The Clock Strikes Twelve - Patricia Wentworth (psued. Dora Amy Elles) 1944 - J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia - First Edition A scarce example of the true first edition, in bright sharp dust jacket.

Featuring Miss Maud Silver, a determinedly professional private detective who relies on logic rather than mere tuition in her work, misleading suspects with her unthreatening outward appearance and predilection for knitting and quoting Tennyson.

‘Miss Silver has her place in detective fiction as surely as Lord Peter Wimsey or Hercule Poirot’ –
Manchester Evening News.
  ‘New Year's Eve, 1940, is unusual for the Paradine family. Departing from tradition, James Paradine makes a speech that changes the course of many lives. Valuable documents have disappeared. A member of the family has taken them. The culprit has until midnight to confess and return the papers’ [Waterstones].

Published the following year by Hodder and Stoughton, London.

Dora Amy Elles (1877-1961) was a prolific British author who wrote under the pseudonym Patricia Wentworth.

References: Reilly, ’
Twentieth-Century Crime and Mystery Writers’ (1980), 1461. Cooper & Pike, ‘Detective Fiction’, 309. Herbert, ‘The Oxford Companion to Crime & Mystery Writing’, 414.

Octavo (book size 19.3x13.3cm), pp. 256. In publisher’s red cloth, spine lettered in black with publisher’s logo in black, top edge tinted black, all edges trimmed. Dust jacket priced ‘$2.00’ to lower corner of front flap. Jacket with with minor 1-2mm thin lines of colour touch-up to head of top panel and similarly small touch-ups to head and tail of spine
  Condition: Very good, wear with some loss to cloth on upper corners, several light marks to boards, one or two pages over-opened, in near fine dust jacket, with unnecessary 1-2mm thin lines of colour touch-up to head of top panel and similarly small touch-ups to head and tail of spine.   Ref: 110341   Price: HK$ 3,800