Red Shadow - Patricia Wentworth (psued. Dora Amy Elles) 1932 - J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia - First American Edition They are letting me say good-bye. I’m to be shot to-morrow. It will be over by the time you get this…”

‘Laura stood, pale and trembling, in the veiled dress she was to have worn as Jim Mackenzie’s bride, and gave her word to marry Basil Stevens, a man she scarcely knew. In his unexpected visit Basil had made three things clear: Laura was the heiress of the great Hallingdon fortune; Jim faced a Soviet firing squad; and only this marriage would save Jim. Why? What was the plot that threatened to destroy him?’ [
Dean Street Press]
  Provenance: Dust jacket with the name of Pauline Cooper to upper edge of front flap.

Published the same year by Hodder and Stoughton, London under the title ‘
Red Danger’. According to Cooper & Pike it is possible the British Edition may not be the true first.

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), 1460. Cooper & Pike, ‘Detective Fiction’, 309.

Octavo (book siz19.2x13.2cm), pp. 319 [1]. In publisher’s red cloth, spine and upper panel lettered in black, top edge tinted red, all edges trimmed. Dust jacket priced ‘$2.00’ to lower corner of front flap. Jacket with paper restoration to spine ends and corners of front flap fold, and re-colouring of white title panel on spine.
  Condition: Some minor rubbing to corners and spine ends else fine, in near fine dust jacket, faint soiling to rear panel, paper restoration to spine ends and corners of front flap fold, and re-colouring of white title panel on spine.   Ref: 110342   Price: HK$ 3,500