Death on the Nile
London: The Crime Club / William Collins, 1938. Original red cloth (7 1/2 inches tall), lettered in black, original dust jacket. Mild toning to endpapers, minor foxing to edges, fading to cloth spine, ink inscription, chipping and tearing to jacket with loss of lower spine and lower corner of rear panel. Very good. Item #1457
"THE BEST OF ALL CRIME NOVELISTS"
First edition—second impression—of Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile. A relatively early, and now uncommon, Hercule Poirot novel, intact in the scarce, bright and unclipped original dust jacket.
Set in Egypt, Death on the Nile finds Hercule Poirot entangled in a case involving love, money, and murder. First serialized in the United States in The Saturday Evening Post (from May to July 1937) with illustrations by Henry Raleigh, the first book edition was published in December 1937 by The Crime Club. Sponsored by William Collins publishers, the Crime Club was an enormously successful imprint for detective fiction during the 1930's. Much of the success of the Club can be contributed to the popularity of Agatha Christie. Under contract to Collins since 1926, all except five of Christie's books were published under the Crime Club imprint—from the Murder at the Vicarage onwards—and most of her classic titles such as Murder on the Orient Express first appeared as Crime Club books. Printed with a diagram of the S.S. Karnak (p. 133), the book is bound with blurbs for Christie's other Poirot novels (Appointment with Death, Dumb Witness, and Cards on the Table). The concluding leaf invites readers to "Join the Crime Club," promising free membership along with the newsletter ("Crime Club News").
Price: $750.00