The Very Best Reads of the Second Plague Year

This annus horribilis draws to a close – thank God – meaning the time has come to recap the last twelve months of reading old books. I tackled a bunch, twenty-one of which were reviewed here and in the pages of Canadian Notes & Queries. I'm counting Arthur Stringer's 1936 novel The Wife Traders and its British reworking, Tooloona, as two.

Fight me.

They're two different books... and having slogged my way through both, I've earned it.

Stringer proved to be this year's most read author, though I'm at a loss to explain why. I read four books by this son of Chatham, which is more than the previous seven years combined. The majority were pretty awful, but one made it onto my annual list of the three out-of-print reads most deserving a return to print:

Willie the Squowse

Ted Allan
Toronto: McClelland &

   Stewart, 1977

Forget The Scalpel, the Sword,  this is the Ted Allan book you want to read. And yes, I'll again point out the wonderful Quentin Blake illustrations.

Get it while you can, then share it with the children in your life.

The Shadow
Arthur Stringer
New York: Century, 1913

Better known under the later (superior) title Never-Fail Blake, this story of one man's relentless drive to bring another to justice was one of Stringer's most reprinted thrillers. Today, it is all but forgotten. It doesn't deserve that fate.

Poldrate Street
Garnett Weston
New York: Messner, 1944

This was the second Weston novel read this past summer. Where the first, The Legacy of Fear, disappointed, Poldrate Street entertained as the year's most unpleasant, stomach-turning read. Voyeurism, adultery, greed, murder, and something approaching necrophilia figure. No disappointment here!

Three of the books I reviewed this year are currently in print:

Dear Departed stands out as a relatively new book. The first true collection of Brian Moore short stories, it features writing that originally appeared between 1956 and 1961. Dear Departed was published just last year by Belfast's Turnpike Books, but went almost unnoticed in the author's adopted land. The only review I've seen or heard is Randy Boyagoda's on The Next Chapter. 

Having been elevated in 2012, Grant Allen's An African Millionaire (1897) holds certain distinction as a Penguin Classic. Much as I like the novel, I wonder why. The Woman Who Did is a much better, more interesting, more enduring, and more culturally significant work.

Never mind.

Give An African Millionaire a read, but if you want Allen at his best I recommend The Woman Who Did, The Devil's Die, For Mamie's Sake, Michael's Crag, Under Sealed Orders, Hilda Wade, What's Bred in the Bone or The British Barbarians.

Brash Books is in the process of returning every Tom Ardies novel to print. The author's second, This Suitcase is Going to Explode (1972) has the defeated hero of the first, Charlie Sparrow, pick himself up to save us all. The third and final Sparrow novel is titled Pandemic (1973), in which he saves us from same.

 At least, I think he does.

Praise this year goes again to Stark House (first recognized in 2012) for its continued dedication to the work of Douglas Sanderson (aka Martin Brett, aka Malcolm Douglas). This year, the publisher put one foot outside its usual crime territory in publishing Dark Passions Subdue, which I reviewed here ten years ago. Sanderson's debut novel, it concerns a male McGill student's attraction to another man.

Dark Passions Subdue was first published in 1952 by Dodd, Mead. The next year, Avon brought it out as a mass market paperback. The McGill University Library does not have a copy of either edition. Now's its chance.

I was involved in the reissue of only one novel this year. Due to production matters, it's been pushed into next. Here's something to look forward to in the New Year:

Resolutions? I have a few:

• I will focus more on francophone writers;
• I will review more non-fiction;
• I will keep kicking against the pricks.

Here's to a better New Year!

Bonne année!

Related posts:

The Very Best Reads of a Plague Year (2020)
The Very Best Reads of a Very Strange Year (2019)
Best Books of 2018 (none of which are from 2018)
The Year's Best Books in Review - A.D. 2017
The Year's Best Books in Review - A.D. 2016
The Year's Best Books in Review - A.D. 2015
The Christmas Offering of Books - 1914 and 2014
A Last Minute Gift Slogan, "Give Books" (2013)
Grumbles About Gumble & Praise for Stark House (2012)
The Highest Compliments of the Season (2011)
A 75-Year-Old Virgin and Others I Acquired (2010)
Books are Best (2009)

Arthur Stringer Unshackled (then bowdlerized)
Little Willie, Willie Won't Go Home
A Shadow Moves Through a Showy Underworld
The Dead of a Dead End Street
Fumbling Towards Legacy
Shorter Moore
Starting on on Grant Allen: A Top Ten
Getting to Know The Woman Who Did
A Nineteenth Century What's Bred in the Bone
Grant Allen Tells Us Like It Is
Criminal Notes & Queries
Have Bomb – Will Travel
The Jacket, the Dressing Gown and the Closet

Just in Time for Christmas!

The new issue of Canadian Notes & Queries arrives at a busy time of year, which suits me just fine. I usually race through each issue, reading it from cover to cover, but am now forced to slow the pace and savour.

And so, all I've read thus far is Seth's regular column 'The Landscape.' The beginning raised a smile of self-recognition:

There are still a few places in Ontario where one can find shelves (or piles) of old second hand books for sale that have not been curated. Randomly acquired, roughly heaped into sections, and priced not by author and title but by paperback or hardcover status alone. These places are dwindling fast but I still know a few prime spots. Don't expect me to name them or tell you where they're located though. s if. I don't want you going there. These are my secret places. My old books! Keep out.

Seth's focus this time is The Canada Permanent Story, 1855-1955. "These corporate books weren't really meant to be perused," he writes, yet Seth has done just that, sharing this endpaper illustration:

My own contribution concerns Garnett Weston, whose books and film work consumed much of my summer. They also consumed a fair amount of my income. I've yet to find a Weston in any of my secret places.

Garnett Weston
1890 - 1980
RIP

It's not entirely true that I've only read Seth's column. Among the other contributions is 'Telling the Story,' in which Susan Mayse remembers her father Arthur Mayse's writing career. I commissioned the  piece as the forward to the forthcoming Ricochet Books reissue of Arthur Mayse's 1949 novel Perilous Passage.

There's so much more to look forward to, including writing by:

Stephanie Bolster

Alex Boyd

Kornella Drianovaki

Megan Durnford

Stacey Easton

André Forget

Stephen Fowler

Alex Good

Ronald L Grimes

Brett Joseph Grubisic

Luke Hathaway

David Huebert

Mark Anthony Jarman

Kate Kennedy

Aris Keshav

M Travis Lane

Rohen Maitzen

Dancy Mason

David Mason

Jeff Miller

Nofel

J R Patterson

Shazia Hafiz Ramji

Patricia Robertson

Naben Ruthnum

Cal Sepulia

Drew Tapley

Rob Taylor

Carl Watts

Bruce Whitman

Given that it's the season... Anyone looking for a last minute Christmas gift can't do much better than a subscription to Canadian Notes & Queries. I bought a couple. You can, too!

The link is here.

Related posts:

The Dead of a Dead End Street
Legacy of Fear

Just Kids

The Ten Best Book Buys of 2021... and much more!

A better year than last, right? I got out more, raised pints in pubs, saw my daughter, and spent seven days touring Quebec City and the Eastern Townships. Hell, I even saw a movie in a theatre.

I also visited more bookstores, though a depressingly small number were worth the effort. Six of this year's ten best buys were purchased online. Ted Allan's pseudonymously published Quest for Pajaro (London: Heinemann, 1957) is my favourite. I'd known about about this science fiction romance since 1983, but in all the years that passed had never come across a copy.

No surprise, I suppose.

Quest for Pajaro was published in 1957 by Heinemann. There was no Canadian edition. Was anyone distributing Heinemann in Canada back then? If so, were they aware that "Edward Maxwell" was in fact Montrealer Ted Allan?

Doubt it.

I purchased Quest for Pajaro after having been invited to comment on Allan's work at this year's Toronto Jewish Film Festival. While not his best book, it is his most intriguing. There hadn't been many many Canadian science fiction romances before 1957 – still aren't. What's more, the novel's linchpin is an experimental jet known as the "Arrow."

Bruce Petty's gorgeous jacket illustration puts it over the top.

What follows is the rest of the ten best:

Willie the Squowse

Ted Allan
Toronto: McClelland &

   Stewart, 1977

The author's only children's book, this tale of a talented squowse (offspring of a squirrel and a mouse) proved one of the most enjoyable and life-affirming reads of the year. The fifty – fifty! – Quentin Blake illustrations brought further joy.

Whispering City
Horace Brown
Pickering, ON: Global

   Publishing, 1947

Horace Brown's adaptation of this film noir shot in Quebec City, for years I'd hoped to find a reasonably-priced copy. This year I did (US$89.95).

Can it be as good as The Penthouse Killings? Please tell me it's better than Murder in the Rough.

Blood on My Rug
E. Louise Cushing
New York: Arcadia, 1956

A mystery novel that begins with the discovery of a body in a Montreal bookstore, since I'd long been searching for this novel. Might it be a candidate for reissue as a Ricochet Book?

Nope.

Still, I'm still happy to have it in my collection.

Let Not Man Put Asunder
Basil King

New York: Grosset & Dunlap,

   [n.d]

Though it's been two years since I bought, never mind reviewed, a Basil King novel, I leapt at this one. Let Not Man Put Asunder is either the seventh or eighth King novel to be adapted by Hollywood. IMDb does not recognize, but I have this photoplay edition as evidence.

 

Toute la Vie
Claire Martin

Quebec: Éditions de L'instant

   même, 1999

I've admired Claire Martin since reading Dans un gant de fer in CEGEP. David Lobdell's translation of her Doux-Amer deserves a return to print. Imagine the thrill in finding three signed Martins during my recent visit to Quebec City. This is one.

In Spite of Myself: A Memoir
Christopher Plummer
Toronto: Random House,

   2009

I regret many things in leaving our St Marys home, not the least of which involves selling thirteen-hundred books, In Spite of Myself amongst them.

I'm slowly been buying them back. This signed copy was found at the Kemptville Youth Centre Book Fair.

Beautiful Joe

Marshall Saunders
Toronto: Standard

   Publishing, 1897

I own many copies of Beautiful Joe, but this is by far the most... um, beautiful. At one dollar, it was the least expensive book I purchased this year.

The Countess of Aberdeen provides an introduction!

Menaud, maître-draveur

Félix-Antoine Savard
Ottawa: Éditions Fides, 1967

Another Quebec City find, I came upon this inscribed, slip-cased edition on the very same day I made my pilgrimage to the author's home.

I vow to read it in the New Year.

Poldrate Street
Garnett Weston
New York: Messner, 1944

This old novel proved to be 2021's most unpleasant, stomach-turning read. Voyeurism, adultery, greed, murder, and something approaching necrophilia figure.

Good fun from a Toronto boy who made a killing in Hollywood before retiring to Vancouver island.

Two generous souls donated books to the Dusty Bookcase this year.

Lee Goldberg noted my interest in the novels of former Vancouver newspaperman Tom Ardies (Their Man in the White House, Kosygan is Coming) and was kind enough to send me newly published copies of This Briefcase is Going to Explode, Pandemic, Balboa Firefly, and Manila Time (the latter two written under Ardies' Jack Trolley nom de plume). 

Lee is in the process of reissuing Ardies' entire bibliography through Brash Books.

More power to him! 

Fraser Sutherland died this earlier this year. I was honoured to have been asked to provide an obituary for the Globe & Mail. One of the greatest challenges in its writing concerned family, specifically the name of a sibling, an older brother, who had died at a young age. Our newspaper of record is insistent on such things. It seemed not one of Fraser's friends could quite remember... and then one came through, which led me to this uncommon chapbook:

Published in 1976 by Northern Journey Press, Within the Wound is dedicated to that brother, Hugh Sutherland (1941-1965). I shared this discovery with Fraser's good friend, Adrian King-Edwards of Montreal's Word Bookstore, who in turn presented me with this copy.

RIP, Fraser. You are much missed.

Related posts:

Love is a Long Shot on the Nose

He and His Arrow

Little Willie, Willie Won't Go Home
Horace Brown: From Penthouse to Pavement
Horace  Brown: Saturday Matinee
No Whack on the Side of the Head
Montreal Most Strange (w/ mysterious directions)

Claire Martin at the Beginning of the Quiet Revolution

Packing Up the Dusty Bookcases

Blue Plaque Special: Quebec City Edition

The Dead of a Dead End Street

A Russian is Coming! A Russian is Coming!
Have Bomb - Will Travel

The Dead of a Dead End Street

Poldrate Street
Garnett Weston
New York: Messner, 1944
256 pages

The first resident of Poldrate Street to die is Sarah Reckon. She's killed by two of her neighbours while stealing flowers from their gardens. Sarah's murder has nothing to do with theft, rather her discovery of a missing dog. Though she doesn't realize it – and never will – the mutt is key in a scheme involving extortion, embezzlement, fraud, mutilation, and sexual slavery.

Three more Poldrate Street residents will die over the next few days. A fourth will be drugged, kidnapped, and then drugged again. That's a lot of activity for a cul de sac consisting of just five houses. 

Eleven people live on Poldrate Street – ten after Sarah is killed. She lived in the first and most modest of its houses. Next to her were Mr and Mrs Gordon and their pre-adolescent son nicknamed "Face." To the reader, theirs is the most mysterious household, but only because the parents are never depicted. Face, on the other hand, plays a prominent role in the novel, despite his young age. He sees a lot of what others miss, mostly because he's a voyeur. It's Face's dog that is missing.

Doctor Ivor Palling lives in the middle house with a raven-haired bombshell named Violet. Everyone believes her to be the doctor's wife, but they're not actually married. Palling spotted Violet waiting at a bus stop one rainy night and offered her a lift. You could call her a pickup.

The fourth house is the home Jacob Sleep, the most elderly resident of Poldrate Street. Sleep had been living his final years alone when he received a letter from an old schoolmate asking whether he might care for her granddaughter. The poor girl had been orphaned, and the grandmother feared that she herself was not long for this world. Turned out she was right. And so, that is how nineteen-year-old Kitty McKay came to live with an old man on a dead end street. Sleep's interest in the girl begins and ends with her sizeable inheritance (of which she has no knowledge).

The last house belongs to Mafia Breene; it's also his place of business. An undertaker, Breene struggles to make a living dealing in the dead. He has some support from Cora, his live-in maid. In her quarters lies the tenth resident of Poldrate Street, Cora's motionless, voiceless, nameless, suffering child known only as "Him."

Of the Garnett Weston novels I've read, Poldrate Street is the very best. As far as I can tell, it's the only one to have enjoyed multiple editions. The second, published in 1945 by American Mercury, gives something away in providing a new title: The Undertaker Dies.

The last, published in May 1950 by Harlequin, uses the original title. Seven decades later, it remains the only Canadian edition. Its cover art, by Max Ralph, captures something of the book. 

Violet does bathe in the nude in her backyard fountain, though her hair should be black. Kitty McKay witnesses this and a whole lot more from a tree in Joseph Sleep's garden. Her hair should be red. The houses on Poldrate Street are Victorian, but not nearly so large as that depicted. The juxtaposition of the imagined house and the brewery makes perfect sense; the street has houses on one side and a brewery wall on the other. Most peculiar. The dining couple in the lower left-hand corner are something of a mystery. The scene doesn't feature in the novel. I'm certain that the lower right-hand corner is meant to depict Cora shooting her boss, though she is described as a rather large woman.

Things are revealed by the American Mercury title and in the Harlequin cover illustration. I've revealed even more myself – but not so much as to spoil the novel. Poldrate Street is populated by uncommon characters with unusual names. Pleasure comes in their interactions.

Not every character is a success. Kitty isn't much more than a pretty face. Her attraction to Jimmie Lane, Sarah Reckon's boxer nephew – it was in anticipation of his visit that she was gathering flowers that fateful night – exists only to elevate the burgeoning rivalry between her and Violet.

Ah, Violet... Violet is a full-bodied character. A femme fatale when first encountered, she gradually reveals herself as insecure and self-hating. Violet's greatest fear is that her exotic beauty might mean she had parents from different races. Her sexual encounters with Mafia Breene and Jimmie Lane – two last spoilers – have everything to do with her desire to be desired. She goes so far as to flirt with young Face, and thinks of him as a future prospect.

Awful things happen to awful people.

Despite its flaws – which are minor – Poldrate Street is by far the most interesting and entertaining novel I read this summer. Published just two years after Garnett Weston quit Hollywood, I very much doubt he had motion pictures in mind when formulating the plot – there's no way it could have passed the Hays Code. And yet, reading the novel I couldn't help but imagining Poldrate Street onscreen. The novel has all the ingredients of a brilliant limited series. 

Now is its time.

It's a shame that Poldrate Street is so obscure.

Dedication:

R. Rowe Holland was chairman of the Vancouver Parks Board and treasurer for the Liberal Party. A barrister, he represented Vancouver theatre owners. In 1932, he was part of a failed campaign to build a large movie studio in the city. In short, he wanted to make Vancouver Hollywood North.

Trivia: Max Ralph holds distinction as the cover artist for Wreath for a Red Head, the very first novel by Brian Moore. Canadian Fly-By-Night has a very good series on Ralph's work for Harlequin.

Beware!: The American Mercury edition is abridged. 

I suspected the Harlequin – 185 pages of text to Messner's 248 – to also be abridged, but Canadian Fly-By-Night's bowdler has convinced me otherwise. The word-count of the Messner is roughly 380 words per page, while the Harlequin is at least 500 per page. 

Object: A hardcover with yellow boards, all evidence indicates a single Messner printing. The jacket illustration is uncredited. The figure is meant to be young Face Gordon. The flashlight he carries was a reward for selling magazines door-to-door. Weston describes the beam it casts as white, not yellow.

I purchased my copy for US$37.50 from a New York bookseller. The shipping set me back a further US$25.00. 

Access: Copies of the Messner Poldrate Street can be found in Library and Archives Canada, Queen's University, the University of Toronto. the University of New Brunswick, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Victoria.

As I write this, no copies of Poldrate Street in any edition are listed for sale online. Ditto The Undertaker Dies.

Related post:

Fumbling Towards Legacy

Fumbling Towards Legacy

Legacy of Fear
Garnett Weston

New York: W S Mill/William Morrow, 1950

245 pages

The jacket illustration suggests a gothic romance, but Legacy of Fear is a thriller. Its protagonist is no-nonsense American war vet Duff Catleigh. With the fighting over, he's returned to the States vowing to never again leave its borders. And yet, the novel's opening scene finds Duff on the cabin deck of the Princess Marguerite, a passenger ship of undetermined size, as it makes the short voyage from Seattle to Vancouver Island. Duff was talked into making the trip by Callender, his business partner: "You've got a knack of finding things, I haven't."

Their business is antique furniture.

"We haven't had a shipment of English or European antiques for years," says Callender. "We're stocked up with Colonial and New England and Mexican and a lot of hybrid junk I'm ashamed to have around." Because he's the tougher negotiator – so insists Callender – Duff makes from their New York office to the American West Coast, thence to Canada.

Aboard the Princess Marguerite, he spots a woman, "tall and slender with a curious rhythm, faintly undulant, in her walk, as if she moved to the sound of music audible to her ears alone." Duff pretends not to notice – and pretends not to notice again when the woman ejects a man from her cabin. That man as Temple Moxx, an inquisitive lawyer whom Duff had met earlier.

The Princess Marguerite reaches its destination early that evening. Duff decides to walk to the hotel at which he's made a reservation. Along the way, he interrupts a kidnapping attempt. The intended victim, Temple Moxx, flees the scene, leaving the newly arrived antique dealer to deal with Bob Brown, the constable walking the beat.

Later that same evening, Duff accompanies Brown to Moxx's flat in the Thunderbird Arms. The constable is looking to investigate the thwarted abduction, but finds the lawyer something less than forthcoming.

Duff  is disgusted by it all. He makes for his hotel, and dodges a knife thrown by a "Chinaman" he recognizes as one of Moxx's attackers. Duff retrieves the knife, returns to the Thunderbird Arms, tosses it it on Moxx's dining room table, and again leaves in disgust. Back at his hotel, Duff sees the woman from the Princess Marguerite getting into a limo. As the car drives away, he notices she's being followed. Turning around, Duff again sees the Chinaman – this time stealing out of the hotel with the woman's luggage. The thief disappears into a fish-and-chips restaurant. Duff follows, orders a meal which turns out to be drugged, and loses consciousness.

Our hero awakens bound in a storeroom. He's rescued by Constable Brown – now off-duty – and together they uncover a brothel/opium den. Brown returns to the station to alert his superiors. Duff returns to his hotel room to find his luggage gone.

That's an awful lot for one evening.

Thrillers with this much action have little room for character. As a tough guy with a passion for antiques, Duff is atypical, right? Brown is an honest cop, who likes to do detective work in his leisure time. That's different, right? What of the woman from the Princess Marguerite? Well, her name is Maureen O'Donnell. Curious gait aside, she's a conventional young Irish lass of a type that will be familiar to the reader. Maureen has made the journey to Vancouver Island after learning that her long-lost great-uncle, Philem O'Donnell, is alive.

Well, barely alive.

Philem lies in his death bed, believing that there is no kin to whom he can leave his vast estate. Moxx, who happens to be Philem O'Donnell's lawyer, has his eyes on his client's land, and so tries to prevent Maureen from seeing her great-uncle.

He's not alone.

Amongst other characters are John Hambly, Moxx's law partner (he's bad), sea captain Victor Mycroft (also bad), crime boss Sin Gun Pow (bad, obviously), Eurasian courtesan Vera (bad), calligrapher Mr Wu (bad), and Philem O'Donald's servants Donald and Morgan (both bad). Moxx too has a servant, Ling Chi, a seventy-year-old "houseboy." I can't say whether he's good or bad, though I certainly recognized him from old American movies and comic books:

"Missie Hambly, he call. Come after you have chow. You eatie quick now for he come. He catch you at chow, he say. 'No thank you; no have chow. Not hungry at all,' he say. Then he sit down an' eat allee sammee pig."

Ling Chi surprised me greatly because Garnett Weston wrote both the story and screenplay for Daughter of Shanghai (1937). Praised for its portrayal of Chinese-Americans, in 2006 it was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.

I really like this film. If you have the time:

To be fair to Weston, Sin Gun Pow is no stereotype, nor is Vera, nor the girls working in the brothel. This is not to say that they have much flesh. How could they? As I've suggested, action crowds character. Things happen in Legacy of Fear, but too much for the four days in which the novel takes place. Both Maureen and Duff are drugged twice and kidnapped twice. Moxx too is drugged. He's rescued by Duff. May as well add that Duff suffers two blows to the head, and loses consciousness both times. Duff falls for Maureen, a woman he'd not so much as spoken twenty-four hours earlier. He proposes. She accepts. They're in love.

Like everything in this novel, the climax comes fast. It spoils nothing to reveal that Brown again comes to the rescue.

The final chapter isn't so much a denouement as a postscript. Callender shows up at Duff's hotel. He was worried by about Duff. The last paragraph – just two sentences – occur after Duff introduces Maureen to his business partner:

Smiling, he lifted the Irish girl's hand and kissed it gracefully. Only a man with a Vandyke beard could do it so well.

I have no idea what this means.

Is Callender bad?

   

Dedication: 

Edward T. Lowe is best remembered as a producer and screenwriter. In the latter role, his greatest accomplishments are House of Frankenstein (1944) and House of Dracula (1945); both penned in late career. Lowe and Weston's overlap in writing Bulldog Drummond films. Though they never wrote together, Lowe did produce the Weston-penned Bulldog Drummond in Africa (1938) and Bulldog Drummond's Secret Police (1939).

Lowe also produced Daughter of Shanghai.

Trivia: The Princess Marguerite docks in "Port Albert," which is clearly Victoria. Duff stays at an unnamed hotel, which is clearly The Empress. I think the obfuscation is explained by Weston's portrayal of Victoria as a city in which tourists and their belongings disappear with regularity (often from the  unnamed hotel).  

Humour: The increasingly unreliable WorldCat provides this information on Legacy of Fear:

Summary: A third baseman is sick with anxiety about whether or not to help his team by using his knack for knowing where the batter is going to hit the ball.

Rating: (not yet rated) 0 with reviews - Be the first.

Subjects: Baseball — Fiction

Object: Bound in red boards, typical of its time. To these eyes, the uncredited dust jacket anticipates Psycho. The rear flap has an advert for Poisonous Relations by Joanna Cannan. The back cover provides a second sales pitch for Poisonous Relations, then tries to sell three more Morrow Mysteries:

My copy was purchased in May from Scene of the Crime Books in St Catharine, Ontario. Price: US$40.00. 

Access: Legacy of Fear first appeared as an eight-part serial in The Saturday Evening Post (6 May - 24 June 1950). James R Bingham did the illustrations. Here's the first:

The rest are just as good (see the illustration above in which Catleigh strikes a similar pose when dodging a knife).

As far as I can determine, the Mill/Morrow edition enjoyed just one printing. There have been no other editions, though the novel did join Christianna Brand's Cat And Mouse, and Erle Stanley Gardner's The Case of the One-Eyed Witness in the Detective Book Club's January 1951 3-in-1 omnibus. 

Library and Archives Canada has a copy of the Mill/Morrow, as do the Toronto Public Library, the Vancouver Public Library, the University of New Brunswick, McMaster University, the University of Alberta, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Victoria.

As of this writing, no used copies were being offered for sale online.