EDWARD LEE

NIGHT BAIT 

(written at Phillip Straker)

 

• Mass-market paperback. Zebra Books, May 1982.

​

 

Lee will tell you hands down: “This book’s a hunk of junk. Don’t buy it.” Zebra contracted this turkey back in 1981, during their famous “fruit-and-knife” cover kick. What does a pile of grapes have to do with a serial-killer in Washington, D.C.? Nothing. Lee is infuriated that his first novel sells for preposterously high sums in the collector’s market, and this is a quote: “It may well be the worst novel ever written.”