ballard's tale, and it's got a low starting price, so someone could potentially nab a bargain.


All of my latest eBay offerings can be found here:

Existential Ennui on eBay

Or by clicking on each picture for the individual auctions...

Among them a 1964 first edition (later printing) of The Man Who Sold Death by James Munro (alias Callan creator James Mitchell)...

....a 1989 first edition of Quiller KGB by Adam Hall...

and a 2016 omnibus of Avengers: Time Runs Out, which collects the climax to Jonathan Hickman's brilliant Avengers run. Quite a mix of books, then, plus there are some others I've offered before  – some of them signed – but which now have lower starting prices. Have at it.

High-Rise by J. G. Ballard: First Edition, First Paperback Edition, Book Review, Thoughts on Ben Wheatley's Film Adaptation

NB: Linked in this week's Friday's Forgotten Books.

When news broke a couple of weeks ago that British film director Ben Wheatley would begin filming an adaptation of J. G. Ballard's High-Rise in June with Tom Hiddleston as his lead, I was prompted to finally pick up and read this:

The British first edition (and first impression) of High-Rise, published in hardback by Jonathan Cape in 1975, dust jacket design by Craig Dodd (who would go on to design the wrapper for the 1979 Cape edition of Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff, and who earlier designed the wrapper for the 1969 Hodder edition of Richard Stark's The Dame). I bought this copy early last year in Wax Factor in Brighton – a secondhand record shop which also stocks a good selection of secondhand books – for a pretty good price – a fraction of what first editions ordinarily go for (upwards of £100). The jacket is a little worn and stained, and the book was evidently owned by a smoker and, I'd hazard, drinker who apparently nodded off whilst reading it:

but cigarette burns on the pages and stains on the wrapper are kind of in keeping with the nature of the novel, which centres on a 40-storey tower block which becomes gradually more dilapidated as the story unfolds, strewn with rubbish, fag butts, faeces and eventually bodies. And those defects aside, the book is in pretty good nick, although not in as good nick as this:

The British first paperback edition, published by Triad/Panther in 1977, cover art by Chris Foss. I blogged about this copy back in 2010, noting its relative scarcity, and it hasn't become any less scarce since: there are at present no copies on AbeBooks, and just a single copy on Amazon Marketplace (I think; it's often hard to tell which edition sellers are offering on Amazon Marketplace, but there's a paperback copy priced at £8.99 which I believe is the 1977 Panther paperback).

The only Ben Wheatley film I've seen is Kill List (2011), but even on that meagre evidence I can well imagine what he'll do with High-Rise. Ballard's tale of middle class residents of a tower block surrendering to their base desires seems tailor made for the director, especially if he remains reasonably faithful to the book. The way in which the novel's triumvirate of Dr Robert Laing (25th floor, and Hiddleston's character), Richard Wilder (2nd floor) and Anthony Royal (40th floor, and the building's architect) – along with the rest of the high-rise's residents – shun the world outside their walls and follow their curious internal logic to their ultimate debasement in a way reflects the horrific descent into degradation by Jay (Neil Maskell) in Kill List, although the three protagonists' cool detachment and the state of strangely beatific squalor they achieve is uniquely Ballardian (see also Concrete Island, and I'm sure others too). It's an arresting read, and in Wheatley's hands should make for an intriguing film.

The Drowned World by J. G. Ballard: The True First Edition? (Science Fiction Adventures, Vol. 4, No. 24, January/February 1962)

After that Donald E. Westlake addendum yesterday, let's have a quick look at one last '60s science fiction magazine before we get back to the books. Although the lead story in this particular magazine would, within months, go on to become a book...

Science Fiction Adventures Vol. 4, No. 24 was published by Nova Publications in January/February of 1962. As you can see from the table of contents:

the line-up of stories is limited to just two novelettes and a short. Two of the writers of those stories – Australians David Rome (real name David William Boutland) and Lee Harding – probably won't be terribly well known to most folk. But the third author most definitely will – as will, more than likely, his story, which is the issue's (untitled) cover feature, as painted by Brian Lewis.

The Drowned World was J. G. Ballard's second novel. It's a post-apocalyptic tale set in a world where the polar ice-caps have melted, submerging the cities of Europe and North America in lagoons. It was published in hardback by Gollancz – under one of that publisher's famed yellow dustjackets, seen above – in 1962... but that wasn't the first appearance of the story. Because the truncated novelette version which appeared in the January/February 1962 issue of Science Fiction Adventures actually predates the expanded novel by some months. So this:

is, in effect, the true first edition of The Drowned World.

I bought my copy of Science Fiction Adventures on eBay; I've got no idea how much it's really worth – I can't find any listings for it on AbeBooks or Amazon – but it's certainly scarce. And since a first edition/first impression of the Gollancz hardback would set me back around £1,500, it'll do me fine – even if the story is abbreviated.

And that really is it for the magazines for a while, although the next post will still be on a science fiction tip. But it'll also be on a movie tip – as will subsequent posts, as I take a look at a bunch of books that all gave rise to rather famous film adaptations...

The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista (Vermilion Sands) by J. G. Ballard (Virgil Finlay Artwork); Amazing Stories Vol. 36, No. 3, March 1962

I mentioned on Friday that I might be able to squeeze in a weekend post on one of those 1960s science fiction magazines I've been hoovering up recently – ahead of the ones with the Donald E. Westlake stories in that I'll be blogging about next week – and so I am. Doing. Have. Done. Whatever.

This is Vol. 36, No. 3 of Amazing Stories, published in the US in March 1962 by Ziff-Davis, with a front cover by Lloyd Birmingham. I spotted this copy whilst lurking on eBay keeping an eye on the aforementioned Mick SoggyPee's various Westlake-story-containing SF mags; this issue of Amazing was one of the other SF mags he had on offer, and I was struck by the quality of the contributors in the table of contents. (Mick always includes a scan of the contents of an issue in his listings, which is particularly handy for British editions of genre magazines, where the contents tend to lag behind the American editions by a few months.) Take a look-see, as you Americans might say:

You've got one novelet (or, to use the more familiar spelling, novelette – basically a story that's longer than a short but shorter than a novella) each from Frank Herbert and Brian W. Aldiss, plus a guest editorial by Robert Bloch, and a generous helping of drawings from one of the finest artists ever to contribute to SF magazines, Virgil Finlay. I've come across Finlay's work before – a few years back I edited a book in which he featured (Sci-Fi Art: A Graphic History – now available as a rather splendid book-and-magnet set, retitled Sci-Fi Art: A Pocket History) – but his elegant illustrations on the back cover and inside this issue of Amazing are... well... quite simply, amazing:

The real prize in this issue, though, is a story which doesn't even get a mention on the cover – and which again boasts a couple of beautiful Virgil Finlay illos:

J. G. Ballard's "The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista" is perhaps the best-known of his stories set in the futuristic resort of Vermilion Sands (all of which were gathered together in 1971 in the Vermilion Sands collection). It's narrated by Howard Talbot, a lawyer who has come to Vermilion Sands with his wife, Fay, while he opens an office in nearby Red Beach. Howard and Fay move into a house on Stellavista, one of the resort's PT, or psychotropic, domains, which are made of a bioplastic which shifts and reforms according to the residents' mood. But they aren't the first inhabitants of the house... and the former occupants, movie star Gloria Tremayne and her husband, architect Miles Vanden Starr – who was murdered by Tremayne while he slept – have left something of an impression on the place. And Howard was one of the lawyers for the defence at Tremayne's trial...

The notion of a home that alters its design according to the occupant's mood is an intriguing idea; Ballard uses it to explore concerns such as how technology impacts and reshapes humanity, and how a bored, well-fed middle class increasingly turns to novelty. And, as with Concrete Island, at the close of the story the narrator even comes to embrace his strange surroundings, finding a kind of peace there, despite – or perhaps because of – the trauma experienced within it.

I'll be featuring another Ballard science fiction story from an even more scarce SF magazine fairly soon – a longer tale which is in effect the first edition of what would become one of his most famous novels. But next on Existential Ennui, it's those Westlake SF stories...

Parker Progress Report: A Review of Slayground by Richard Stark

Sometimes, the weight of expectation can be too much for a book to bear.

I don't think it's an accident that the Donald 'Richard Stark' Westlake novels starring career thief Parker I've enjoyed most thus far have been the less celebrated ones. While I've liked The Outfit (Parker #3, 1963), The Score (Parker #5, 1964) and The Sour Lemon Score (Parker #12, 1969) just fine, the standouts for me have been The Man with the Getaway Face (Parker #2, 1963), with its meticulously planned heist and kick-in-the-teeth ending; The Green Eagle Score (Parker #10, 1967), where we meet a parallel younger version of Parker; and perhaps my favourite so far, The Seventh (Parker #7, 1966), with its post-heist frustrations and eventual bloodbath. I think that's partly because everything I'd read about them beforehand suggested they weren't quite up there with the agreed classics of the series – which just goes to show you should never believe everything you read – but it's also their more reflective nature, the way they each show Parker in a different light: as the master planner, as he might have been as a novice, and as a man completely at fate's mercy.

The flipside to that is, of course, that my enjoyment of the likes of The Outfit and The Score may have been soured slightly by expecting too much from them, although I don't know how true that is. I did like 'em, as I say; I just think there's more going on in some of the other books. But I suspect that's almost certainly the case with Slayground. First published in 1971, the fourteenth Parker novel may well be the most venerated of all the Parkers. Something about it obviously chimes with Stark's fans – probably the way it confines Parker, traps him in a snowbound closed-for-the-winter amusement park following a disastrous getaway from a heist, beset on all sides by corrupt cops and gangsters all after his loot. But for me, while I liked it, and there were moments I really dug, on the whole, it lacked something.

Perversely, I think that plot was precisely what my problem with the book was. On first inspection, Parker alone, back to the wall, living on his wits, fighting to escape a closed down funfair sounds brilliant. In practice, I found it a bit too simplistic, and therefore a bit too predictable. Because you know Parker will get out of this. I mean, you know Parker will always get out of whatever situation he's in somehow, as there's always a next book in the series (until you get to 2008's Dirty Money, that is). But usually it's more about how he'll come out the other side with some kind of reward, not whether he'll come out the other side at all. In Slayground, the money quickly becomes a secondary concern. Parker's fighting for his life. And given that, you just know, one way or another, he's going to exit through the gate he entered. That took some of the suspense out of it for me.

Another consequence of the plot is that Parker's on his own for most of the novel, and again, that didn't quite work for me. The whole point of Parker is he's a criminal automaton: there's little to him beyond stealing stuff. So if you spend any great amount of time alone with him in his head – as we do in Slayground – you'll quickly discover it's not a terribly interesting place to be. Despite the fact he can barely be bothered to speak to most people, Parker works best when he's interacting with other characters. I live for those moments where Parker has to deal with a horrific human situation like, y'know, actually having to speak to someone, which he generally handles by not speaking at all, because for him there's nothing to say. How he deals with, say, Alan Grofield, or Handy McKay, or Claire, helps to define him, by contrasting his utter weirdness – that taciturn blankness – with characters that are comparatively normal.

All that said, there is much to enjoy in Slayground. The opening chapter – which Slayground famously shares with the Alan Grofield novel The Blackbird – is blistering. (Here's a thing though: I actually ended up enjoying Grofield's subsequent adventures as a reluctant spy more than Parker's parallel adventure. Now there's a first.) There's some memorable, wonderfully absurd business in Part One, where Parker familiarizes himself with the amusement park, testing out the rides and setting traps; stuff like this:

"Quarter after five. Parker rode a rocket with wooden seats past suns and satellites to the end of the black-light Voyage Through the Galaxy."

Or this:

"Five minutes to six. Parker climbed to the bridge of the pirate ship."

There's a splendid silliness to the idea of a hulking brute like Parker folded into an amusement park ride, or clambering over a pirate ship.

On top of that, we get an appealing Stark Stooge in the shape of level-headed local mobster Caliato, who takes charge of the manhunt for Parker. Unfortunately he doesn't really stick around long enough, but he does provide the book's most surprisingly affecting moment. (As for the Stark Cutaway, that comes in Part Two instead of Part Three – while at only four chapters, Part Three is possibly the shortest 'Part' in all the Parkers.) And there are some great action sequences, not to mention, as Book Glutton pointed out on his blog, some interesting similarities to some other novels I've read this year, in particular J. G. Ballard's Concrete Island.

So there are good things here. But more than anything, what Slayground feels like is a prelude: an opening chapter to some longer work. Which, in a way, is exactly what it is: a curtain opener for the main event, Butcher's Moon (1974), the next Parker but one, and the longest Parker of all. Parker's major nemesis in Slayground, local mob boss Lozini, is left alive at the end of the novel, so it's a pretty safe bet we'll see him again in Butcher's Moon, which details Parker's attempt to retrieve his loot. Before that though, there's Plunder Squad (1972), which is a less-celebrated Parker novel, so it'll be interesting to see how that pans out. And I'll also be reading the Joe Gores novel Dead Skip (1972), which ties into Plunder Squad, and possibly the final Alan Grofield book, Lemons Never Lie (1971), before I get to Butcher's Moon. Verily, my Stark cup runneth over.

(For the previous Parker Progress Report, on Deadly Edge, go here.)

The Mac's Place Quartet: The Backup Men by Ross Thomas (Lawrence Ratzkin Cover Design)

Next up in Existential Ennui's ongoing tribute to critically acclaimed but increasingly overlooked espionage/crime writer Ross Thomas, we have this:

A UK hardback first edition of The Backup Men, published by Hodder & Stoughton in 1971 (published in the States in the same year by William Morrow). This is Thomas' sixth book, but the third in his series featuring saloon owner Mac McCorkle and his business partner and part time spy Mike Padillo, following 1966's The Cold War Swap (published as Spy in the Vodka in the UK in 1967) and 1967's Cast a Yellow Shadow (published in the UK in '68). This time out the pair have to protect the future king of an oil-rich country from assassination, with all the murky big American oil business that scenario entails.

For this one I took a punt on a sight-unseen copy from one of those big bargain books retailers that litter eBay. You know the ones: they never have an image of the book in question accompanying their listings, and the info in said listings can be scant and inaccurate (not stating a book is ex-library is a popular omission). In this instance, however, I asked a further question about the book and actually got a helpful response, so I snapped it up for a tenner. And it's in pretty good condition: the jacket's price-clipped, with a bit of edge wear at the spine, but the book itself is virtually pristine.

And that, in fact, sets it apart from most of the other seven or eight copies listed online by booksellers around the world. Because there's a curious defect associated with this Hodder edition of the book, to do with the copyright info: in most copies, that info is inked out with a black pen. Apparently this was done by Hodder themselves, although I have no idea why; I can't see anything egregious about the copyright info in my copy... and yes, that does mean what that implies – the copyright info is entirely unblemished in my copy:

Which, judging by the only other un-inked-out copy on AbeBooks, which is on sale for £130, makes my one rather valuable. Of course, the market for Ross Thomas first editions seems to be virtually non-existent at the moment – basically, I'm it – so there isn't exactly a queue of people wanting to get their hands on this hardback. But even so. Always nice to have something rare.

The dustjacket on this edition – and indeed on the Morrow edition; both UK and US versions have the same jacket, I believe – was designed by Lawrence Ratzkin, whose playful, distinctive designs graced American editions of J. G. Ballard's Crash, Bruce Jay Friedman's A Mother's Kisses and Black Angels, a plethora of SF novels and anthologies, including Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End and Robert Silverberg's The Calibrated Alligator, and more besides. He was also responsible for many a cover for Harper's Magazine from the late '60s, which boasted some striking examples of ingenious text/image juxtaposition.

I think Ratzkin was (I'll stick with past tense, as I suspect he may be dead now) also a photographer: I'm not sure if this website was his, but Ratzkin, if indeed it is the same man, definitely took photos in and around New York; a selection of his black and white shots accompanied Eve Merriam's poems in the 1969 edition of The Inner City Mother Goose. One thing is for certain: he was exasperated by the way book publishing developed (if that's the right word) towards the end of the 20th century, as it shifted from editorial-led decision-making to being in thrall to the nebulous methods of the sales and marketing departments. As Ratzkin wrote in this 1997 letter to The New York Times, "Publishers and editors have relinquished literary taste and publishing judgment to the yahoos." Couldn't have put it better myself.

Going Underground: Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household, Concrete Island by J. G. Ballard, and Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd

Before we get to the promised cavalcade of Richard Stark/Donald Westlake Scores, I thought I'd take a slight detour to chew over some recent non-Westlake reads (yes, I do read other books). Quite by chance, I've read three books in quick succession over the past few weeks where the main protagonist finds himself cast away or trapped in a small patch of land. Two of the books are actually very similar in their choice of urban location, while the third is more rural, but still bears a remarkable similarity to the others.

Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household was the first of this triumvirate I read, and the most rural. Originally published in 1939, it's the first-person account of an unnamed British man (who, though nameless, hints throughout that he is a Lord, and well-recognised in England), his unsuccessful attempt to assassinate a European dictator, and his subsequent escape into the English countryside, all the while pursued by agents of the dictator. There's an extended sequence in the novel where our hero digs himself a burrow in the Dorset moors, and it's this section that's the most compelling and bears the most resemblance to the other two books, as he gradually loses all trace of his previously civilized nature and sinks into a filthy, degraded, but also strangely alluring existence.

Alluring, because it's at this point that he seems most free, and most happy, despite the squalor he's living in. Reduced to merely surviving, any and all problems melt away in the face of more immediate concerns: finding food, keeping warm. It's an extremely simplified way of life, but one our hero almost revels in, particularly when he is granted the occasional company of a grumpy, feral cat.

It's this acceptance of, and in turn embracing of, a downgraded existence that I was reminded of when I was reading the second book, William Boyd's Ordinary Thunderstorms (2009). Here, a young man called Adam Kindred is being hunted for a murder he didn't commit, so, much like Household's character, he removes himself from society and in this case goes underground in London. Again, as he divests himself of the trappings of civilization – he can't use his credit cards or contact anyone lest he be tracked – he finds a kind of peace in a triangle of overgrown wasteland near Chelsea Bridge, with a camping stove to heat his tins of beans and three old tyres fashioned into a chair.

Even when he's forced to leave this patch of ground and starts to slowly rejoin society, Kindred feels the occasional pang for his lost parcel of land, much as Rogue Male's protagonist is reluctant to leave his lair. And once again, this is probably the most vivid part of the novel, enjoyable though the subsequent chapters are. Like Household, Boyd, through Kindred, seems to be yearning for a simpler way of life, one where a small triangle of land can offer more fulfillment than a wider life of conspicuous consumption – even if it does mean having to snack on the occasional seagull.

Of course, the protagonist in the third novel of our triumvirate has even less choice in the matter than either Kindred or Lord No-Name: in J. G. Ballard's Concrete Island (1973), an architect named Robert Maitland crashes through a barrier on London's Westway onto another triangle of wasteland, and becomes trapped. His injuries prevent him from escaping, and in any case no one will stop to help him. I'm only a third of the way through the book at the moment, so I don't know if Maitland will come to embrace his new existence, but it's still striking that both Maitland and Kindred wind up in triangles of land in west London, only a couple of miles apart.

It's too early to pass judgment on Concrete Island yet, but the other two novels are both fine works. Household has a clipped style befitting his ennobled narrator, while Boyd's early tendency to pepper his prose with off-piste words – a boscy here, a ratiocination there – settles down once the narrative starts to gain momentum. But both books paint compelling portraits of individuals cast adrift from mainstream society, and, possibly with Concrete Island (we shall see...), show that going underground needn't necessarily be such a bad thing. Seagull snacking aside.

New Arrival: High-Rise by J. G. Ballard (1977 Panther Paperback)

Been wanting to get this one for a while. I was toying with getting a 1975 Jonathan Cape first edition hardback, but they're a little pricey. So instead, I snatched this 1977 Panther paperback up on eBay, the first UK paperback edition I believe, with a cover by SF artist Chris Foss (who recently provided a foreword to a book I worked on – Sci-Fi Art Now, out in the autumn, folks):














And actually, while there are plenty of copies of the Cape first edition online, I can't see a single copy of this paperback on AbeBooks or Amazon. It's in nice nick too, certainly better condition than the 1976 Panther paperback of Ballard's previous novel, Concrete Island, which I picked up in Arundel:














Bit grubby that one, but even so, the binding's tight, and it's perfectly serviceable. Amusing, too, how the cover illos on both books feature, to a greater or lesser degree, well, a lass with her tits out. Ah, God bless the '70s... Anyway, those are the two Ballard novels I really wanted to read, so now I can. Splendid.

To Arundel and Chichester

A trip out at the weekend took me and the bird to a couple of rather ace bookshops, both called Kim's. One's in Arundel, the other's in Chichester, but of the two I'd say the Arundel one is better: absolutely stuffed with old books on three (or possibly four; I stopped counting) floors. Arundel is also the prettier of the two towns (both of which are in West Sussex), quite small, with a great big castle and cathedral, all set on a picturesque hill. We took some pictures but I forgot to resize them, so here's one I borrowed off the interweb instead:











That's a feck of a lot of swans. There weren't that many swans there when we were there. Three at most. Anyway, much more importantly, both Kim's Bookshops offered up a huge haul of books:











At the Arundel Kim's, Rachel bagged a few things:














A 1985 Triad paperback of Iris Murdoch's The Sandcastle. Unfortunately, when we got home she discovered she already had an original Penguin of the book. Whoops. But this new copy did come with a very neat shopping list inside it. Bovril and scones anyone? She also got this:














A 1962 Book Club edition of Agatha Christie's The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side (interesting cover there), and this:














A 1973 Chatto & Windus first edition of Iris Murdoch's The Black Prince in hardback, with a jacket designed by Christopher Cornford. Rachel's slowly working her way through Murdoch and Christie, and has now furnished herself with a list of Christies so she doesn't double up anymore (she's off book shopping in Lewes at lunchtime today, I believe – there's a fair few Christie paperbacks scattered around the Lewes bookshops). She's particularly keen on the Fontana editions with the Tom Adams covers, one of which she picked up at the Chichester Kim's:














That's a 1975 Fontana paperback. Those Tom Adams covers are great. I think we're going to track down a copy of Tom Adams' Agatha Christie Cover Story at some point – I've never read any Christie, but I'd like to have a look through that book.

So that was Rachel's haul. Mine consisted of paperbacks for the most part from the Arundel Kim's, but the Chichester Kim's did turn up a couple of nice hardbacks, so it was definitely worth the further jaunt over there. From Arundel I got:














A 1970 Pan paperback of Kingsley Amis' Bond novel Colonel Sun. Unfortunately it has clear plastic affixed to the cover with no way of removing it, but it was only a couple of quid, and I have a hardback first edition of this one anyway. Next:














A 1971 Fontana paperback (second impression) of Ross Macdonald's The Moving Target (first published in 1949). This is the first of Macdonald's (a.k.a. Kenneth Millar) novels starring the detective Lew Archer, played by Paul Newman in the excellent movie Harper (renamed Lew Harper, natch; I love that film). Comics writer Ed Brubaker is a fan of these, so I thought I'd give one a go. Next:














1971 Pan paperback of Gavin Lyall's fifth novel, Venus with Pistols. I've read The Wrong Side of the Sky, and I have The Most Dangerous Game to read still, so I thought I'd grab this one too. Next:














A 1967 first Fontana paperback of Eric Ambler's Passage of Arms (first published 1959). Ambler is another British thriller writer like Gavin Lyall; I read in an interview once that Kingsley Amis was a fan of these two, as well as of Geoffrey Household. I've got a first Penguin paperback edition of Household's Rogue Male to read at some point, so now I have an Ambler to try as well. Next:














A 1976 first Panther paperback of J. G. Ballard's Concrete Island (originally published in hardback in 1974) with a cover illustration by Richard Clifton-Dey. Been meaning to try some of those early Ballard SF novels – i.e. The Burning World, High Rise – so this was a good find. And that was the lot from Arundel. The Chichester Kim's was a smaller shop with a less interesting selection, but I did get these there:














A 1977 Heinemann hardback first edition of Patricia Highsmith's Edith's Diary, and:














A 1967 Heinemann hardback first edition of Highsmith's Those Who Walk Away. The dustjacket's a bit knackered on this one, but what the hell. I figured I might as well nab it. And it does mean I have an almost unbroken run of Highsmith first edition novels from The Two Faces of January (1961) to her final novel, 1992's Small g: A Summer Idyll. I'm only missing firsts of The Tremor of Forgery (although I've read that in paperback already) and People Who Knock on the Door.

So, all in all, a successful trip.