Skeleton in Concrete

London / Gateshead on Tyne: Gifford / The Thriller Book Club / Northumberland Press Limited, 1953. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good. 0x0x0. Signed by author. Inscribed to the author's editor (at length!) and signed on front endpaper ('To my favorite editor J.P. Hall of the California Mining Journal who has the guts and the good will to tell the paper money bags to go to hell! With affection regards from the author John E. (Evarts) Barry, Victorville - 1954, who once again thanks the British publishers after America's gave me the cold shoulder! JEB'). Ink note on front endpaper states 'These books not on sale in America! Sold only in the 'colonies' S. Africa, India, Australia, N. Zealand.' Jacket rubbed with minor loss from spine ends, pages toned. Binding tight and square, text clean and unmarked. 1953 Hard Cover. 256 pp. From the jacket: "Sheriff Bill Hoe and Coroner Slim Blevins, of Biscocho, Vaca County, near the Mexican Border, are up with the police at the long-discussed Gila gold mine, twenty-five miles out in the desert. They have been tipped off that this is where stolen cars have their licence plates, engine numbers, etc., stripped. They have also been tipped off that they may discover evidence of an old murder in the vicinity. During their search inside one of the tunnels leading into the mine they find a deep pool, and when this is drained they discover a skeleton, encased from the waist down, in a barrel of concrete. The skeleton has been there for nearly twenty years. Who was the skeleton and why did he die? This is the problem which Sheriff Hoe has to solve, and his investigations provide a fast-moving, action-filled thriller, with plenty of humour and excellent characters.