The Better Part of Valor
Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1964. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. [8], 324, [4] pages. DJ has some wear and soiling. Some endpaper discoloration. Private collector's bookplate inside the front cover and embossed seal on fep. Basil Heatter (1918-2009), the son of radio commentator Gabriel Heatter. He attended schools in Connecticut, then went abroad when was 16 for a two year travel stint through Europe. Returning to America, he went to work for a New York advertising agency. He enlisted in the Navy in 1940 and during WWII served as a skipper on a P.T. boat in the Southwest Pacific. Besides being a news commentator himself, Heatter wrote twenty novels of intrigue and adventure—beginning with The Dim View in 1946, the story of a young PT boat skipper—as well as several non-fiction works revolving around his love of the sea. In fact, he lived for years off Key West on his own self-built sailboat, The Blue Duck. More