THE GODWULF MANUSCRIPT by Parker, Robert B - 1974

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974. First edition. Near fine in very good plus jacket.. Signed first printing of Parker's debut crime novel, in which private detective Spenser is hired to recover a distressed medieval manuscript held for ransom by criminals with no respect for literature or the niceties of the rare book trade. First of Parker's long-running and highly successful series of 'Spenser' novels, inspiration for the '80s TV series "Spenser: For Hire" and the recent film Spenser Confidential (2020). Parker, a onetime English professor at Northeastern who wrote his doctoral dissertation on "The Violent Hero" in the hard-boiled detective novel, set his debut novel at an unnamed Boston university full of student radicals, criminal schemes, and dark departmental politics: realism, more or less. 8.25'' x 5.5''. Original brown cloth with ornate "G" stamped in darker brown. In original price-clipped dust jacket, designed by Paul Bacon. Tan endpapers, red topstain. [6], 186 pages. Signed by Parker on front endpaper. Slight spine lean. Jacket with shallow edgewear, a few spots of soil.