Boston: Alyson Publications, 1989. First edition. 209pp. Illustrated wraps. Fine. Signed and inscribed by Steward at half-title. With three laid-in items: an errata slip, a publisher's note, and a review of the book off-printed from The Advocate Issue #538.
A queer erotic mystery by American academic, tattoo artist, and writer Samuel Steward (1909-1993); the second of two novels, following Murder Is Murder Is Murder (1985), in which he reimagined Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas as private detectives. This copy signed and inscribed in year of publication to Steward's close friend Douglas Martin: "For Doug — more a giggly book than a guffaw one — Luff Sam 20-XI-89." A student of Steward's at DePaul University in the early 1950s, Martin wrote Steward a warm letter of re-introduction in 1977, sparking a prolific correspondence acknowledged by Steward's biographer Justin Spring as "the most significant and sustaining friendship of Steward's final decades," and "the single greatest consolation to him in his otherwise very lonely old age" (Secret Historian, p.378). A nice association copy of an uncommon work.
