A Pocket Full of Rye by Agatha Christie first edition 1953

London: Published for the Crime Club by Collins, 1953
 
Crown 8vo., bright red cloth, backstrip lettered in black with publisher’s device to foot; in the red, yellow and black dust wrapper (10s. 6d. net); pp. [iv], 5-191, [i]; a very good example, foot of spine a little pushed and sunned; some light spotting to prelims and page edges; minor offsetting to half title and final page of text; in the very good jacket which has some nicks and creases to spine and ends of folds; small chips to head a foot of spine; a couple of nicks and one short closed tear to the rear panel; some overall light shelf wear and marking. 
 
First edition. 
 
Agatha Christie was one of the most prolific writers of Crime Fiction within the 20th century and A Pocket Full of Rye was published towards the middle of her canon of work, in a career which spanned over fifty years and resulted in the publication of 74 novels. With the reintroduction of the character of Miss Marple (whose first appearance in full-length novel form was in The Murder at the Vicarage in 1930), the plot here follows the detective as she investigates a series of murders disguised within the nursery rhyme Sing a Song of Sixpence; the first victim being found with a handful of grain in his pocket. 
 
In a contemporary review for the Times Literary Supplement, Philip John Stead wrote: “Crime is a convention, pursuit an intellectual exercise, and it is as if the murderer of the odious financier did but poison in jest. The characters are lightly and deftly sketched and an antiseptic breeze of humour prevails. It is a pleasure to read an author so nicely conscious of the limitations of what she is attempting." 
 
A lovely copy of this classic ‘Whodunnit’.