Biggles Flies East.

1935. London; Oxford University Press. Humphrey Milford. 1935. Thick 8vo.; original mid-blue cloth pictorially blocked in darker blue with a vignette of a bi-plane to upper cover and smaller stylised plane to spine, in pictorial dustwrapper; pp. [v], 6-7, [8-13], 14-256; with coloured frontispiece and 4 half-tone plates on coated stock; a very good copy with some fading, minor browning, and slight marking to spine, with a localised 1cm brown splash to upper cover, fore-, and lower edges of book block speckled and browned, internally very good, and sound, without ownership marks or inscriptions, with moderate scattered foxing largely confined to the first 30, and final few, pages of the text block and a 7.5cm production wrinkle to a single Foreword leaf; very attractively presented in original, unclipped, and unrestored dustwrapper (3/6 net) with slight nicking and abrasion to spine ends with 2 neat and narrow strips of paper pasted to reverse, to strengthen, rubbing to corners and folds, light overall dusting, and 2 small and narrow surface scuffs to upper panel (7mm and 1.5cm) and a small and pale stain to upper joint fold, barely visible on the upper side; genuinely rare in the jacket in any condition, especially so in this state. First edition, first issue, 4.5cm thick, in the correct dust-jacket. Only the seventh flying adventure in novel form by Captain W.E. Johns following The Camels Are Coming; The Cruise of the Condor; Biggles of the Camel Squadron; Biggles Flies Again; Biggles Learns to Fly; and The Black Peril. Published alongside Biggles Hits the Trail (1935). A WWI flying adventure set in Palestine and one of W.E. Johns' most popular Biggles novels. While on leave in London Major James Bigglesworth is approached by a stranger who mistakes him for a flying officer recently dismissed from the service. His proposition, Biggles correctly guesses, comes from the enemy Intelligence Service. On reporting the incident the Air Board propose that Biggles assumes the place of his double and heads to the Middle East where he finds himself surrounded by enemies, and in desperate peril, especially when the second-in-command at German Headquarters suspects him of being a spy.