Still Dead. Knox (Ronald A.) Modern First Edition

FIRST EDITION, Bip Pares vignette to title-page, pp. 320, crown 8vo, original black cloth, lettered in red to upper board and backstrip, textblock edges slightly toned, maps to front endpapers by Bip Pares, her design to the dustjacket also with related press-clipping tipped to front flap (see below), the dustjacket a little chipped with sunned backstrip panel, splitting to front flap-fold, separated along upper joint-fold, darkened to backstrip panel and border of rear panel, the latter with a few spots, some surface abrasion to left-margin of front panel, press clipping of Daily Herald review tipped to front flap, very good. Knox's detective novel is scarce, with this copy particularly notable for the encomium attached to the front flap, which reserves particular praise for the work of Bip Pares - the reviewer wanting to 'congratulate the artist and the publishers on the dust-cover', commending it as 'a masterpiece', and explaining how it affected his reading of the novel, giving it a paratextual status beyond mere cover-design. After his first, 'The Viaduct Murder', all of Knox's crime fiction (this the fourth of five further) employed as detective Miles Bredon; the author attended Balliol College, Oxford before being elected a fellow of neighbouring Trinity, where he became a chaplain. He subsequently converted to Catholicism.