Sue Eugène

1982 · rif. UB-17876 — New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston 1982. 1. Very Good/Good. 1. FIRST EDITION FIRST PRINTING SIGNED WITH THE PUBLISHER'S REVIEW SLIP. "First Edition" stated on the copyright page with a complete number line 1-10. Signed by Grafton on a decorative bookplate affixed to the half-title. Laid in is the Holt Rinehart and Winston "Advance Copy" slip giving a release date of April 30 1982 and a price of $13.50 which differs from the $12.95 printed on the jacket. The slip gives the publisher's address as 521 Fifth Avenue; the copyright page and jacket give 383 Madison Avenue. Bound in gray textured paper over boards with spine lettered in metallic red with the publisher's skeleton key device. Presents nicely in original pictorial dust jacket in protective archival sleeve. Moderate edgewear to dust jacket with scattered chipping and small tears to edges and extremities as well as mild toning foxing and dust soiling to flaps and verso. Mild wear to binding with gentle bumping to head and tail of spine corners still sharp. Mild foxing to endpapers and page edges. Binding is firm tight and sound. Pages are clean and unmarked. Overall a very good copy in good dust jacket. Dust jacket shows front-flap price $12.95 code "0482" and features: front panel photograph by Kathie A. McGinty author photograph on rear flap by Steven Humphrey rear panel prints Kinsey's opening paragraph framed by skeleton keys. Book designed by Joy Chu. Grafton's third published novel following Keziah Dane 1967 and The Lolly-Madonna War 1969 and years of screenwriting for television A Is for Alibi was her first mystery and the first Kinsey Millhone novel beginning the beloved "Alphabet" series. Over the next thirty-five years she would carry the series to Y is for Yesterday 2017. She died that December before writing the planned Z is for Zero. Kinsey works out of Santa Teresa the fictional stand-in for Santa Barbara that Grafton took from Ross Macdonald. She is thirty-two twice divorced self-reliant and wryly unsentimental. Together with Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone and Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski whose Indemnity Only also appeared in 1982 she helped claim the hardboiled private-eye novel for women both as writers and as protagonists. Patricia Moyes's blurb on the front flap now reads as prophecy: she predicted the series would run "all through the alphabet." From the publisher: A IS FOR AVENGER. A tough-talking former cop private investigator Kinsey Millhone has set up a modest detective agency in a quiet corner of Santa Teresa California. She's a twice-divorced loner with few personal possessions and fewer personal attachments but with a soft spot for underdogs and lost causes. A IS FOR ACCUSED. That's why she draws desperate clients like Nikki Fife. Eight years ago she was convicted of killing her philandering husband. Now she's out on parole and needs Kinsey's help to find the real killer. But after all this time clearing Nikki's bad name won't be easy. A IS FOR ALIBI. If there's one thing that makes Kinsey Millhone feel alive it's playing on the edge. When her investigation turns up a second corpse more suspects and a new reason to kill Kinsey discovers that the edge is closer-and sharper-than she imagined. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston unknown books