Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
C. E. Tripp. Ace High. The Book Club of California, San Francisco, 1948.
Price: US$56.00 + shipping
Condition: Near Fine
Description: This 8.75 x 12.0 inch, 56 page hardcover book is the 1948 printing by the Grabhorn Press for the Book Club of California. This copy is in near fine condition with just a touch of wear to the decorative paper covers and maroon-cloth spine. The paper label on the spine is secure with just a touch of chipping. There is a hint of offsetting to the front and back endpapers but beyond that the book is in near fine condition. This title again demonstrates the integrity of the work by the Grabhorn Press, with the striking color contrast of red-and-black against the white of the paper. The use of decorative touches throughout the text and the engravings by Mallette Dean all went together to prompt the selection of this book as one of the fifty books of the year. This copy is now protected by a heavy clear mylar wrapper. 56 pages.
Seller: JDBFamily, Chico, CA, U.S.A.
Price: US$75.00 + shipping
Description: One of 500 copies printed by the Grabhorn Press. Reprinted from Beadle's Half-Dime Library (Number 814), February 28, 1893. Quarto. Pp. [8], 56. Title, colophon and 8 text engravings in red and black by Mallette Dean. Red cloth-backed decorative boards, paper spine label. Some light offsetting to endpapers, else a very fine and bright copy. An amusing tale, one of the few Beadle's "Half-Dime Library" novels set in California. One of the Fifty Books of the Year. Also included in the Exhibition of Western Book (Rounce & Coffin Club). [Grabhorn: 470].
Seller: Argonaut Book Shop, ABAA, San Francisco, CA, U.S.A.
Price: US$100.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: Cloth backed patterned boards. Illustrations. 500 copies printed by the Grabhorn Press. Page sides and bottoms are uncut. In the Introduction, David Magee comments on that item of reading material from long ago called the "Dime Novel". Parents and grandparents were sure that young people reading this trash were going to have a future life of "arson, rape and murder". "Our grandfathers, razor strop in hand, stormed the woodsheds and attics of this country eighty years or so ago to rout out the evil known as the "Dime Novel". If they had bothered to read these books the elders would have discovered that "They are depressingly moral and, in the light of present day fiction, might well have served as Sunday School texts". "But if the reading of such heady stuff was supposed to send the youth of America headlong to perdition via the penitentiary, it gave pleasure to millions of simple, not very literate folk". This novel, "Ace High, the 'Frisco Detective or, the Girl Sport's Double Game" by C. E. Tripp, is definitely in the decadent or razor-stropping tradition". It is "as slap-happy and rootin'-tootin' piece of fiction as ever graced publisher's list".
Seller: Barry Cassidy Rare Books, Sacramento, CA, U.S.A.