Harlequin #295, Lost House by Frances Shelley Wees, a 1954 Canadian hypodermic-needle

This is a reprint. Harlequin first issued it as a complete novel in May 1949 as book #2, then again in April 1954 as #295. That makes the 1949 printing one of the very first Harlequins ever; #1 in the line was Nancy Bruff's The Manatee. The number 295 is in the box at top left, next to Harlequin's diamond-shaped logo. The 35¢ price sticker in the yellow diamond and the "A Harlequin Book" banner at bottom left match the house style of the time.

Good - VG condition cover nic on bottom left corner (see pictures)

Early Harlequin wasn't the romance publisher it later became. In the early 1950s the Winnipeg/Toronto company put out a mix of mysteries, westerns, crime and sleaze-leaning pulp. The lurid "Dope, Danger and Dolls" tagline is typical of that period, before the company moved to all-romance later in the decade.

The cover
The syringe over the screaming woman is the reason people want this book. Canadian book historian Brian Busby has called it one of the greatest Harlequin covers of all time. A dealer listing credits the art to Rickard and describes #295 as a reprint of book #2 with the same hypodermic-needle design. 

The novel is older than either Harlequin edition. It first came out in 1938 from Hurst & Blackett in the UK and McRae-Smith in the US, and it was serialized in Argosy magazine that same year. Argosy billed it as an eerie mystery of the Canadian North