Tryst for a Tragedy. 1940

London: published for The Crime Club, by Collins,, 1940. Octavo. Original red cloth, titles to spine in black. With the dust jacket. Very slight discolouration along top edge of boards, extremely faint spotting to fore-edge and some early leaves, with a rust-spot going from the front pastedown, through the jacket front flap and the front free endpaper, to the half title, otherwise an excellent copy in the striking, lightly rubbed jacket. First edition, first impression. Inscribed on the front free endpaper, "Maud Lang (from the authoress)" and includes, laid in, an autograph letter signed from the author "At Raven's Croft" (her boarding school, to which this book is dedicated, and which was evacuated to Thurlestone Hotel, in Devon, during the war) to the "Mrs Lang & Dorothy", dated Nov 6th [1940]. Her letter complains humorously, "It is a silly sort of life - the combination of boarding school & luxury hotel is even more fatuous than the establishments separately!", but goes on in a more serious tone: "There is just no one to 'talk' to here. I expect Dorothy remembers red-headed Mae, who played bridge with us sometimes. He was one of my oldest friends & was killed fire-fighting in September. Most of my other friends have been bombed or burnt out of their homes. What a sickening insanity it all is." Rare in any state (WorldCat lists holdings in four libraries worldwide, and only one copy has ever surfaced at auction), but especially so thus.