Identification points are listed only where two independent sources agree. Last reviewed 22 Oct 2026.
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Collins issued the first edition in London in August 1944 under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, before the Farrar and Rinehart edition in New York later that year. It is a small wartime volume of 160 pages in blue cloth (one dealer calls it greyish blue) lettered in gilt on the spine. The title page carries the Westmacott name and the 1944 date. Any copy with an ISBN is a later reissue. Copies in the dust jacket are scarce.
Collins did not mark first editions or first impressions in any special way, so a Collins first, Crime Club titles included, carries no edition statement and is recognised by the absence of any later date and by the points for that title.
Read the full guide to Collins first editions, decade by decade, and check your copy's copyright page against it. Our number line decoder reads the printing from the row of numbers.
We have not yet confirmed the issue points that tell this first impression from later ones. Until we do, compare your copy's title page and copyright page with the publisher, place and year above: any later printing or edition statement means it is not this one.
Know the points? Tell us. We publish them, with credit, once a second source agrees.
Collins, London, in 1944, in hardback.
Points of issue are listed only where at least two independent sources agree. Last reviewed 22 October 2026. Reviewed by Harriet Ellis; read how we check facts.
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