Quicksand

Santa Fe: Burning Books, 2011. First edition. 150pp; duodecimo; perfect-bound in illustrated wraps. Very good or better, with light edge and corner wear.

A terse and hardboiled mystery novel by American composer and librettist Robert Ashley (1930-2014), notable in particular for Perfect Lives and his other experimental television operas. This work written as an opera libretto, per Ashley's introduction: "I thought that I would try to make an opera libretto from a mystery story, told verbatim. That meant I had to write a mystery novel."