The Assassination Bureau, Ltd. — New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1963.
This novel was unfinished at London's death. It had been sent to The Saturday Evening Post in December 1911, in unfinished (about 30,000 words completed) form. (Letters of Jack London, pp. 1058-1059.) It is one of the Sinclair Lewis plots and was given an ending by mystery story writer Robert L. Fish "from notes by Jack London." These notes, along with others, are contained at the end of the McGraw-Hill edition, but Fish obviously made little use of them — and it is perhaps best that he didn't. London purchased the plot for the story from Lewis on March 11, 1910. It was one of five plots he actually used from a total of twenty-seven he bought from Lewis for a total sum of $137.50. This one is the only real novel that resulted from this "collaboration." The plot "The Dress-Suit Pugilist" became the novelette The Abysmal Brute (entry 21) and three others became short stories. (See Mark Schorer, Sinclair Lewis, An American Life. New York: McGraw-Hill Co., Inc., 1961, pp. 164-166; also Franklin Walker's "Jack London's Use of Sinclair Lewis Plots," and Letters of Jack London, p. 1041.) Refer also to entries 131, 132, 21, and 171.
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