Appointment with Death.

with rare original dustjacket

This scarce jacket was designed by Agatha Christie's friend, Robin Macartney, who often travelled with the author and her husband, the archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan. As an archaeological architect as well as an illustrator, Macartney shared an interest with Christie and her husband in archaeology, antiques, and travelling throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, which also inspired the setting of this novel in the Levant.

Macartney designed four book covers for Christie, of which Appointment with Death was the final. In this cover, Macartney illustrates the book's passage of Sarah's arrival at Petra, 'The way wound down—down into the ground. The shapes of rock rose up round them—down, down into the bowels of the earth, through a labyrinth of red cliffs. They towered now on either side. Sarah felt stifled—menaced by the ever-narrowing gorge. She thought confusedly to herself: "Down into the valley of death—down into the valley of death..."'.

First edition, first impression; 8vo; endpapers with minor marks, some light foxing to edges of text block, otherwise clean interior; publisher's orange cloth, spine lettered in black, a very sharp copy in the exceptionally fresh pictorial dust-jacket with two minor tape stains to the flaps from an old jacket protector, mild ghosting through the jacket at the spine; housed in a black quarter morocco drop back box; 252pp.