London: Herbert Jenkins Limited, [1937]. Octavo, pp. [1-9] 10-311 [312] [313-320: ads], original orange cloth, front, spine and rear stamped in black. First edition. The second R. R. Ryan novel. "A kind, generous pillar of the community by all appearances, bank manager Selwyn Maine is secretly a sadistic pervert who not only tortures birds, cats, and dogs, but also blackmails his associates into enduring “unholy penalties” and “sadistic séances” instead of being turned over to the police for the minor crimes they have committed. Maine’s two most recent victims are Trevor Garron, a mild-mannered cashier at his bank who has been embezzling money, and Edna Ferrar, a young inexperienced shop girl who is one of Maine’s tenants and behind on the rent owed by her and her sick mother. The tortures that Garron and Edna endure are never described, but Ryan clearly suggests they are sexual in nature, “the greatest inhumanities, the most degrading, revolting atrocities it is possible for the human brain to conceive.” Garron, who is consumed by self-loathing, and Edna, who ends up pregnant, decide independently of one another to kill Maine and end their subjugation. Garron, also an amateur inventor who has created “a device for rendering aircraft safe,” constructs a door to his flat that contains a gun with a silencer that is triggered when a key is inserted into the lock. While Garron is attending a ball and establishing an airtight alibi, Maine is killed in front of Garron’s apartment by this device. Unfortunately, Edna is seen fleeing the vicinity that same night because she has been following Maine with the intention of shooting him with her deceased father’s service revolver. Edna is, of course, quickly arrested for the crime, and tortured by his conscience, Garron confesses the truth to save Edna’s life, but no one believes his account of the murder because of his alibi and his destruction of all traces of his ingenious killer door. The final dizzying act of DEATH OF A SADIST includes Edna’s attempts in prison to miscarry Maine’s unborn child, a tense courtroom drama about justifiable homicide, Garron’s decision to commit suicide, and a journey to a leper colony. Like all of Ryan’s thrillers, DEATH OF A SADIST is a mess, an enthusiastic but poorly written fever dream of abnormal psychology and pathological behavior that displays, for the time period, an unusually sympathetic understanding of the exploitation women suffer in a male-dominated society because of socio-economic circumstances and public opinion." - Boyd White. [Reference: Sullivan, ed., The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural, p. 365. Hubin (1994), p. 710].

London: Herbert Jenkins Limited, [1938]. Octavo, pp. [1-6] 7-282 [283-288: ads], original orange cloth, front, spine and rear stamped in black. First edition. "Horror thriller about a fascist ideologue who employs a vivisectionist to manufacture murderous freaks for display -- and the young lovers caught in his web of intrigue. Reminiscent of Wells' THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU, and strongly attuned to the political climate of the times. Ryan's deadpan humor crops up in a series of Scotland Yard detectives who enter the museum: 'They went up. They never came down again.' Ryan was not fond of authority figures." - Robert Knowlton. [Reference: Sullivan, ed., The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural, p. 365. Hubin (1994), p. 710].