Death of a Cloud Walker

New York: Walker and Company, 1991. BH5 - A first edition (complete numberline) hardcover book in very good condition in very good dust jacket. Dust jacket and book have some bumped corners, light discoloration and shelf wear. Although not marked in any way, this copy comes from the personal collection of Otto Penzler, legendary editor and founder of the Mysterious Press, an award-winning icon in the genre. A Walker Mystery. 8.5"x5.75", 182 pages. Satisfaction Guaranteed. Toby Frame has grown into a bitter and suspicious man. Years of study and psychoanalysis, a Harvard Ph.D. and a blossoming career in psychology have not restored the basic trust he lost as a teenager in a hiking accident that cost him his leg and nearly his life. Nor can he forget the malicious stranger who might have helped him when he lay disabled on the remote Appalachian trail but chose instead to leave him to die. Yet when a special interdisciplinary study project takes Toby to a neighboring university, his exaggerated fears seem to be vindicated by a bizarre chain of events. A collection of newspaper clippings marking all the significant events of his life turns up in the closet of his new apartment. Then he is attacked by a student who knows more about his personal history that would have seemed possible. While Toby is recovering from the beating in the hospital, a voice from the past breaks through his delirium to taunt him about his old injury. Is he becoming paranoid? The murder of a close associate convinces Toby - if no one else - that there is some sinister logic behind the strange happenings. But does Toby have the courage to track his adversary down? His burgeoning love affair with a pretty graduate student suddenly changes his whole perspective on life, and now Toby realizes it's time to confront old fears - and perhaps new evils!. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.