Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Fake or Real? An Ed Gorman Signature

A real-life detective story, or something. I purchased a nice edition, nearly fine, of Ed Gorman’s Dark Trail (Evans, 1990) on eBay a few weeks ago. As an aside (in the listing as in my purchasing decision) it was signed. I have several signed books by Ed, and this one is a little different.

The “G” is very different (an awkward nearly lower case) and the last name is rushed and illegible. The “E” in Ed is similar (with sharper, less rounded edges) to the signatures I’ve seen, but the “d” is a little different. I’ve also never seen Ed cross out his name on the title page.

The signature in Dark Trail is in the top photo, and for comparison sake the signatures in the three photographs below are from Cemetery Dance’s limited edition of The Autumn Dead / A Cry of Shadows (1996), PS Publishing’s limited edition of The Cage of Night (2008), and Leisure’s paperback of The Poker Club (2000).  


The total purchase, including shipping, was $5.50, which I’m pleased with and provides little incentive for forgery.

What do you think? Is the signature is real or fake?

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Looks forged to me, but I'm no handwriting expert.

Ben Boulden said...

That's what I think, too, Bill.

Peter Brandvold said...

Either he was in a huge hurry, or it's a forgery. Might be time to pay a visit to the vendor with a big husky friend with a name like Guido!

Mathew Paust said...

Not sure any two of my signatures are alike, Ben. If the top one is Ed's, I'd say he was in a helluva hurry.

Prashant C. Trikannad said...

I'm with the others here, Ben. Mr. Gorman does seem to have signed in a hurry. Still, you got a very good edition, I think.