A first edition of Peter Rabe's Blood on the Desert, published by Gold Medal in the US in paperback in 1958. Rabe was an interesting character, a toiler in the fields of pulpy American paperbacks alongside the likes of Jim Thompson and, yes, Donald 'Richard Stark' Westlake. In fact Rabe was an influence on Westlake, who followed in his wake. Blood on the Desert is a mid-period Rabe, and I'm looking forward to finding out what he's all about (there's an interview with him and a list of his books here).
The other new arrival was this:
A first UK edition of Richard Price's debut novel The Wanderers, published in hardback by Chatto & Windus in 1975, the year after the US edition (my crappy photo on the left, a better scan of someone else's edition on the right). I don't know much about Price other than he wrote for The Wire and has been an influence on the likes of George Pelecanos and Dennis Lehane, but it's the Wire connection that piqued my curiosity. The Wanderers focuses on street gangs in New York in the 1970s, which sounds good to me, and when I saw the cover online – jacket by Graham Palfrey-Rogers – I had to get meself a copy. There are only a few copies listed on AbeBooks from the UK, so it's nice to have one, and in splendid condition too (and at a reasonable price).
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