"ALL FRANK SERPICO EVER WANTED WAS TO BE A GOOD COP"

MAAS, Peter. Serpico. New York: Viking, (1973). Octavo, original half black cloth, original dust jacket. $1200.

First edition of Maas' critically-praised book, inscribed by on the title page by him, "With my regards Peter Maas," basis for the same year's film starring Al Pacino, with four pages of illustrations, in original dust jacket.

Peter Maas once said that his books usually started with "'some anger I have about something, or what someone does about something that gets them hurt'… Time and again he returned to organized crime, organized corruption and people whose revelations shattered myths or created new ones. He spent the 1980s and 90s investigating everyone from Mafia turncoats to rogue CIA agents to clemency-sellers in Tennessee after he became famous in the 1960s and 70s for a pair of true-crime stories. One was about Joseph Valachi, who revealed the secrets of the Mafia. The other was about NY detective Frank Serpico." Based on months of interviews and written with "effortless smoothness," his book chronicles Serpico's struggle to combat corruption and the shooting that nearly killed him (New York Times). The 1973 film adaptation starring Al Pacino and directed by Sidney Lumet won Oscar nominations for Pacino, and screenwriters Waldo Salt and Norman Wexler. Mass, who died in 2001, "gave half of his $400,000 screen rights income to Serpico. 'After all,' he observed, 'it's his life'" (Los Angeles Times). First edition, first printing: with no statement of edition or printings on the copyright page.

Book fine; light edge-wear, mild creasing to rear flap of near-fine price-clipped dust jacket.