BEEDING, Francis. The Ten Holy Horrors. London: Hodder & Stoughton. 1939.
8vo. Publisher’s black cloth lettered in red to front board and spine, original illustrated dust jacket with the price 7/6 added in black ink to front flap; pp. 318, [ii]; some closed tearing and wearing to edges of jacket, with slight creasing and soiling to spine, toning and spotting to textblock edge, toning and some spotting to endpapers, an unusually bright example; very good.
First edition, likely a publisher's review or file copy as the inner flaps are blank.
Published at the beginning of WWII, this spy thriller tells the story of the head of the British intelligence service Colonel Granby who, together with Alec Ogilvie, MP, finds himself involved in a life and death struggle against Von Nessel, the most dangerous German agent in England.
'Francis Beeding' was in fact John Leslie Palmer, who co-authored 31 novels with Hilary Saint George Saunders under this pseudonym. Their most famous work, The House of Dr. Edwardes, was later used as the basis for the Hitchcock film Spellbound. The Beeding pseudonym was kept secret from its commencement in 1920, until 1925, when Saunders delivered a lecture about his writing methods as Francis Beeding. When Palmer heckled from the audience, Saunders invited him to the platform, and the dual authorship was revealed.
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