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I am wondering about the odd turn of phrase used here:

"One good sale today: £220 for two early beautiful leather-bound editions of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. They weren't the more valuable first editions, but they certainly weren't cold on their heels."

Confessions of a Bookseller (2019) By Shaun Bythell

I assume it is derived from to cool one's heels, but I just can't grok its meaning in this context and can't find its usage elsewhere.

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not cold on their heels = fairly hot on their heels

The expression to be hot on the heels of someone or something means to be in close pursuit of or to swiftly follow that thing, to be soon after it. Other variants of this expression include being hard on the heels of it, or simply on its heels. That's why a dog at heel is close behind you.

So if they were not hot on their heels, they would not be editions that followed closely behind those first editions They would instead be far behind rather than close behind, so not soon afterwards.

But that is not what this said. Think of this instance here as a form of litotes, a one-off stylish euphemism for its opposite: Because cold means not hot, denying that they were far behind means that the mentioned editions were indeed fairly close behind the first editions, just not quite the very first ones.

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    Oh that makes far more sense! It was just such odd phrasing. I'm glad I asked and thank you for the response. Commented 2 days ago
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    Excellent. And just to add that Carroll's work was filled with backwards talk like "Sentence first—verdict afterwards" in Wonderland. Commented 2 days ago
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    I'm sure that this is the correct analysis, but I want to note that "cold on X's heels" is definitely not a conventional standard phrase. It doesn't really make sense even when the nature of the wordplay is recognized, as "hot on X's heels is not a clear opposite to "cold on X's heels", nor vice versa. Commented 2 days ago
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    @T.E.D:No, it's not a Britishism. It's just a quirky turn of phrase from the writer. Commented 2 days ago
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    @TonyK: Agreed it’s not a specific established Britishism — but this sort of use of litotes is very typically British. “How’s the weather?” “Well, you know. Not hot.” Commented yesterday

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