HONOUR AMONG THIEVES: THREE CLASSIC ROBBERIES.

UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn.FINE/FINE.No owner inscrptn and no price-clip to dw/dj.Bright,crisp,clean,glossy laminated,white background with facsimile Reward poster with red lettering and black+red lettered title to front panel of dw/dj; with negligible shelf-wear or creasing to edges and corners - no nicks or tears present. Top+fore-edges lightly aged/toned with minimal,sporadic foxing; contents bright,tight,clean,solid and sound - pristine - no dog-ear reading creases to any pages' corners,would appear unread - apart from my own collation.Bright,crisp,clean,sharp-cornered,publisher's original plain dark blue cloth boards with bright,crisp,stamped silver gilt letters to spine/backstrip and immaculate plain white endpapers.UK,slim 8vo HB +dw/dj,1st edn, 1-244pp [paginated] includes Tricks of the Trade,3 accounts/ history of 3 classical,historical robberies,a select bibliography; plus [unpaginated] half-title+title pages,a dedication,contents list/table and 4pp blanks at the rear of the book.
Honour and betrayal are as much the subject of these stories as the gold,diamonds and pearls which were the targets of the robbers.Two hundredweight of Victorian gold,en route for Paris in sealed bullion boxes within a twin-locked burglarproof safe,under constant guard,was inexplicably transformed into lead shot.Though the consignment had been weighed and its seals checked at every stage of the journey,the skill of the cracksman made it impossible to say even in which country the crime had occurred. Half a century later,on the eve of King Edward VII's visit to the Irish International Exhibition,the Crown Jewels of Ireland vanished from under twenty-four hour security in Dublin Castle,less than fifty yards from police and military headquarters. 'A case for a Sherlock Holmes to investigate',reported the Daily Express.By the time that the scandal was laid to rest,two members of the viceroy's court and a policeman had been shot dead,while a number of eminent reputations had been destroyed. In 1913 Max Mayer's great creation,a rose-tinted pearl necklace, was the finest in the world with a modern value of some seven million pounds.The box holding it left Paris safely.When opened in London it contained only lumps of sugar.Scotland Yard and the insurers had no hope of recovering the necklace except by an elaborate confidence trick on the thieves themselves. In two of these cases the thieves were caught.Only in one of them was the stolen treasure ever seen again.Each of the robberies occurred in 1855,1907 and 1913 respectively. Since April 2013,again in March 2015,and in this year too,the UK Post Office has altered it's Pricing in Proportion template,altering it's prices,weight allowances,dimensions and lowered it's qualifying compensation rates too!
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