The Silver Eagle

New York: Lincoln MacVeagh/The Dial Press. Near Fine. 1931. First Edition. Hardcover. (no dust jacket, but encased in a nice-looking facsimile reproduction of the original first edition jacket; see 2nd scanned image posted with this listing) [no significant wear apart from some rubbing to silver spine lettering at base of spine (title and author are bright and unblemished), light age-toning to edge of text block, attractive vintage bookseller's label (Satyr Book Shop, Hollywood and Los Angeles) on rear pastedown, one-time owner's embossed stamp on half-title and rear endpaper (see Notes)]. Burnett's fourth published novel, by far the most obscure and hard-to-find of his early books -- and a classic example of how a work by a notable and successful author (and Burnett had become notable and successful right away, with the publication of his first book, "Little Caesar," in 1929) can fade into obscurity for no other apparent reason than because nobody ever made a movie out of it. (It's the only one of Burnett's first six novels that's never been filmed.) I've seen the book referred to as a "follow-up" to "Little Caesar," but that's only true in the sense that it's also set in Chicago (and in fact on the original dust jacket it's heralded as "A Chicago Novel"). It's not even really a gangster novel, although the underworld does play a part in the narrative, which is primarily about a successful restaurant/club owner, a self-made man with ambitions to rise in the society world. But if you were a successful restaurant/club owner in Chicago in that era, you'd inevitably find yourself rubbing shoulders with the town's rougher elements, and between its somewhat low-born protagonist and some of the characters he gets involved with, there's a pretty decent quotient of hard-boiled, tough-guy talk to keep things snappy. The milieu is also evoked by the book's dedication -- "To the Wilson and Oak Gang, 1915-1918" -- although the significance of such a "gang" (if it was) has so far eluded my research. This copy is from the library of one-time MGM producer-writer Carey Wilson, with his embossed ownership stamp on the half-title page and the rear endpaper. NOTE again that the dust jacket on this book is a FACSIMILE, and that its presence has not been factored into our pricing. . (Inventory #: 29273)