Murder Draws a Line

New York: The Crime Club / Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1940. Very Good/Good. New York: The Crime Club / Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1940. First Edition, stated. Octavo; [viii], 333pp. Illustrations throughout. Illustrated dust jacket with $2.00 price intact; book in charcoal cloth with red debossed Crime Club banner to front and red lettering and ornamentation to spine. Red topstain. Jacket shows a small closed tear at bottom front, missed by amateur tape repair (folded over onto both sides ostensibly over folds but actually along the majority of the top and bottom edge) which likely hides a few other prior tears. Jacket otherwise crisp with a bit of smudging to white back panel and a bit of spotting to base of spine. Boards lightly shelfworn, with rubbing to spine at ends and joints. Light abrasion to front pastedown rubbing away a prior owner signature. Endpapers a bit toned adjacent to flap folds. Binding is sound and pages unmarked.

The first mystery featuring Christopher "Kit" Storm, an NYPD sketch artist whose illustrations feature as further clues throughout the novels.

[Nehr, Crime Club Compendium p. 163; Heising, Detecting Woman 2 p. 25].