Beschreibung:

1. Typed Manuscript with Annotations, 101 pp, 4to, n.p., [1970], on yellow typing paper (pp 71-80 xeroxed), being the original single-spaced draft of Survival … Zero!, with 6 pp of outline and story notes, leaves lightly smudged and soiled, otherwise fine. 2. Typed Manuscript with Annotations, 253 pp, 4to, [New York], March 30, 1970, being a double-spaced draft of Survival Zero, additionally annotated by at least 2 Dutton editors, stamped “Copy for the Press,” pages lightly toned and thumbed, final leaf heavily creased. 3. Galley proofs, 93 sheets, dated in manuscript May 1, 1970, with annotations by Dutton editors, creasing and thumbing throughout. 4. Page proofs, 97 sheets, dated in manuscript May 20-21, 1970, with annotations by Dutton editors, creasing and thumbing throughout. Like other Spillane novels , this one opens with a murder: “They had left him for dead in the middle of a pool of blood in his own bedroom, his belly slit open like gaping barn doors, the hilt of the knife wedged against his sternum. But the only trouble was that he had stayed alive somehow, his life pumping out, managing to knock the telephone off the little table and dial me. Now he was looking up at me with seconds left and all he could do was force out the words, ‘Mike … there wasn’t no reason.’ / I didn’t try to fake him out. He knew what was happening. I said, ‘Who, Lippy?’ / His lips fought to frame the sentence. ‘ Nobody I … not the kind … No reason, Mike. No reason.’ / And then Lippy Sullivan died painfully but quickly.’” During the course of investigating Lippy’s death, Mike uncovers a Soviet plot to unleash a biological weapon in America, which, however, the Reds want to recover because they fear that American retaliation will be far worse for them. See illustration.