Author: VESCELIUS-SHELDON, Louise.
Title: An I.D.B. in South Africa.
Description: NY, Lovell [1888]. Octavo publisher's illustrated cloth (a couple of small spots); illustrations through the text. Minor signs of use but a good, bright copy. ¶ First edition, there was a London issue using these sheets. I don't want to give away too much but this is complicated. We begin in a theatre box in the Kimberley diamond fields with Herr Schwatka divulging to an near stranger that the fascinating beauty in the box opposite has Zulu blood. Before the end of this short chapter Count Telfus has been arrested in that same box for having an illicit diamond (IDB is an illicit diamond buyer), handcuffed, locked up and has shot himself in his cell. The South African police frisk prisoners for diamonds, not guns. Donald Laure worships his part Zulu wife Dainty but has a guilty secret or two while she has not yet had the passion in her soul awakened. But she does have a black dwarf servant with a glass eye.

Keywords: literature fiction c19th America South Africa thrillers mystery detective