Dead Cert
By Dick Francis
 
First edition, first impression: London: Michael Joseph, 1962.

Octavo. Original maroon cloth, spine lettered in gilt with the publisher's device to the foot. With the original dust jacket designed by Trevor Denning, priced 15s net, unclipped.

Very good: some offsetting to the endpapers, with a previous owner's name to the front endpaper; some toning to the edges of the text block; light wrinkling to the fore-edge of a few leaves.

The dust jacket, original and unclipped, very good: some toning to the spine panel; a tear and associated crease to the foot of the lower panel hinge; a little rubbing to the spine ends and upper panel hinge; a nick to the spine head, with an associated tape repair to the verso; otherwise very good.

Francis's first novel, published the year after his autobiography "The Sport of Queens" and drawing directly on his own career as champion National Hunt jockey. "Dead Cert" introduced the racecourse thriller that would occupy Francis for the next four decades, and was adapted for the screen in 1974, directed by Tony Richardson. Francis went on to become the only three-time winner of the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award for Best Novel - for "Forfeit" (1970), "Whip Hand" (1981), and "Come to Grief" (1996) - and received the Crime Writers' Association's Cartier Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement; "Dead Cert" stands as the foundation of that body of work.