A Gun for Sale

Plot summary

Raven, an English assassin, is hired to kill a government minister in a European country (in fact, Czechoslovakia), an act calculated to provoke a European war. Returning to London, he is paid off in cash by his contact, who uses the false name "Cholmondely". However, when Raven starts spending the notes, he discovers they were stolen. Furious at being cheated and hunted by the police who think he was the thief, without a ticket he follows "Cholmondeley" onto a train going to Nottwich.

Also on the train is Anne Crowder, a chorus girl travelling to start work in a pantomime. Her fiancée, Mather, is the detective leading the hunt for Raven. At Nottwich, Raven uses Anne's ticket to get off the station and, since she has recognised him, he takes her to an empty house to kill her. Escaping, she does not report what has happened, out of sympathy for Raven, but instead goes to the theatre to work. There, she is asked out to dinner by one of the backers, Davis, who is "Cholmondely". After dinner he takes her to a house where, when he realizes she knows about his involvement with Raven, he smothers her, though he does not kill her.

The owner of the house helps herself to Anne's smart monogrammed handbag and the next day is seen with it in the street by Raven, who forces his way into the house and finds Anne weak but still alive. She agrees to cooperate with him, since both want Davis/Cholmondely dead, and he takes her to a hideout he has found. While in hiding, they discuss Raven's murder of the government minister; Raven also talks to Anne about his childhood and the difficult circumstances in which he discovered his mother's suicide—details that will anticipate Raven's own death and the imagery the novel utilizes to depict his final moments.

In the night, the hideout is surrounded by police, led by Jimmy Mather, and Anne decoys them so that Raven can escape. Nonetheless, Raven has to shoot and wound a policeman in order to flee. There is gas drill practise, in preparation for war, and everyone, except Raven, is wearing a gas-mask, so forces a student participating in a rag to undress and give him his clothes and gas-mask.

Thusly disguised as a student participating in the rag stunt, Raven spots Davis, sans gas-mask, in the street, and fines him for charity. Davis says he has no cash and will pay him in his office. Going there, Raven discovers it is the headquarters of a giant steel company that will profit hugely from a war and that the boss is Sir Marcus, a corrupt Jewish industrialist. Upon discovering that Marcus is Davis/Cholmondely's boss Raven takes him at gunpoint up to the suite of Sir Marcus. After explaining his reasons, he kills both men and is himself shot dead by police who have surrounded the building.

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Publication history and adaptations

The novel was first published by Doubleday Doran in the U.S. in June 1936 as This Gun For Hire and by William Heinemann in the U.K. in July 1936 as A Gun For Sale. Several film and television adaptations have been made: a 1942 film version transposed to wartime California starred Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake under the U.S. title This Gun for Hire, a Turkish adaptation (Günes Dogmasin) was made in 1961, and an Italian television mini-series, Una pistola in vendita, followed in 1970. The 1942 film was remade in 1957 under the title Short Cut to Hell and as a TV movie in 1991 starring Robert Wagner.