BRAIN GUY. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1934. Octavo, pp. [1-2: blank] [3-12] [1-2] 3-355 [356] [357: blank] [358: "a note on the type ..."] [359-360: blank], publisher's beige cloth stamped in brown. First edition. A hard-boiled novel in which a fired rent collector becomes the leader of a New York mob. The sequel is a strike novel, POWER-HOUSE (Dutton 1939), in which the "brain guy," Bill Trent, is killed in a riot which he himself deliberately formatted. Appel grew up in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of New York City and he drew upon his life there for his crime novels featuring the city's street punks, gangsters, con-men and crooked politicians. Hanna, Mirror for the Nation 97. Hubin (1994), p. 27. Mild dust soiling to beige cloth, a very good copy in very good price-clipped pictorial silver foil dust jacket with some rubbing to edges, corners and spine ends and some scratching. (#126467).
Price: $1,500.00
First edition so stated on copyright page.