Shadows on the Wall

New York: Dodd, Mead & Company. Good in Fair dj. 1943. First Edition. Hardcover. [book is shelfworn, with bumping and slight fraying to lower extremities and at top of spine, former owner's initials, date/place of purchase and brief editorial comment written in ink along edge of rear pastedown (concealed beneath rear jacket flap); the jacket itself is heavily edgeworn, with various little bits of paper loss at several corners, small chip at upper left corner of spine panel (taking part of the book's title with it), light dampstain at lower right corner of front panel, and an old internal and external tape-repair that runs the length of the front hinge and is starting to give way (held in place by a new mylar cover); also, the rear hinge of the jacket is partially split, at both upper and lower ends]. The first of nine mystery novels by this author, whose literary career had a somewhat unusual trajectory: five books published by Dodd, Mead between 1943 and 1948, then nothing for almost twenty years before she came out with a spurt of four paperback originals in the late 1960s. (I don't find any evidence that she was writing in some other genre during that gap, so who knows? Maybe she got married and raised a couple of kids before resuming her literary activities.) The mystery here deals with the murder of a successful lawyer. .