James, P.D.

A MIND TO MURDER [Inscribed]

London, UK: Faber and Faber, 1963. First UK Edition, First Printing. Octavo, 224 pages. In Good plus condition with Very Good minus condition dust jacket. Spine is pink and white with black lettering. Dust jacket protected by mylar covering, price uncut: "18s net" on front flap, has faint gray smudge on front cover; mild chipping to fore corners and head joints, a long open chip along length of spine tail; mild creasing, moderate age-toning, and faint brown staining along spine; moderate soiling along rear cover. Boards have faint black soiling along extremities, moderate shelving and rubbing wear along head and tail edges; spine severely cocked. Text block has mild bending wear throughout along tail fore corner, moderate age-toning, soiling, scuffing along all edges, and a dark brown smudge along fore edge; endpapers have moderate foxing and acid staining from non-archival tape and adhesive (now removed). Inscribed "To Dick" by P.D. James on title page. DL Consignment. Shelved Case 6.

1397320

Shelved Dupont Bookstore

Price: $3,000

NOTES

A MIND TO MURDER is English novelist and life peer P.D. James' sophomore mystery starring the Scotland Yard police commander-poet Adam Dalgliesh. James (1920-2014), whose family had survived the Great Depression by sacrificing her education, worked in a tax office and then as a theater stage manager when she married an army doctor already on his way to World War II. He returned three years later with severe Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome and was institutionalized, at which time James studied hospital administration and did a stint working on a hospital board. Her husband died in 1954, which allowed her to pursue a change in career she long felt a pull towards: public service. Throughout the '50s, she wrote mystery fiction which allowed her to explore the themes of injustice against the backdrop of the UK legal system and National Health Service, bureaucracies that James engaged with in her various careers. In publisher's original red cloth, this true UK first edition of A MIND TO MURDER is one of the few inscribed by James.