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. Benjamin Appel (1907-1977) 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. Owner's name and address in ink on the front free endpaper. Front and rear covers damp stained, a good, internally clean, copy married to a very good price-clipped silver foil dust jacket with wear along top and bottom edges, mostly spine ends and corner tips, and several unnecessary internal tape reinforcements along the top edge. Quite a nice example of the jacket. From the library of a well-known mystery writer with his library stamp on the front paste-down. (#177046).
Price: $1,000.00
First edition so stated on copyright page.