The Notched Hairpin

New York: The Vanguard Press. Very Good in Good+ dj. (c.1949). First Edition. Hardcover. [lightly shelfworn, spine slightly turned, a bit of dust-soiling to top of text block, one-time owner's name plus date & place of purchase written in ink at top of front endpaper; the jacket has a number of tiny insect-nibbled holes, in particular along the rear hinge and on the rear panel, and is also split about halfway down from the top at the front flapfold]. The third and final "Mr. Mycroft" mystery, one that (per the jacket blurb) "will evoke the shades of Baker Street" -- Mycroft, of course, being a retired Sherlock Holmes in all but name. Narrated, as always, by "Mr. Silchester" (the Dr. Watson doppelganger), this investigation, of a murder committed with an antique hairpin, takes the reader "from the antiquarian gentility of twin Shropshire houses, through the haunts of a munitions runner and 'hotels' of prostitution, to the continent-wide reaches of the slave trade." (The two previous Mycroft mysteries were "A Taste for Honey" (1941) and "Reply Paid" (1952); Heard also employed the character in a couple of short stories.) .