Mare's Nest [*SIGNED*]

New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc.. Very Good. (c.1941). First Edition. Hardcover. (no dust jacket, but encased in a new professionally-produced FACSIMILE of the original jacket) [a bit of soiling to top of text block, light wear to extremities, some fraying to cloth at spine ends, upper corner of pp.5/6 diagonally creased, one-time owner's initials plus date & place of purchase written in ink along edge of rear pastedown (concealed beneath the rear jacket flap)]. INSCRIBED and SIGNED by the author on the front endpaper. This "Honorable Mention" honoree in the publisher's Mary Roberts Rinehart Mysery Novel Prize Contest is described as "a first mystery and a first novel"; in terms of the latter, that's only true if you ignore the author's THREE earlier books, all published under the pseudonym "Hester Pine," which she adopted for her first novel -- a somewhat scandalous college novel with the wonderful title "Beer for the Kitten" -- in order to distance herself from (and not damage the reputation of) her husband, Harrison Coffin, a professor of Greek at Union College in Schenectady, New York. The plot in this novel, set largely on the titular Maryland country estate, involves a woman (the tale's narrator) attempting to get to the bottom of her brother's mysterious death -- which turns out to have been murder. Following this book, the author turned out just two more novels -- one more mystery and one more "Hester Pine" book, bringing the grand total of her literary output to six books in as many years (1939-1944) -- before apparently giving up the writing life, at least as far as full-length novels were concerned, although she lived until 1994. (And by the way, OCLC still hasn't figured out that Hester Pine = Carlyn Coffin. Spread the word.) PLEASE NOTE that the dust jacket on this book is a FACSIMILE of the original. Signed by Author .