Shadow of a Hero

Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Very Good+ in Very Good dj. 1949. First Edition. Hardcover. [light wear to book, slight fading to cloth along top and bottom edges, small vintage bookseller's rubber-stamp (Bertrand Smith's Acres of Books, Long Beach, California) at bottom corner of front pastedown; jacket has tiny tears at several corners, some edgewear and minor wrinkling along bottom edge, a handful of tiny nicks and closed tears]. Novel about a newspaper's book editor who starts looking into the background of Arnold Kelleher, one of his city's upstanding (and recently-deceased) citizens, regarded as a hero for his role in recovering a kidnapped child, and discovers a great disparity between the myth and the man. His quest for the truth takes him "behind the front of a political machine, [as he] unlooses the stench of past misdemeanors in which Kelleher had had more than a small part, [and] interviews those on whom his treacheries had had a lasting effect. [He] learns of Kelleher's many secret vile and vicious actions, learns too the reason for his own lasting fear and hatred of the man." (Kirkus Reviews) The author had an interesting career arc (if that's the term): newspaper reporter in the 1930s, novelist in the 1940s, a brush with the anti-communist witch-hunters in 1953 (he was interviewed privately but never called before HUAC itself), a stint as a Hollywood TV writer for about a decade (ca. 1954-1964), and finally a researcher and writer of books about medicine. .