CONQUEST AFTER MIDNIGHT - Berkeley Gray, UK ed w/ DJ

CONQUEST AFTER MIDNIGHT - Berkeley Gray (pseudonym of Edwy Searles Brooks). Collins, 1959. Second printign. Oriignal was "First published 1957"DJ in superior condition. Remarkably look brand new. No damage or flaws. Price of "6s. net" intact on front flap. Clean maroon cloth boards. Clean white pages. Tight & square. Only real flaw is the lengthy POI on front free endpaper (see photo). Overall, an excellent copy...though it is a later printingAdventure thriller featuring Norman Conquest, a pulp hero who doesn't seem to know it's not the 1930s anymore."...very old-fashioned potboiler. There is a rich master criminal (a prominent member of Parliament who owns an independent political newspaper) who devises a preposterous plot in order to remove a former business partner he cheated and who is now planning to expose him. Does he threaten him with violence or shoot him dead? Does he hire a thug to beat the guy up or otherwise scare him into silence? No, the M.P. pretends to be interested in starting a private zoo, buys a lion, and hires a couple of men to let the lion loose on his enemy who he knows takes an evening stroll. Let the lion be blamed for having escaped and mauling the man in a surprise but bizarre encounter at night. And everyone chalks it up to an accident. You have to give Rupert Hargrove credit for over-the-top imagination." -- from Pretty Sinister Books blog review.