Comeback Has Come Back

My brand new copy of the University of Chicago Press edition of Richard Stark's Comeback just arrived.   This book marks the return of Parker after a 23 year hiatus.  And for me it should end a four or five month break of not reading any Richard Stark novels.


Butcher's Moon and Backflash should be here soon. 

Thank you to the folks at the University of Chicago Press for reprinting these books.   Can a university press win the Nobel Prize for Literature?  I think these people should.

Killy

I just got a copy of Killy by Donald Westlake.

It is in hard cover, a first edition, and its dust jacket is unclipped. It is a little worn and has some tanning on it. Since I got it for $6.50, I am rather pleased with it. There is only one small problem with it: it is an ex-library copy, a fact the seller did not disclose. Had I paid more, I would be pissed off. But since I got it so cheaply, I can live with it. (Additionally, I won't be so worried about messing it up when I read it.) The seller gave the item a detailed listing and I am certain he purposely omitted the fact that it was an ex-library copy.  (The library sold it for 10 cents.)

My copy of Killy came from the Daycroft School Library. Now closed, this Christian Scientist school was located in the tony Connecticut town of Greenwich (now better known as the primary base for most American hedge funds). It seems odd to me that a Christian Scientist school would have early Westlake novels. Perhaps a librarian had a fondness for crime novels and ordered it. Killy does not strike me as the kind of thing that the school founders would want their students reading. From the dust jacket:

Killy is a first rate detective story about the solving of several murders, but it is even more a novel about how a young man still filled with illusions can be turned into the inevitable path of the ruthless seeking for power.

Or perhaps maybe the students were to read it as a cautionary tale.  Having had a look at the place, I would think they could have used a copy of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go instead as it looks like the kind of place where they keep cloned kids until they are ready to donate their organs.  (But I suppose being a Christian Scientist school, such a thing would have been singularly unlikely.  Or, perhaps, that is the perfect cover?)

The dust jacket of my copy of Killy was designed by Arthur Hawkins.  I don't know much about him (I get the feeling he was an important/prominent designer or artist) but I like what I see of his work.  He's also done:

I am still reading Tana French's fantastic second novel The Likeness and don't know when I will get around to reading Killy.