Peril at House End; The Body in the Library; Hercule Poirot’s Christmas (Agatha Christie Crime Collection series)

First thus.  508pp. .  Black cloth-covered boards with gilt lettering on red relief on spine and gilt and red dagger embellishment of upper panel.  Top edge sprayed orange.  Orange endpapers.  8vo.   Traces of dustiness to upper text block edges, remaining edges faintly spotted, somewhat affecting extreme page margins else internally neat, clean and tight.

The Agatha Christie Crime Collection, issued by Paul Hamlyn Publishing Group in the late 1960s and early 1970s, is a definitive collected edition of Christie’s crime fiction, including her short stories, up to the publication of Nemesis in 1972. Each volume contains three of her detective fiction novels (or short story collections). Issued by monthly subscription only, sales tailed off towards the end so fewer copies were produced of the latter volumes, making them now quite hard to find. The set was nicely and robustly produced, with each volume featuring a golden dagger over Christie’s initials on the front panel, and coloured endpapers.  We always have volumes from this series in stock )both jacketed and, as this copy, without jackets) and offer generous discounts to those purchasing more than one volume at a time – please inquire.