The Madhouse in Washington Square – David Alexander (Lippincott, 1958)

It seems my previous “fear” about the details and shipping of this book was uncalled for. It arrived last week and everything was more than OK. I don’t know exactly what it was that made the seed of doubt or skepticism start to grow but i guess it was basically the fact that i had a hard time getting into contact with the seller.

As usual when i find something like this i immediately get paranoid and start to think that someone is going to snatch it from me. In this case i found it, emailed the seller and when he didn’t reply in 15-20 minutes i just had to place an order. I then emailed him again saying i only wanted it if it was the book displayed in his image and that if not he should go ahead and cancel the order but nothing happened. And then the payment seemed to bounce back or something, so more emails followed and finally after a filed claim with Amazon he promptly replied… I might have some “stalking” issues i need to work on, that and my mental dilutions that people are going to steal recently found bargains from me in an instant.

Anyways, back to the book itself. The only other time and place i’ve seen this book since i started my collection was on this listing on ebay a year or so ago. It has annoyed me more than once that it didn’t sell and of course that it ended just around the time that i started my book collection. I have stalked that seller also and after a couple of emails it turned out it is now sold…

About the condition i think it’s one of my better ones. The only real issues that were not visible in the sellers image or noted in the description are the remains of an old price tag in the top right corner and a small ~2cm tear on the top left corner, besides from those little things it’s generally in great condition. Most of the books i’ve found so far have been protected by some plastic mylar thing but this one isn’t. I don’t know what effect (if any) this has on the value, but considering that on some of the books the actual paper is pretty frail i think i’m going to try and find some protection for this one also. I was looking at the first couple of pages to find the year it was published and when i closed the book i thought i made the tear to the top left so i cussed myself out for not being careful but i see now in the pictures that i took before i started fooling around with it that the tear is present so it seems it was already there…

What’s behind the cover seems to be a standard murder mystery story. The Madhouse in Washington Square appears to be the name of a pub/tavern frequented by some social misfits. And when one of them finds a failed writer beaten to death i guess it’s all set for a classic whodunit novel, i found a short review here. This also explains parts of the drawing – the restaurant, bar and café signs and whatnot… I wonder what it is that he’s holding in his hand though, perhaps it’s the murder weapon? Anyways, it sounds pretty good, i started reading The Immortal but it didn’t really caught my interest so i might give this one a go instead. After all, summertime is the time for reading thirteen to the dozen murder mysteries.

Considering i’ve never seen this listed anywhere before i was very happy when i found it and even more so when it arrived and it turned out to be the correct edition. It seems my memory is short but i think i payed about $25-30 for it, and even though the previous auction on ebay found no buyers at about the same listing price i’m still very happy with this and i think i made a very good deal.

I also have another book that i haven’t posted yet that i got a couple of months ago and i’m also currently waiting on a copy of The Adventures of Maud Noakes that the seller claims has the Warhol dust jacket, but that was also a real bargain so once again we’ll see what shows up. I wish i could keep adding record covers to my collection at the same pace as dust jackets. It’s been a while since i found something exciting but who knows what tomorrow night will bring…