בידספיריט | Dennis Wheatley - Murder Off

Dennis Wheatley - Murder Off Miami. London: Hutchinson & Co, c1936. - Murder off Miami – Dennis Wheatley presents a new era for crime fiction – a murder mystery planned by J.G. Links, published for the Crime Book Society by Hutchinson & Co., London, undated but known to be 1936, card folder with assorted papers as described below (about 1” thick in all), and secured with tape. This is a copy of the first of four “crime dossiers” produced by Dennis Wheatley and J.G. Links in the 1930s. They were a novelty and, at least initially, immensely popular both in Britain and around the world. What makes the crime dossiers so unique was that they presented the reader with all the evidence that an investigating team of detectives might gather, in the correct order. A variety of physical clues and reports were housed together in a cardboard folder, which if worked through methodically, would yield the correct solution to the problem. Having used deduction to arrive at a suspect, the reader could then check his findings with the actual solution to the mystery, originally concealed within a sealed section towards the rear of the folder. The result is therefore a curious cross between a work of fiction and a game. Murder Off Miami was published by Hutchinson in July 1936 and priced at 3/6. At this price, profit margins were very tight as the production costs were high, as all the physical clues and sheets of written evidence had to be put in place manually. Despite initial resistance from booksellers, who often found the format awkward to display, around 120,000 copies were eventually sold. I believe this copy is one of the first batch printed, as it does not have any date or the 'nth thousand' of later impressions.