A HIVE OF GLASS

Hamish Hamilton, London, 1972, 1^st pr thus.  ISBN 0-241-02165-0.  Hard cover, 186 pages.  Very good; blue boards with gold lettering on spine; binding sound.  Dust jacket with price intact shows some edge and cover wear, old water marks along top and bottom edges being most noticeable on verso.  Book interior clean and unmarked with lightly tanned pages; small spot on fore-edge page block.  “Johnnie Slade was an inveterate glass-fancier, so his interest was more than held when he saw the photographs of the fabulous Verzelini tazza reproduced in Peter Sarrett’s high-class magazine for connoisseurs Old Glass.  The prints had been supplied by the impeccably honest dealer, old Levinson.  Johnnie went to see Levinson, but he was too late: Levinson was dead, and the tazza was gone.  Or had it never existed?  And what was the relevance of the entry in the dead man’s diary which read ‘Dunstreet’?  Johnnie found out what that meant and he also found Claudia.  But his pursuit of both the tazza and the girl were to be complicated not only by Claudia’s Aunt Elizabeth, blind and autocratic, but also by the dawning realization that he was not alone in his quest.  And death, of course, was just round the corner.” (from front flap)