More on The Great Taos Bank Robbery States

Another example – an update in February 2017

Back in October of 2013 I did a post about the states of The Great Taos Bank Robbery, showing that collectors and dealers have mis-identified the first versus second states of this book for many years. Louis A. Hieb published a bibliography of Hillerman books and writing titled, Tony Hillerman: From The Blessing Way to Talking God A Bibliography (Press of the Gigantic Hound, Tucson, 1990). His book has become the definitive reference regarding Hillerman books published from 1970 through 1989. Hieb, however, described the two states of this particular book in reverse chronological order - the details of this inadvertent transposition are described in the 2013 post.

One of my customers, John Van Derhoof of Long Beach, California, is an avid Hillerman collector. He recently bought a copy of The Great Taos Bank Robbery that was apparently a Review Copy. He sent along some photos of this example and I show them below.

Although John’s copy is a bit worn, compared to Dan Stouffer's, shown in original post, it also indicates that the first state of the original first edition of this title was just as described in detail in the original post. The first edition, first state book and jacket were distinctly different than the later state, or perhaps a second printing after 1979, that has been mistakenly considered to be the first state for many years. Note that the first issue of this book has two photographs on the back panel of the dust jacket. Thanks to John for sending along this additional proof.