Stamboul Train
London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1932.
First edition, first printing. [x], 307 pp. Bound in publisher's black cloth lettered in gilt on the spine. Near fine with lean to spine and foxing to textblock edges and sporadically throughout; front hinge exposed, two bookplates to front endsheet. In a Near Fine unclipped dust jacket with light edgewear, toning, and soiling. Miller 10.a.
The first edition of Graham Greene's spy thriller set on a train from Ostend to Istanbul. The book was published in the United States as Orient Express and was adapted into a film by the same name two years later, resulting in Agatha Christie's 1934 Poirot mystery Murder on the Orient Express being renamed Murder in the Calais Coach for its American audience.
Another link with the Golden Age of detective fiction: the novel's striking dust jacket, unusually well preserved in this copy, features artwork by Philip Youngman Carter, a leading jacket designer who was married to Albert Campion's creator Margery Allingham. Youngman Carter designed two more dust jackets for Greene, and though the author disliked them (beneath the dignity of his books, he thought), they are now valued for their exemplary modernism.
Price: $3,200