BELLS FOR THE DEAD

Garden City: NY: The Crime Club, Inc., : Doubleday, Doran & Co., Inc.,, 1942. 1st edition, so stated. Green cloth binding very light wear at rear else about fine in homemade acetate jacket. White pages and tight binding. 300 pages. Joan Thorntree journeys with her new husband, Jeremy, to his family estate in Guatemala, a fantastic Walt Disney castle on the shores of a lake high in the mountains. She finds herself the intruder, the outlander, with a hostile reception from the entire household. Worst of all, Jeremy is a different person at home than the charming, gay young man she had married in New York. It is obvious that everyone is intent on making her life so unbearable that she would return to the States of her own accord. When a member of the family dies a violent, Joan realizes that she is the scapegoat to bear the the brunt of any blame that might fall. It becomes impossible for her to return to New York and get out of the situation. Native superstition, the dread of being alone in a foreign country, inimical glances on every side, and an ultimatum from the matriarch of the family reduces her to abject terror and humilation. And then she begins to fight back to preserve her own integrity, to rescue her marriage, and to clear her name of the suspicion of murder. . First Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine. Book.