Curtain Call

ANTHONY QUINN

Publication: Jonathan Cape, 2015, London

First edition. Signed by the author. Fine in dust jacket. In the summer of 1936 a woman accidentally interrupts an attempted murder in a London hotel room. Nina Land, a West End actress, faces a dilemma: she’s not supposed to be at the hotel in the first place, and certainly not with a married man. But once it becomes apparent that she may have seen the face of the man the newspapers have dubbed ‘the Tie-Pin Killer’ she realizes that another woman's life could be at stake. Jimmy Erskine is the tawdry leader of theater critics who fears that his star is fading: age and drink are catching up with him. He has depended for years on his loyal secretary Tom, who has a secret of his own to protect. Tom’s chance encounter with Madeleine Farewell, a lost young woman haunted by premonitions of catastrophe, closes the circle: it was Madeleine who narrowly escaped the killer’s stranglehold that afternoon, and now walks the streets in terror of his finding her again.

Inventory Number: 38271