THIEVES LIKE US ...
London, Toronto: William Heinemann Ltd, [1937]. Octavo pp. [1-2: blank] [3-10] 1-286, publisher's green cloth stamp in brown, tan endpapers. First British edition. The author's second and last novel. Three escaped convicts rob banks. The central character goes on the run with his girlfriend. "Anderson’s second novel crackles with tension and has a very different mood from “Hungry Men” [his first] because the reader understands from the start that these characters are doomed. Hence their romance. The book lives best, not in its sometimes hard-boiled idiom, but in the moments between the action, when the characters are driving around Texas and Oklahoma, or holed up in a safe house or hotel" (Richard Raymer, L. A. Times, 22 June 2008). The title is used memorably by a character in the book, T. Dub Masefield, whose sentiment about bankers is: "They're thieves, just like us" (see p. 15). Film noir source title and basis for a 1949 film directed by Nicholas Ray titled They Live By Night and a later 1974 film directed by Robert Altman titled Thieves Like Us. [Reference: Johnson, The Dark Page I, p. 6. Silver and Ward, eds., Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style (third edition), pp. 284-285. Selby, Dark City: The Film Noir, p. 187]. Previous owner's signature on the title page. A tight, clean, very good copy in very good pictorial dust jacket designed by Malcolm Easton priced 7/6 on the front flap, with wear with shallow loss at spine ends, several short closed tears along top and bottom edges, and tanned spine panel and flap folds. From the library of a well-known mystery writer with his library stamp on the front paste-down. (33955). Item #33955
Price: $850.00