THE BLANK PAGE

New York & Cleveland: Saturday Review Press / E. P. Dutton. Fine in Fine dust jacket. 1974. 1st Edition; 1st Printing. Cover Art; This book is in Fine condition and has a Fine dust jacket. The book and its contents are in clean, bright condition. The top edge of the book cover (both front and rear) has the faintest hint of sunning. The text pages are clean and bright. The dust jacket is crisp and clean with only some beginning fading / toning to the spine. This is the third book in the Chief Mario Balzic mysteries, set in Rocksburg, PA, and of the books in the series, this is one of the most difficult to find. "It was hot. The temperature on Memorial Day had tied the record set in 1910. In the five days since, the weather report was notable for its sameness. When Miss Cynthia Summer called to say that she hadn't seen one of her student roomers, Police Chief Mario Balzic was glad to stop working on the budget report. But then he saw Janet Pisula's body on the floor of her room." "Little is known about Kosak, as he prefers anonymity and has given only a few interviews. He was born in 1934 and served in the Marines in the early 1950s. He lives in Greensburg, Pennsylvania with wife Linda. He is an alumnus of Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania and claims that he "flunked freshman composition twice" because he "did not know how to make an English sentence." (As reported in the bulletin of that college's "Friends of the Library" Autumn, 1990.) Other than that, information is sketchy. He may have been a minor league baseball player (some had even been suggesting that Kosak was a pseudonym for former Major League baseball player Phil Rizzuto) and he may have studied at the University of Iowa's writers' program in the 1960s. Other evidence suggests he never got near a baseball and instead was a journalist at a western Pennsylvania newspaper." .