NY: Robert M. McBride and Company, 1938. Octavo, [1-8] 1-213 [214-216, blank], original red cloth, front and spine stamped in black. First edition. Classic hardboiled mystery novel set in Southern California. From a new essay on the book by Woody Haut at the online Los Angeles Review of Books (7/29/11) -"The book does read like James Cain filtered through Thomas Pynchon. Although Knight’s first person narrative begins in typical tough-guy fashion, with Dick Dempsey, an Oklahoma-born AWOL Marine hopping a freight in Texas for Southern California in pursuit of his wife and son, it soon moves off in another, wilder direction — more like a noir Alice in Lotus Land than a cool and conventional hardboiled novel." The author's only mystery novel, best known for creating the character Lassie the dog.