Dust and the Curious Boy

Book Details:

Hardback edition published by Joseph, London, 1957. First edition.

Sleeve notes:

A FELLOW American, Louie Oswicz, comes to Joe Dust s missing persons bureau in London and asks him to trace his wife, Shirley, and his young son. Dust discovers that Shirley is now the mistress of Pastern, right-hand man to a gang boss. He finds her all right, but she has been strangled and the boy is missing. Dust's determined search for the boy leads him to the heart of gangdom--and to Scotland Yard. Sudden violence on all sides and the sinister circumstances in which he does track down the boy make a tough thriller which punches home with every sentence.

Book source:

Terry Jenkins

Book Details:

Hardback edition published by Mill, New York,1957. First edition.

Sleeve notes:

Introducing Joe Dust, private eye with a public past, in a tough, astringent novel o[ mystery and murder.

Joe Dust is tall, very nearly handsome, and strictly from Brooklyn -- not at all the kind of man you'd expect to find settled in London, England, absorbing a British accent and operating a one-man detective agency.

But his Brooklyn background makes American clients feel at home, and Louie Oswicz heads straight for Joe when he reaches London.

Louie has a picture of his wife, Shirley. He knows he has a son. And he can't believe that Shirley has walked out on him forever.

From the moment Dust agrees to take the case it is swift, unexpected story-telling, moving from the swank homes of the West End and the .seamy side of London's underworld toward an unpredictable climax.

Here is a new writer who brings a fresh, realistic approach to the classic problems of mystery and murder.

Book source:

Terry Jenkins

Book Details:

Paperback edition published by Pan Books, London, 1959. First impression.

Sleeve notes:

Meet Joe Dust - Private eye!

'. . .  he looked towards the sitting-room, and the light flooding from it. The foot of the bed came into the arc of light. The foot of the bed, and something that lay on it, small and white and stark - a naked foot.'

Dust, Missing Persons Investigator, had completed half the assignment.

But the boy was missing too . . . ' Maybe I didn't know what the risk was' Joe said.

He knew all right when Pastern's thugs got to work on him.

Book source:

Terry Jenkins (with thanks to Peter Stevenson for supplying it)