X Marks the Dot

New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce. Very Good+ in Good+ dj. (c.1943). First Edition. Hardcover. [book is moderately worn at the extremities, former owner's name plus date & place of purchase in ink at top of front endpaper, bookplate on front pastedown; the jacket, which has some edgewear and a couple of tiny chips, has been internally tape-reinforced along most edges and folds, and has also been touched up and filled-in along both the top and bottom edges]. (A Bloodhound Mystery) Series An unusual mystery novel, centering around the use of graphology (handwriting analysis) to solve a murder that takes place in a newspaper office. This was the only novel by Ms. Stafford, described in the jacket blurb as "America's best-known and most gifted graphologist," as indeed she was (best-known, anyway, by virtue of having had a regular newpaper column, which debuted in the Chicago Tribune in 1934 and later in papers across the country. (When it began running in the Los Angeles Times in January 1935, she cemented her "graphologist to the stars" reputation from the outset, choosing Bing Crosby as the subject of her first column. (The rear jacket flap of this book contains a list of some of the famous people whose handwriting she had analyzed, from J. Edgar Hoover to Mae West.) She also had a bit of a side gig going, it seems, offering a "personal analysis" of readers' handwriting, for only 10 cents, "to cover mailing and handling charges." Sounds like a deal, although at that time it only cost 3 cents to mail a first-class letter.) The book, in fact, is written in the first person, she having cast herself as the heroine of the tale, and starts very much like a memoir. Numerous facsimile handwriting examples are scattered throughout the text and worked into the narrative. .