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The Drought

John Creasey

First published 1959
Series Dr. Palfrey #21
Publisher Hodder & Stoughton
Format Hardcover
Type Novel
Pages 191

  • Revised as Dry Spell, 1967?
  • Four Square Books published The Drought and Dry Spell with identical page count 157 --from WorldCat library records.
  • From the series bibliography at SFE3 (quote): • The Drought: A New Dr Palfrey Story (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1959) [Dr Palfrey: hb/]   • Dry Spell (London: New English Library, 1967) [rev vt of the above: pb/] Here "rev vt" is revised, variant title. Compound listings at SFE3 show first printings only revised works and variant titles (no 1st US ed., 1st paperback, etc).
  • The Drought (#21) was followed three years later, a long wait in this series, by The Terror: The Return of Dr. Palfrey (#22), which later became the first of more than 20 volumes published by Walker & Co. for the US market. One US review of the latter (below) explains that The Drought had concluded the story arc, apparently, with the death of Dr. Palfrey.   So a revision of The Drought may be no surprise--but Sherlock Holmes returned without any published rewrite.

No ISBN on record — searching by title and author.

Title Year Publisher Format Type Catalog ID Cover Artist Pages
The Drought Cover 1963 Four Square Books Paperback Novel 918 157
The Drought Cover 1967 Walker & Co. Hardcover Novel 191
The Drought Cover 1974 Arrow Books Paperback Novel 191