CHRISTIE, Agatha (1890-1976). Death Comes as the End. London: for The Crime Club, 1945.

First UK edition in an excellent unrestored dust-jacket. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author: 'Larry from Agatha, March 1945 in a time of much preoccupation with the Nile & a Hidden Horizon.' The recipient of this book ['Larry'] was Francis Loftus Sullivan, known to his friends as Larry, an actor and close friend of Agatha Christie and her husband. Sullivan had been in the London cast of Agatha Christie’s stage play Hidden Horizon, which was an adaptation of her novel Death on the Nile, and in 1945 Christie was on tour with the play. Sullivan had played the part of Hercule Poirot in Christie’s plays Black Coffee (1930) and Peril at End House (1940), and 'Although her friend Francis "Larry" Sullivan longed to play the part [of Poirot] again, [Agatha Christie] took Poirot out of the script and instead gave him a "good part as Canon Pennefeather"' (L. Thompson, Agatha Christie, 1999, p. 344). Sullivan later appeared in Witness for the Prosecution on Broadway in 1955 for which he received a Tony Award. Christie dedicated her novel The Hollow (1946) to the Sullivans with the dedication reading: 'Larry and Danae, with apologies for using their swimming pool as the scene for a murder'. Hubin p. 79.

Octavo. Original orange cloth (edges of binding slightly sunned, stain to fore-edge); original pictorial dust-jacket (small tears at folds at foot of spine, very slight chipping at fold ends, slight creases to spine, slightly toned and dust-stained). Provenance: Francis L. Sullivan ['Larry'], (1903-1956; presentation inscription by the author on front free endpaper).