The Wrong Body

New York/London: Alfred A. Knopf. Very Good in Very Good dj. 1937. First Edition. Hardcover. (in Grosset & Dunlap reissue dust jacket) [moderate shelfwear to bottom edge, very slight fraying to cloth at top of spine, top front corner bumped; jacket shows a little wear at edges and corners, faint staining at bottom corner of rear panel]. Mystery novel with a resurrectionist angle, involving a racketeer who's died in prison -- well, actually, he's basically volunteered to be executed by carbon monoxide gas, as part of his agreement to be the subject of an experimental technique designed to bring victims of such poisoning back to life -- the condition for his cooperation being that if it works, he'll be pardoned and set free. But just at the critical moment, the Governor of the State accidentally dies of carbon monoxide poisoning(!), and is brought into the operating chamber and placed on the next table. The doctor "proceeds to perform a double experiment. The blood is drawn out of both bodies, treated, and re-injected. Both men recover. But something has gone wrong...." (Wasn't there a Boris Karloff movie with a plot something like this?) This seems to have been the author's only published book; institutional holdings are pretty slim, with just a dozen copies recorded by OCLC. [NOTE that although the book itself is the first (Knopf) edition, the dust jacket has been supplied from a Grosset & Dunlap reprint; the illustration appears to be identical with the original.] .