Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$13.53 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: New York, 1938; covers not as pictured in stock photo; gray cloth covered boards; mild edge and corner wear; no jacket; 12mo, 6 3/4" to 7 3/4" tall; end papers toned; interior is clean and unmarked; 303 pages.
Seller: A Squared Books (Don Dewhirst), South Lyon, MI, U.S.A.
Queen, Ellery. The Devil to Pay. Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York, 1938.
Price: US$15.00 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: good clean copy with only very light general wear.tightly bound. exceptionally clean covers of light cream color with red lettering. some light sun fading on spine and some light soiling at top and bottom of spine. pages clean and unmarked. 303 pages.
Seller: Faith In Print, cumming, GA, U.S.A.
Price: US$15.75 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: First Edition. vi, [2], 303 p.; 19 cm. Off-white cloth with red-stamped spine and cover titles. No dust jacket, but the flaps from the dust jacket have been attached to the fixed endpapers. This was the first Ellery Queen mystery to take place in Hollywood. In Good Condition: cover is lightly soiled; light stain on upper spine and part of back cover; ends of spine fraying; scattered soiling throughout.
Seller: Classic Books and Ephemera, IOBA, Lansdowne, PA, U.S.A.
Queen, Ellery. The Devil to Pay. NY:Frederick A. Stokes Company,1938,, 1938.
Price: US$20.00 + shipping
Description: cloth,303 pgs, 2nd printing before publication, no dw, VG
Seller: Juniper Point Books, Round Lake, NY, U.S.A.
Queen, Ellery. The Devil to Pay. Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1938.
Price: US$21.50 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: First edition. No jacket, boards bowed and lightly soiled. 1938 Hard Cover. We have more books available by this author! vi, 303 pp. Solly Spaeth is a financier whose machinations with the "Ohippi Hydro-Electric Project" have left a number of people much less wealthy than once they were, including his business partner, Rhys Jardin. Jardin's beautiful daughter Valerie is involved with Spaeth's son Walter. Rhys is so impoverished, he has to sell up his personal property at auction, much to the dismay of his daughter and his long-time servant/valet/trainer, Pink. Walter asks Ellery Queen to sit in on the auction and buy every lot, which is how Ellery becomes involved when Solly Spaeth is found pierced by an ancient sword whose blade has been coated with molasses and cyanide. Suspicion falls on a number of people, including the Jardin household, Solly's son, lawyer and his mistress, the kooky Winni Moon, but Ellery works through alibis and motives and traces the crime back to the murderer. A sub-plot of the novel is that Ellery has been hired to work on a screenplay and has been completely idle for weeks because he can not get in to see studio head Jacques Butcher; Butcher plays a much more prominent role in the next novel, The Four of Hearts.
Seller: Yesterday's Muse, ABAA, ILAB, IOBA, Webster, NY, U.S.A.
Queen, Ellery. THE DEVIL TO PAY. Frederick A. Stokes: NY, 1938.
Price: US$230.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: 7.5 x 5", cloth, 303pp, spine ends bumped, tiny nick from bottom of spine, extremities a bit worn, eps toned, some spotting to edges of textblock else a nice copy in a rubbed, edge-worn/torn/creased but still complete and pretty nice dustjacket. FIRST EDITION. SCARCE in dustjacket.
Seller: John K King Used & Rare Books, Detroit, MI, U.S.A.
Price: US$300.00 + shipping
Description: Very Good in a Good dustjacket. Bound in full tan buckram. Both the spine and the front panel are stamped in red. Octavo. 303pps. There are spots of soiling to the cloth and touches of foxing to the endpapers and to the page-edges. There is also a faint pencil-erasure (of price) at the top of the ffep. Otherwise clean and soundly bound; no names or inscriptions. The rare and striking dustjacket, glossy in a new mylar sleeve and married to this copy, is flawed though presentable: it is backed in brown paper from a previous mylar sleeve (which has, frankly, served to sustain it) and there are abrasions -- superficial -- to the interior of either flap from where they had been affixed to their original book. The bottom 1/8" of the jacket has been clipped off (presumably to allow it to fit into a smaller sleeve); this affects none of the text. There is general overall rubbing wear along the folds and the edges, though there are no large chips or tears. The original price (2.00) is intact. ".An exotic movie actress, the swivel-hipped blonde, Winni Moon, and her scented chimpanzee; a murder which, already precious, became a managing editor's dream; Pink, who came from Flatbush, Brooklyn; Solly Spaeth who was spawned in New York. These are only some slight hints of what you will find in 'The Devil to Pay' and it is fair to say that here again is evidence that for ingenuity, surprise and original setting no mystery writer today can equal Ellery Queen. He never has failed to play fair with his reader. The amazing deductions of his stories are always in accord with the science of the streamlined murder." (from the dustjacket) Purchase with confidence: all books, gradings, and descriptions are rendered the care of a genuine bibliophile. Satisfaction guaranteed or all costs you've incurred will be promptly refunded. Thanks for your interest in Nooks Of Books. To assist with your decision, photos can be emailed upon request.
Seller: Nooks Of Books , Elkins Park, PA, U.S.A.
QUEEN, Ellery. The Devil to Pay. Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York, 1938.
Price: US$723.45 + shipping
Description: First Edition. -- Condition: Very good to near fine, offsetting to endpapers, toning to spine, and some small spots to boards, in near fine dust jacket with colour touch-up to corners, spine ends and some small spots along spine, archival paper repairs along rear panel. -- Details: First edition featuring Ellery Queen as he heads to Hollywood . . 'Some slight hints of what you will find': 'An exotic movie actress, the swivel-hipped blonde, Winni Moon, and her scented chimpanzee; a murder which, already precious, became a managing editor's dream; Pink, who came from Flatbush, Brooklyn; Solly Spaeth who was spawned in New York . . ' Ellery Queen, and later Barnaby Ross, was the pseudonym shared by the writing team composed of cousins Frederick Dannay and Manfred B. Lee. Together, the pair wrote four Drury Lane mystery novels, starring a Shakespearean actor and detective, as well as the Ellery Queen mystery series. The pseudonym pair was all the rage in the 1920s and '30s, with one of the cousins, usually Dannay, donning a mask and appearing in public as Ellery Queen. The cousins carried on a fictional dialogue as Ross and Queen in print and ended the intrigue in 1932 when Ross was revealed to be Ellery Queen. Several years later, when the writers behind the pseudonyms were unmasked, the public was so enamoured of them that their work continued to enjoy great popularity for decades to come. 'After Poe, I think it's true that Ellery Queen was the most significant and important writer of mystery fiction in America.' - Otto Penzler. -- Reference: Reilly, 'Twentieth-Century Crime and Mystery Writers' (1980), 1225. Penguin Random House. Julian Symons, 100 Best Crime & Mystery Books, Sunday Times (1957). -- Octavo (book size 19.3x13.5cm), pp. vi [2] 303 [1]. In publisher's light straw-grey cloth, lettered in red to spine and upper board, all edges trimmed. Dust jacket priced '$2.00' to upper corner of front panel, all corners with publisher's decorative trim, and with colour touch-up to corners, spine ends and some small spots along spine, archival paper repairs along rear panel. --
Seller: Lok Man Rare Books. ABA/ILAB, Central, Hong Kong
QUEEN, ELLERY.. THE DEVIL TO PAY.. Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1938., New York, 1938.
Price: US$950.00 + shipping
Description: First edition. Light off-setting to the front and rear endpapers else a fine, bright copy in a bright dust jacket with light wear to the spine ends and corners, and small nicks and chips to the extremities. Accompanying this copy is an inked handwritten letter on Ellery Queen stationery and dated March 3, 1958. Frederic Dannay responds to questions posed by the recipient of this letter. Mr. Dannay says that he does not know which author first used hypnosis as an integral part of a story, and he cannot be of help with the book Cops And Robbers by O. Henry as "we have no copies left." He further advises that all matters involving money orders and subscription requests will be forwarded to the New York Office. Signed "Sincerely, Frederic Dannay." The letter contains three paragraphs and is about 85 words. The letter has two horizontal faint, fold creases and the original stamped mailing envelope is also included.
Seller: BUCKINGHAM BOOKS, ABAA, ILAB, IOBA, GREENCASTLE, PA, U.S.A.