Identification points are listed only where two independent sources agree. Last reviewed 28 Oct 2026.
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Collins Crime Club published the first edition in London in March 1940, 256 pages, ahead of Dodd, Mead's New York edition later that year. It is bound in orange cloth and was issued in a pictorial jacket. The published price was 8s. 3d., the first rise in the price of a new Christie in Britain. Copies in the trade often have faded or spotted cloth and jackets that are price clipped or reinforced with tape, so check for both.
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.
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Collins, London, in 1940, in hardback.
Points of issue are listed only where at least two independent sources agree. Last reviewed 28 October 2026. Reviewed by Harriet Ellis; read how we check facts.
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