P. M. Hubbard, A Hive of Glass: First Edition (Michael Joseph, 1965), Uncorrected Proof (Michael Joseph, 1964)

One would be forgiven for thinking in the internet age that pretty much any edition of any old book a book-collecting body might desire would be (fairly readily) available online, if only said book-collecting body had sufficient funds. In fact some books still prove stubbornly elusive, irrespective of cost. I've been on the lookout for a 1965 British first edition of A Hive of Glass, perhaps the finest novel in cult crime/suspense writer P. M. Hubbard's queasily compelling canon, ever since Book Glutton got me into Hubbard's work four years ago, and though the occasional jacketless copy has hoved into view, a first edition in its wrapper has, until very recently, remained frustratingly out of reach. This has been especially maddening because there haven't even been any images of the British first's jacket available online, so I had no idea even what the thing looked like – an inexcusable state of affairs for a novel that I would consider to be among the ten best that I've read in the past half-dozen years.

Happily, I'm finally able to rectify that situation:

That there is the British first edition and first impression of A Hive of Glass, published by Michael Joseph in 1965 and purchased by me just last week. It's an ex-library copy:

but both book and jacket are in very good condition (despite having been borrowed from a Kesteven county library twenty-nine times over a five year period), with all pages (and indeed library dockets) present and correct and the wrapper quite bright and unclipped.

That wrapper, now added to Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s, was designed by Ivan Lapper, an artist and illustrator whose best-known book jacket work is probably the 1966 Bodley Head edition of Graham Greene's The Comedians but who has latterly found wider fame as a painter. Those familiar with A Hive of Glass will recognise the curious object on the front of the jacket as a Venetian tazza (albeit one with the embellishment of a lid); those unfamiliar with the novel and wondering what the bloody hell a tazza is and why it should feature on the cover will just have to go and read the book (or maybe my review – or better still John Norris's).

There is more to this particular tale of book collecting, however; because not only have I at long last laid my hands on possibly the scarcest book in Hubbard's backlist, I've also laid my hands on something which, I'd hazard, is scarcer still:

An uncorrected proof of A Hive of Glass. I've only ever come across one other proof of a Hubbard novel – 1964's A Picture of Millie, still listed on AbeBooks (for about £100) as I type – so this one is rather a rare thing indeed. (And I should just like to state for the record, for those who are au fait with the novel, that no murders were committed in the acquisition of this item.) What's really interesting about it, aside from the little errors one expects to find in proof copies –

compare page 17 of the proof (top) with that of the first edition (bottom; click on the images to see them larger) – is its copyright page. The stamped date on the card cover gives the pub date as 11 January, 1965 (and the price, scrawled in pen, as 18 shillings, as per the first edition's jacket flap); but on the copyright page, the year of publication (and copyright date) is given as 1964:

Whereas on the copyright page of the first edition, the year of publication (and copyright date) is given as 1965:

In a way I suppose that's fair enough: the uncorrected proof was indeed 'published' – in the sense that it was printed and distributed (in presumably a very small edition) – in 1964, whereas the first edition wasn't published – in the sense of being made available for sale to the public – until the following year. But it's not something I think I've seen before with a proof and a finished edition, and it does lend some credence to the notion that an uncorrected proof is the true first edition of any book. Which, at least in this case, it's hard to argue that it isn't.

Gavin Lyall's Harry Maxim / Secret Servant Spy Series: Uncorrected Proof Editions

A big part of the appeal of book collecting for me is the pursuit and acquisition of that which is rare. Sometimes that can mean first editions; sometimes it can mean little-seen later editions or scarce paperback editions; sometimes it can mean signed or, better yet, inscribed editions; and sometimes, on occasion, it can mean uncorrected proofs.

Uncorrected proofs, for the uninitiated, are advanced copies of books, printed and bound with paper or card covers bearing bibliographic details and/or blurbs, which are sent out to proofreaders, authors, reviewers and, increasingly, bloggers, for a variety of purposes. That purpose initially, as the name suggests, was for authors and proofreaders to spot and mark up any typos that had slipped through the net, but in more recent years uncorrected proofs, or advance review copies (ARCs) as they're also referred to, have been used primarily to drum up publicity.

You could argue that uncorrected proofs are the true first state of any printed book, preceding, as they do, the first edition. But even if you accept that, I think it's fair to say that most book collectors, myself included, would still prefer the first edition; apart from anything else, uncorrected proofs are frequently unlovely and, by nature, unfinished things, whereas firsts benefit from designed dust jackets and hardback binding. Still, uncorrected proofs can be scarce things, and as such can sometimes be of interest to me – say, for example, if a novel has a certain significance, and a first edition isn't quite enough, and a signed edition isn't available, as with Patricia Highsmith's Ripley Under Ground; or to give another, more recent, example, if an entire series, one which I enjoy and admire, suddenly becomes available in its entirety in uncorrected proof – well, that would be very hard to pass up indeed.

So it proved when the latter three of Gavin Lyall's four Harry Maxim spy novels popped up on eBay a few months back – The Conduct of Major Maxim, The Crocus List and Uncle Target. Despite owning entirely serviceable first editions of all three, I was sorely tempted even so; and when I then noticed an inexpensive uncorrected proof of the first Harry Maxim novel, The Secret Servant (which I also own in first), elsewhere online, the notion of nabbing the whole series in uncorrected proof proved irresistible. Individually they're quite uncommon things – at present I can see online one other uncorrected proof of The Secret Servant, one of The Crocus List, two of Uncle Target, and none of The Conduct of Major Maxim – but taken together they are, I'd venture, quite a unique and potentially intriguing collection. Well, I reckon so anyway; whether anyone else will think so too is debatable, but here they are anyway.

The Secret Servant (Hodder & Stoughton, 1980)
The first Harry Maxim novel – which I reviewed here – this proof of The Secret Servant comes with a dust jacket (designed by none other than Raymond Hawkey, utilising a photograph by Peter Williams), something which in my experience is atypical for an uncorrected proof, although not unheard of. (At least in the 1980s and earlier; nowadays uncorrected proofs frequently have full colour covers.) The inner card cover, meanwhile – which the jacket has been trimmed to fit – bears no text at all – again, atypical for a proof, but not unheard of. What is really unusual is the width of the thing: the pages are a lot wider than those of the finished book, and on some of the later pages in the proof– which looks to me to have been photocopied rather than printed – the edges of the original pages can be seen.

. . . . . . . . . .

The Conduct of Major Maxim (Hodder & Stoughton, 1982)
No dust jacket here, and a printed card cover, bearing publication info, which is more typical of an uncorrected proof. The interesting thing with this proof is the copyright page, which bears one notable difference from that in the finished, printed book, which can be seen below:

Evidently The Conduct of Major Maxim was titled A Slightly Private War until shortly before publication.

. . . . . . . . . .

The Crocus List (Hodder & Stoughton, 1985)
It's possible sometimes to spot typos and errors in uncorrected proofs – they are, after all, uncorrected – especially if one compares them to the finished first editions. And then there are those errors that can be spotted without comparison, like the one on page 6 of The Crocus List proof:

I can confirm that that was caught and fixed for the finished book.

. . . . . . . . . .

Uncle Target (Hodder & Stoughton, 1988)
As with the first Harry Maxim spy thriller, the uncorrected proof of the final one also comes with a dust jacket, although the inner card cover is printed too, more in line with the proofs of The Conduct of Major Maxim and The Crocus List – more so, in fact: the front of the inner cover replicates the jacket front in black and white, while the back cover copy features details of the promotional plans for the book, including a "Powerful Saatchi and Saatchi national advertising campaign", no less. Unlike The Secret Servant, however, the jacket on the proof of Uncle Target isn't final. Colour scheme apart – presumably that's a proof placeholder – though the various elements of the design remained the same for the final (uncredited) version, they were rearranged thusly:

Donald E. Westlake on Patricia Highsmith and Ripley Under Ground (the Book and the Film)

NB: A version of this post also appears at The Violent World of Parker.

Four years ago I posted a review of Ripley Under Ground, Roger Spottiswoode's 2005 film adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's second Tom Ripley novel. Much as I love Highsmith's source text – indeed the Ripliad as a whole – I wasn't terribly keen on the film; the dreadfully miscast Barry Pepper's performance as Tom Ripley left a lot to be desired, and the way the filmmakers eviscerated Tom's character, excising his murderous background, for me fatally undermined the entire enterprise. I didn't blame anyone in particular for any of this, but I did make note of one of the people at least in part responsible: Donald E. Westlake.

Westlake is credited as co-writer of the screenplay for Ripley Under Ground – with William Blake Herron – but at that point I was only dimly aware of who Westlake was; I hadn't yet read anything by him, although I was just about to, namely The Hunter, alias Point Blank – the first Parker novel (written, of course, as Richard Stark), and the first of many Westlake books I would read over the ensuing years. One of the most recent being this:

The Getaway Car, the forthcoming (in September) Westlake non-fiction miscellany put together by Levi Stahl of the University of Chicago Press. Levi kindly arranged for me to be sent an uncorrected page proof of the book, which I've been dipping in and out of since it arrived the other week; I expect I'll review it in full nearer the pub date, but I was drawn in particular to a piece to do with Westlake's experiences on Ripley Under Ground – partly because Patricia Highsmith has been on my mind of late (I reviewed two inscribed copies of her short story collections recently, and have further posts on her planned), but also because it sheds a little light on what may have gone wrong with the film and on what Westlake made of Highsmith – i.e., what one of my favourite authors, responsible for one of the two most brilliant series of novels to feature a conscienceless criminal ever written, made of another of my favourite authors, responsible for the other most brilliant series of novels to feature a conscienceless criminal ever written (IMHO).

It's part of a longer piece titled "The Worst Happens", which comprises a selection of Westlake quotes from an interview by Patrick McGilligan (originally published in Sight and Sound in 1990 and then later expanded for Backstory 4: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1970s and 1980s) in which Westlake expatiates on other writers' adaptations of his own work (The Hot Rock, The Outfit) and his own adaptations of other people's work (The Grifters). Westlake calls Ripley Under Ground – or rather "Mr. Ripley's Return" as the film was apparently known to Westlake – "one of the odder episodes", going on to recount how he "was delighted to take a crack at the book", and that his "first draft... attracted Michael Tolkin to direct... [who] had some lovely ideas, details of menace and suspense for the second draft, which I wrote, and then never heard from them again".

Over a decade later the film was made with no further involvement from Westlake (or indeed Tolkin), who had "no idea what happened to the script over the last eleven years" but who agreed to a shared credit in order to receive, on top of belated payment for his work, "a potential production bonus". This despite the fact that, as Westlake memorably puts it, "[n]o one [from the production] has contacted me directly. I am merely that truck-stop waitress in Amarillo they fucked in 1992. That's okay. I think highly of them, too. Someone working on the set of the movie—I think it was shot in France, but don't know for sure—said it wasn't coming out well, which could merely be schadenfreude."

As entertaining as all of this is, however, much more interesting to me are Westlake's thoughts on the source novel and on Highsmith herself:

I've always loved the deadpanness of Highsmith, and I thought it reached a peak in that book. The guy Ripley is tormenting, in his passive-aggressive way, suddenly turns around, smashes Ripley's head with a shovel, and buries him in Ripley's own garden. Ripley survives, comes up out of the grave later that night, takes a nice hot tub, patches his cut parts, and then what does he do? Call the cops? No. Shoot the guy? No. He haunts the guy for the next one hundred pages of the book, appearing and disappearing in windows, stuff like that.

I've long wondered whether Westlake read Highsmith – I mean beyond Ripley Under Ground, which for obvious reasons I figured he must have read at least – so it's nice to find that he did and that he loved her "deadpanness". I've yet to discover whether Highsmith read Westlake, but something I did learn was that almost certainly the two never met. Westlake told McGilligan: "I was delighted to take a crack at the book, and I didn't mind Highsmith's weirdness and repulsiveness, because I wasn't going to meet her or deal with her; that was the ground rule."

For me Highsmith's "weirdness and repulsiveness" are a big part of why her work appeals (let's not dwell on what that says about me), case in point being the next Highsmith book I'll be looking at: A Suspension of Mercy.

Introducing a New Existential Ennui Permanent Page: the Patricia Highsmith First Edition Book Cover Gallery; plus the Patricia Highsmith Papers

Well, I surprised myself with this one. I sort of figured that if I ever got round to setting up a new permanent page, a la Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s, it would be focused on one or other of the artists featured in Beautiful Book Jacket Design – Val Biro, say, or Denis McLoughlin; either that, or I'd set up a paperback cover page. Instead, Existential Ennui's second permanent page has ended up being devoted not to an artist or a format, but an author.

In a way, that's rather fitting. I've been collecting Patricia Highsmith in first edition longer than any other writer – longer than Donald Westlake, or Kingsley Amis, or any other of the literary reprobates wot litter Existential Ennui. The 1974 Heinemann first of Ripley's Game at the top of this post was, I think, the first first edition I ever bought – purchased on London's Cecil Court, no less, from a secondhand bookshop the name of which escapes me and which has since vanished anyway – while my inaugural visit to the Lewes Book Fair upon moving down to Lewes in 2008 netted me Heinemann firsts of The Cry of the Owl and The Two Faces of January. Highsmith, then, is in large part responsible for all that's followed – my book collecting habit and consequently this 'ere blog, basically – so it's entirely apt, I feel, and given that I now own first editions of all sixteen of the Highsmith novels initially published in the UK by Heinemann, that she should get her own permanent page:

Patricia Highsmith First Edition Book Cover Gallery

The gallery can be accessed by clicking the link above, or via the permanent link in Existential Ennui's sidebar, just below the link to Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s. Note that I've titled it simply a first edition gallery, not a British first edition one, or indeed a Heinemann first edition one (which was what I originally thought of assembling – as a post, not a page – when the notion occurred to me last week). For while the page does currently consist of British editions, and the vast majority of those were published by Heinemann, I reserve the right to add in American – or even foreign – first editions should I come into possession of them – and I certainly reserve the right to include Cresset Press firsts of Strangers on a Train, The Blunderer and The Talented Mr. Ripley, in the unlikely event that I ever find affordable copies of them.

If you're a fan of Highsmith's work, you'll find all manner of stuff to look at – not just jackets and cases but uncorrected proofs and a few intriguing, little seen editions of her novels – but even if you're not a fan, the gallery is interesting as a demonstration of how dust jacket design changed over the course of five decades, from the kind of hand-lettered, illustrated wrappers that were prevalent in the '50s and '60s (and which are also featured on the aforementioned Beautiful British Book Jacket Design page), to photographic and typographic treatments and, finally, back to illustrations again.

Incidentally, in the course of researching my own Highsmith archive I stumbled upon another Highsmith archive – one I dimly recall having encountered before, actually, but which I don't believe I've ever blogged about: the Patricia Highsmith Papers at the Swiss Literary Archives (part of the Swiss National Library, where a Highsmith exhibition was held in 2006). The site is essentially a catalogue of material that's archived elsewhere – manuscripts and notebooks and scrapbooks and the like, which Highsmith's biographers, Andrew Wilson and Joan Schenkar, must have drawn on heavily – but it's still well worth a rummage, especially Highsmith's photo albums, pages from which can be viewed online.

Patricia Highsmith Shelf Porn (Slight Return)

Apropos of nothing other than I took a load of pictures of my Patricia Highsmith shelf for yesterday's post on Deep Water and only used one of them, plus it subsequently occurred to me that an update to this shelf porn post from over three years ago might be of mild interest – and furthermore Patti Nase Abbott's Friday's Forgotten Books Patricia Highsmith special is, as the "Friday" in the title suggests, actually today, not yesterday (evidently I simply couldn't wait another day for the world to read my erudite and pithy ruminations on Deep Water) – presenting the Existential Ennui Patricia Highsmith first (and other) editions book collection, 2013 iteration:

You can see that it's expanded somewhat from the collection as it stood back in 2010:

Although, remarkably, it's still in the same glass-doored cabinet it was back then, whereas all my other books have migrated to various far-flung (i.e., upstairs) bookcases and, in some cases, sadly (but necessarily; hello, little Edie), boxes in the loft.

Additions and updates since 2010 are, in the bottom photo, from left to right: a first edition of Andrew Wilson's biography of Highsmith, Beautiful Shadow (Bloomsbury, 2003; I think I already owned that one by the time of that post, but it must have been shelved elsewhere); an uncorrected proof of Carol (Bloomsbury, 2000, alias The Price of Salt); a signed limited edition of Ripley Under Water (London Limited Editions/Bloomsbury, 1991); a first edition of Little Tales of Misogyny (Heinemann, 1977; not, in fact, the one seen in the 2010 photo, which I've since sold, but a signed edition I've since acquired); a first edition of The Tremor of Forgery (Heinemann, 1969, replacing the Penguin paperback I read in 2009); a first edition of The Glass Cell (Heinemann, 1967 – another replacement, this time for an ex-library copy); and first editions of This Sweet Sickness (Heinemann, 1961), A Game for the Living (Heinemann, 1959) and, of course, Deep Water (Heinemann, 1958).

And resting atop the hardbacks, new additions are: an uncorrected proof of Ripley Under Ground (Heinemann, 1971); a first American paperback edition of The Talented Mr. Ripley (Dell, 1959); a first (revised) edition of Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction (Poplar Press, 1983); and just visible far right, an uncorrected Heinemann proof – which, it suddenly strikes me, I've yet to blog about – of the aforementioned The Tremor of Forgery (Heinemann, 1969) and a curious hardback edition of The Talented Mr. Ripley (Heinemann, 1973). (Not seen in that more recent photo, by the way, is my 1961 Pan paperback edition of Deep Water, as I was using it to write my review.)

I make that thirteen Patricia Highsmith books bought in the three or so years since I posted that original Highsmith shelf porn piece in May 2010 (actually, fourteen: I briefly owned a 1994 Chancellor Press omnibus edition of four of the Tom Ripley novels but donated it to a Lewes charity shop). Which is only slightly less than the roughly fifteen Highsmith books I must have bought in the two years from May 2008, when I moved to Lewes, to May 2010. So, y'know: at least I'm slowing down a bit.

Hmm. Something else just occurred to me: the acquisition of that Heinemann first of Deep Water means I could, if I so desired, put together a proper Patricia Highsmith Heinemann first edition cover gallery...

The Great Tom Ripley Reread, 2: Ripley Under Ground by Patricia Highsmith (Heinemann Uncorrected Proof, 1971)

NB: Featured as one of this week's Friday's Forgotten Books.

For this second post in the Great Tom Ripley Reread, I've another intriguing edition from which to springboard some random thoughts. Like the 1959 Dell edition of The Talented Mr. Ripley that kicked off this series, it's a paperback; but unlike that Dell edition, which was published some years after the US and UK first editions, this particular paperback actually predates the first edition – the British one, anyway:

It's an uncorrected proof of Ripley Under Ground, the second of Patricia Highsmith's five Tom Ripley novels, which was published in hardback in the UK by Heinemann in 1971, the year after the US Doubleday edition. Despite already owning a copy of the Heinemann first of Ripley Under Ground (actually two copies... don't ask), with its Mon Mohan-illustrated dust jacket (see below), I conspired to win this proof as well when it popped up on eBay a while back, for no other reason than I fancied a look at it. On first inspection it appears to be almost identical to the proper Heinemann first; obviously the cover is a text-only, thin card affair as opposed to the first edition's illustrated wrapper and boards, but the interiors look pretty much the same. Look closer, however, and there are very slight differences – such as, for example, a missing quote mark on page 20 of the proof, which has been corrected for the final edition. Because of course it's an uncorrected proof, i.e. a galley, intended for proofreaders, reviewers, libraries, and possibly even Highsmith herself.

Ripley Under Ground is set five or six years after The Talented Mr. Ripley, although in reality fifteen years had passed between the two books, which means that either Under Ground is set in the then-past or Talented was set in the then-future (I'm guessing the latter is more likely, as at one point in Under Ground a policeman finds a buried coin dated 1965 and the inference is it's been there some time). Either way, Tom is now thirty-one, and has secured for himself the kind of comfortable, idle existence he worked – and killed – so hard for in Talented. He lives with his wife of three years, Heloise, in a large house, Belle Ombre, in rural France, spending his time pottering about in the garden, reading, painting, and occasionally acting as a middle man for a fence friend of his, Reeves Minot (and oh, what an attractive way of life it is – at least, to me). Heloise has a stipend from her father, and Tom has Dickie Greenleaf's inheritance, but Tom also derives an income from an art forging ring in England, and it's the unravelling of this that forms the basis of the plot.

In making art, painting and forgery the focus of the book, Highsmith is picking up on themes she established in The Talented Mr. Ripley. Dickie painted, as did Tom – except of course Tom only painted as Dickie, having assumed Dickie's identity. Right at the end of Talented, however, Tom discovers a genuine interest in painting, determining not so much to paint himself (although by the time of Under Ground he has, as I say, taken it up, and as a painter believes himself to be, amusingly, "worse than Dickie"), but "to collect paintings that he liked, and to help young painters with talent who needed money". In a perverse sort of way, this is what he does prior to Under Ground. As is established at the start of the novel, when Derwatt, a painter in whom Tom became interested, died a few years back, Tom suggested to Derwatt's friends that another painter, a friend and admirer of Derwatt's named Bernard Tufts, forge further Derwatt paintings, and helped concoct a story that Derwatt was in fact still alive and living in Mexico. Tom has two Derwatts hanging on his walls at Belle Ombre, one real, one fake, and it's telling that he prefers the Tufts fake to the genuine Derwatt.

But there are other strands from Talented that Highsmith immediately picks up in Under Ground. Tom's association with the shady Reeves Minot speaks to Tom's fascination for the criminal, and he's soon called upon to impersonate Derwatt himself, donning make-up and a fake beard for a press conference in London, echoing the moment in Talented when he briefly tries out eyebrow pencil and putty on his nose to impersonate Dickie. Tom's skewed perspective is highlighted when he takes delight in the obscene but witty graffiti scrawled on the London Underground, and when he observes that "Some people didn't know how to run a business" upon learning that the gallery which sells Bernard's Derwatt fakes hasn't accounted for how the paintings might have arrived from Mexico – as if faking records and ledgers were a typical business practice.

Highsmith professed herself very pleased with Ripley Under Ground when she finished writing the novel, and it's easy to see why. There's an unhinged, giddy, almost farcical quality to the book – a grotesque hall of mirrors, with Bernard's forging of and Tom's impersonating of Derwatt reflecting Tom's impersonation of Dickie and forging of his will in Talented. (Derwatt, Dickie... is it a coincidence that their names both begin with "D"...?) Moreover, Dickie's cousin, Chris, is staying with Tom when Bernard comes to stay at Belle Ombre also, Chris's expressions often reminding Tom of Dickie. On top of that, after six years Tom has just killed again, this time an art collector, Murchison, who had come to suspect Derwatt was being forged. Tom buries Murchison's body in the woods out back of his house before enlisting Bernard's aid in moving it and dumping it in a river instead; with all this going on, it's little wonder that Tom comes close to cracking up.

Of course, Highsmith is performing the same trick she did in Talented: getting the reader to empathize and even sympathize with Tom. Her aim with Talented, as quoted from her diaries in Andrew Wilson's biography of Highsmith, Beautiful Shadow, was to show "the unequivocal triumph of evil over good, and [rejoice] in it". She added: "I shall make my readers rejoice in it, too." That said, in Under Ground – unlike, arguably, in Talented – Highsmith leaves the reader in no doubt as to Tom's true nature: after Bernard, whom Tom greatly admires (although perhaps more as a forger than a painter), tries to kill him (the first of two attempts, the second of which will see Tom buried alive – hence the novel's title), Bernard tells him, "I detest you – because all this is entirely your fault. I should never have agreed to it – true. But you're the origin." After which Tom reflects: "Tom knew. He was a mystic origin, a font of evil."

The realisation that Tom full well understands who and what he is is perhaps more disturbing than the revelation that he's evil incarnate. It's a stark illustration of Tom's lack of conscience: even with that knowledge, he's perfectly able to continue operating and to live his life; to appreciate art; to be fond of ("love" would be putting it too strongly) his wife; to take pleasure in learning and in his garden and his house. But that self-awareness and self-acceptance extends to his perception of others, too – and here is an ability that serves both him and Highsmith well. His "otherness" grants him insight into how people – adversaries and potential allies – think; allows him to foresee what they might be planning. In a sense, this is Highsmith making things slightly easier for herself: by endowing Tom with an acute intuitiveness, she can have him make startling leaps of logic and consequently move the plot along.

Tom's intuitiveness, his knack for feeling his way through hazardous situations, helps him to evade capture in both Talented and Under Ground, but just as important are his single-minded ruthlessness – which reaches its apotheosis at Under Ground's climax with the monstrous desecration of another corpse – and his aptitude for obfuscation, misdirection and impersonation. He weaves an intricate web of lies in Under Ground – admittedly strengthened with a little luck (the literal luck of the devil) – and will do much the same in the next book in the series. And as rewarding a novel as Ripley Under Ground is – and it actually rose in my estimations this time around – the third Ripley outing, Ripley's Game, is, I think, even better...

The Scorpion Signal (Quiller #9) by Adam Hall: Prebind or Uncorrected Proof? (Collins, 1979)

So then, did we all enjoy Paul Simpson's guest post on Big Finish's Sherlock Holmes audio plays? Jolly good. All being well, Paul will be back in the new year with another guest post, and I'll also hopefully have a further guest essay from another friend and former colleague of mine, on a "suppressed" work for adults by one of Britain's most beloved children's authors.

Back in the here and now, though, I'd just like to say a quick thank you to Ethan Iverson, whose brilliant Do the Math blog linked Existential Ennui at the end of last week, in the process sending a stampede of no-doubt bewildered traffic my way. I was already familiar with Do the Math, having used Ethan's terrific overview of Donald E. "Richard Stark" Westlake's canon – which includes quotes from Westlake himself – to navigate Westlake's work when I first got into that writer's novels a couple of years back, so it's a real pleasure to receive props from Mr. Iverson, and for my part I can heartily recommend spending a few hours exploring his extensive archives.

Anyway: to business. And I'm afraid the year is rather getting away from me: I'm not going to be able to complete my series of posts on spy fiction series before 2011 draws to a close, so that series will have to continue in the new year. But I should be able to squeeze in a couple more spy novelists – and a couple of Violent World of Parker cross-posts – before I inflict a barrage of end-of-year missives on you, both of them writers who've featured on Existential Ennui before. Beginning with the first of two novels by Adam Hall, an alias of Elleston Trevor:

This is The Scorpion Signal, Hall/Trevor's ninth novel to feature his secret agent protagonist Quiller. I blogged about the Quiller series in a run of posts in July; in this instalment, Quiller must retrieve an old ally from the clutches of the KGB. But what's interesting about this particular copy of the novel is that it's not, for a change, the British first edition – or at least not what we'd normally identify as a first edition. For one thing, although it has a dustjacket (unclipped, but also uncredited – I can't tell you who illustrated it; possibly Chris Foss, who illustrated the jacket of 1973's The Tango Briefing... perhaps the denizens of the Quiller Yahoo Group can lend some assistance here...?), once you remove the jacket, instead of being cased the book inside has been bound in a thin blue paper cover, with nothing at all printed on it:

However, the copyright line inside the book states that it is the 1979 Collins first edition:

So what is it? The eBay seller I bought it from called it a "prebind", a term which usually denotes a library edition of a novel. I'm not sure that's an accurate description, though. I think it's more likely it's an uncorrected proof, i.e. an advance readers' or reviewers' copy – see this post on a Patricia Highsmith proof and this one on a Dennis Lehane one – in which case it predates the British first edition. But while there are plenty of copies of the proper British first on AbeBooks at present, ranging in price from a fiver to over twenty quid, I can't see any other copies of this proof (or prebind, or whatever the hell it is), making it something of a collectible curio.

But not, perhaps, as collectible as the second Adam Hall novel I'll be showcasing – a very special first edition which has a connection to another Hall/Quiller first I blogged about in September...