Lion Books #127 Jim Thompson's The Alcoholics, from 1953.

Lion Books #127 Jim Thompson's The Alcoholics, from 1953.  VG+ Condition 

Bibliographic details: Small octavo, pictorial wrappers. Lion #127. Paperback original. The "A Lion Original—Not a Reprint" banner on your cover confirms it's a PBO (paperback original). There was no earlier hardcover, so this is the first edition. It was originally published in paperback by Lion Books, March 1953.

The story: It revolves around Dr. Peter S. Murphy and his clinic El Healtho where he treats alcoholics. One bookseller sums it up as a day in the sanitarium among the patients, including The General, The Twins, and The Rich Man's Son. The book is darker, stranger and more blackly comic than the lurid "evil woman" tagline suggests. That kind of mismatch between cover copy and contents was typical of 1950s paperback marketing.

Scarcity: One dealer calls it one of the scarcest Lion Library titles. It's also one of Thompson's more obscure novels, so fewer copies circulated and survived than of his famous books.

Where it fits in Thompson's career
Thompson (1906–1977), born in Oklahoma, is now considered one of the great American noir writers, though he was mostly unappreciated in his lifetime. In 1952 Lion Books published The Killer Inside Me, lauded by critics and perhaps his most renowned book. This began a successful Lion partnership and led to his most productive years. From 1952 to 1954 Lion produced ten Thompson novels. The Alcoholics was one of five paperback originals by Thompson published in 1953 alone. The "author of Cropper's Cabin" credit on your cover refers to his 1952 Lion novel. The subject was personal for him: Thompson struggled with alcoholism for most of his life.