The Rope Began to Hang the Butcher

New York/Toronto: Farrar & Rinehart. Very Good+ in Good dj. (c.1944). 1st Edition ("War Edition"). Hardcover. [light shelfwear, slight fading to cloth around edges of covers, one-time owner's name plus date & place of purchase written in ink at top of front endpaper; the jacket is heavily edgeworn, with numerous small creases, slight paper loss at most extremities, light soiling to rear panel]. The second (and, alas, final) novel featuring "lawyer and trouble-shooter" Gilmore Henry, of Calhoun County, Kentucky, this book has been called (by Jon Breen) "one of the very best [Erle Stanley] Gardner-style novels not by Gardner himself." Grafton wrote only one additional crime novel, "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" (1950), and (Breen again) "had [he] chosen to continue in the field he might have become one of the major names in American crime fiction." He may not have produced any more books, but he did produce (well, co-produce) Sue Grafton, so that's a pretty good contribution to the genre right there. .