Oculus Presents: Another find for the Shelf O' Stuff

Welcome to Oculus Presents, folks.

I confess that for a long-ass time, I'd only known Patricia Highsmith as the author of the novel The Price of Salt (nowadays also published as Carol, after the movie adaptation), a groundbreaking piece of 1952 lesbian fiction. And then I found out she was actually a very acclaimed crime and thriller author of such classics as The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train. I know it usually happens the other way around when people get into her books, but either way, she's been on my to-read list for a while.

And then I found a copy of this book in a used bookshop.

Those Who Walk Away apparently is one of Ms. Highsmith's lesser-known thrillers, but it is still relatively widely read (bestselling crime author here) and has been published many times, in various languages. However, this particular edition with the wonderfully unsettling cover was released by Pan Books in 1970 as part of the very obscure Best of American Crime Fiction series (not to be confused with the other series titled The Best of American Crime Fiction, which came earlier and had a very different cover art style). And it is pretty much impossible to find on the internet. Nothing on Goodreads and Abebooks, nothing on eBay; only a few question marks from Pan paperback collectors, and copies for sale of various other books from this same series. Eventually I managed to dig up a blog entry on the Pan Books collectors' website, TiKiT, which includes at least a photo of this edition of Those Who Walk Away in the TiKiT catalog, proving that this is in fact a thing that people know about. I haven't the foggiest how valuable this edition is, nor do I particularly care, but it's definitely one of the hardest-to-find books I've tried to track down, especially from such a famous author. Whether the contents will hold up to that creepy cover remains for me to see, but I'm very glad to place it on the Shelf.

Update: I forgot to credit the designer behind this magnificently scary cover art - the back cover of the book tells me it's the work of one Tom Simmonds. Hats off, Mr. Simmonds.