HELEN MacINNES - AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED 08/20/1973 - HFSID 341344

HELEN MacINNES
Handwritten, signed letter from the author to a reviewer thanking her for her positive thoughts on Message from Málaga, going on to say that she hopes she enjoys her book-in-progress set for release next spring (The Snare of the Hunter)
Autograph letter signed: "Helen MacInnes", in black ink, 2 pages (front and verso), 6¾x7½. August 20, 1973. Accompanied by original mailing envelope. In part: "Dear Ms Stanford, Many thanks indeed for your splendid review of Message from Malaga, which is especially interesting to me because of your visit there (+ to Granada) this Spring. It is certainly one test of a novelist's descriptive powers if a reviewer actually knows the scene from personal experience...I am now finisher a new novel, which will be published next Spring. Title is still indefinite. Central + Western Europe is the setting. I am never specific about a work-in-progress!". The book mentioned here is most likely The Snare of the Hunter published in 1974, which follows a recently divorced Czechoslovakian's escape to the west.Helen MacInnes (1907-1985) began writing her best-selling espionage novels just as World War II commenced (Above Suspicion, 1939), and she continued through most of the Cold War. Her last novel, Ride a Pale Horse, appeared in 1984. The Salzburg Connection, one of 4 MacInnes novels to be made into a film, was published in1968. The Scottish-born MacInnes and her husband Gilbert Highet, a classics professor who worked in British intelligence during World War II, became American citizens in 1951. Normal mailing fold. Light surface creases. Fine condition.