DEATH OF A DUDE. A Nero Wolfe Novel.

First edition, first printing. Signed by the author. Publisher's original quarter black cloth and blue paper covered boards, with titles in green silver and blue, in the S. A. Summit designed dustwrapper. Top edge green. With a typed letter signed by Rex Stout on a single leaf of the author's personal stationery, complete with the original paper envelope, loosely laid in. An excellent near fine copy, the binding square and firm, the cloth bright and fresh, with just a touch of rubbing to the spine tips and extremities. The contents are clean throughout and without previous owner's inscriptions or stamps. Complete with the lightly rubbed and creased dustwrapper, which is without fading, loss or tears. Not price-clipped ($4.50 to the upper front flap).

Signed by Rex Stout and dated 'May 22 1973' in brown ink on the half title. The loosely laid in letter, in which Stout agrees to sign the books and advises that he does not send pictures of himself, is dated 8th May 1973. The thirty-first Nero Wolfe novel. Rex Stout was a prolific letter-writer, whose personal correspondence spanned thousands of letters addressed to friends, editors, and several famous political figures. He accrued mountains of fan mail over the years and dutifully responded to "all but perhaps the unanswerable" (The Wolfe Pack). A considerable archive of correspondence, files, records, manuscripts, certificates, artwork, radio and television recordings, first editions and ephemera, including the research files of his official biographer John J. McAleer and bibliographer Judson C. Sapp are housed at the John J. Burns Library, Boston College in Chestnut Hill, MA.