Vintage & Collectible Mystery Books

Softcover. Greenwich, CT, Fawcett Gold Medal Publishing, 1st, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 205 pages. Paperback. Gold Metal Book #m2889-95c. Light creasing to paper wrappers. Spine lightly cocked.

Softcover. Greenwich, CT, Fawcett Gold Medal Publishing, 1st, 1961, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 127 pages. Paperback. Gold Metal Book #s1170. Small ink notation on 1st page. Light creasing to paper wrappers. Hinge cracked.

Softcover. New York, Popular Library, 1st, 1946, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 222 pages. Paperback. Popular Library Mystery #76. Cover art by Hoffman. Light creasing to paper wrappers.

Softcover. New York, Pocket Books/Permabooks, 2nd, 1959, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 195 pages. Paperback. Pocket Book #2821. Moderate crease to center front cover wrapper.

Softcover. New York, Dagger House, 1st, 1946, Book: Fine, Dust Jacket: None, 120 pages. Paperback. Red Dagger Mystery #23. Crease to front cover. Light wear to wrappers.

Hardcover. NY, Clarkson N. Potter, 1st, 1981, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 264 pages. In a bright, unclipped dust jacket with art by Edward Gorey.

Hardcover. London, Andre Deutsch, 1st UK, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 1946, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, gray cloth with purple WRB and decorative design on cover, purple/red lettering on spine with green filigree. Suspense noirish novel. Night club singer marries man with a past and secrets. Back cover with faint staining otherwise clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's Press, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A Sheriff Milt Kovak mystery, set in Prophesy County, Oklahoma. Clean copy

Hardcover. NY, Dutton, 1st, 1984, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Author's second novel, featuring Marina Robinson, a 'failure analyst' engineer, who heads to India to investigate the 10-year past death of her sister.

Hardcover. NY, Viking, 1st US, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Translated by William I. Neuman. Novel set in 1922 in post-revolutionary Mexico, described as "a blending of roman noir with magic realism, a cross between Raymond Chandler and Gabriel Garcia Marquez."

Hardcover. NY, Bantam, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The author's fifth novel featuring gambler & magician Lou (Shifty) Anderson. Down on his luck, Shifty goes to work as a chauffeur for an elderly millionaire. Enter his employer's long-lost showgirl daughter.

Hardcover. NY, Dutton, 1st, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 224 pages. Clean copy. Ghote comes to a cold and drizzling London for a international conference, but becomes involved in investigating the disappearance of a radiant niece.

Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Glen Orbik. Two identical twin sisters--one a sexually repressed defense attorney, the other a former libertine now living a respectable life in suburbia--are about to have their darkest secrets revealed, to the men in their lives and to themselves. As one sister prepares for the toughest trial of her career and the other faces a stalker who knows details of her life that even her husband doesn't, both find themselves pushed to the edge, and confronted by discoveries about their husbands that shock and disturb them. THE SECRET LIVES OF MARRIED WOMEN is an intense, psychologically penetrating tale of fears and fantasies, the desires that drive us, and how far men will go for the women they love. Like new.

Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Chuck Pyle. Anita Carbone was a good girl--and it bored her.That's why she took the long subway ride down to Greenwich Village, home of the Beats and the stoners, home to every kind of misfit and dropout and free spirit you could imagine. It was where she met Joe Milani, the troubled young war veteran with the gentle touch. But it was also where she met his drug-dealing roommate--a man whose unnatural appetites led to murder. Like new.

Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, colorful wraps with a retro-style illustration by Robert McGinnis. The ruthless professional killer known as Quarry long ago disappeared into a well-earned retirement. But now a media magnate has lured the restless hitman into tackling one last lucrative assignment. The target is an unlikely one: Why, Quarry wonders, would anyone want a beautiful young librarian dead? And why in hell does he care?On the 30th anniversary of the enigmatic assassin's first appearance, bestselling author Max Allan Collins brings him back for a dark and deadly mission where the last quarry may turn out to be Quarry himself. Like new.

Hardcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st thus, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, colorful dust jacket with a retro-style illustration by Glen Orbik. Cashed out from the NYPD after 24 years, Doak Miller operates as a private eye in steamy small-town Florida, doing jobs for the local police. Like posing as a hit man and wearing a wire to incriminate a local wife who's looking to get rid of her husband. But when he sees the wife, when he looks into her deep blue eyes. He falls--and falls hard. Soon he's working with her, against his employer, plotting a devious plan that could get her free from her husband and put millions in her bank account. But can they do it without landing in jail? And once he's kindled his taste for killing...will he be able to stop at one? Like new.

Hardcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket featuring a retro-style illustration by Michael Koelsch. On the border between El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico, five lives are about to collide--with fatal results. You'll meet MARTY--the professional gambler who rolls the dice on a night with...MEG--the bored divorcee who seeks excitement and finds...LILY--the beautiful hitchhiker lured into a live sex show by...CASSIE--the redhead with her own private agenda...and WEAVER--the madman, the killer with a straight razor in his pocket, on the run from the police and determined to go down swinging! This is MWA Grand Master Lawrence Block at his rawest and most visceral, a bloody, bawdy, brutal story of passion and punishment--and of lines that were never meant to be crossed. Small remainder dot on bottom edge otherwise like new.

Softcover. NY, Mysterious Press,, reprint, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 204 pages. Mass market paperback

Softcover. London, Hard Case Crime, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 264 pages. The son of a struggling single mother, Jamie Conklin just wants an ordinary childhood. But Jamie is no ordinary child. Born with an unnatural ability his mom urges him to keep secret, Jamie can see what no one else can see and learn what no one else can learn. But the cost of using this ability is higher than Jamie can imagine - as he discovers when an NYPD detective draws him into the pursuit of a killer who has threatened to strike from beyond the grave. LATER is Stephen King at his finest, a terrifying and touching story of innocence lost and the trials that test our sense of right and wrong. With echoes of King's classic novel It, LATER is a powerful, haunting, unforgettable exploration of what it takes to stand up to evil in all the faces it wears. Remaider line on bottom edge.

Hardcover. NY, Donald I. Fine, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The third mystery featuring maverick lawyer Steve Winslow. Clean, like new.

Hardcover. NY, Crown Publishers, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. "Eric Auden, recently estranged from his wife and the world, finds himself one snowy day in New York's greatest art museum confronting the cool marble contours of the Goddess of Desire, forty-five centuries old and still a bit of a flirt. Helplessly enchanted, and hoping to revise his life, he steals her." Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Bantam Books, 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY DAVIDSON on the title page. Goldy Bear's fiance, Detective Tom Schultz, discovers the Reverend Theodore Olson lying in a pool of bloodright before Tom and Goldy's wedding ceremony was about to begin, but when police arrive to investigate Olson's murder Schultz is nowhere to be found. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Bantam Books, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Like new. When her husband, Ben, drags her to the States for a gourmet cooking competition, the nervous and pregnant Ellie Haskell encounters mystery and murder in the American Midwest.

Softcover. Ashland OR, Blackstone Publishing, reprint, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, pictorial wraps. Ms. Moxie Mooney is Hollywood royalty--and she's in trouble. At the summons of his on-again, off-again lover, Fletch drops in on Moxie's film set, located in sunny Florida. If being called up for help by the box office beauty isn't work enough, Steve Peterman, Moxie's sleazy manager, is murdered while the cameras are rolling, and no one managed to see a thing. Despite the obvious lack of evidence, the rumor mill is still quick to churn up a potentially plausible suspect: Moxie. Realizing the need for a little R&R away from prying eyes, he hastily flies Moxie and her drunken father off to Key West. But trouble follows Fletch, in every sense of the word, and soon enough he's playing host to a full house of Hollywood's brightest.I n true Fletch style, he delves into the investigation, dodging police inquiry, betting on race horses, taking a leisurely sail, and talking up his elite houseguests to get the dirt and solve this perplexing murder.

Hardcover. London, Gollancz, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BOOKPLATE BY AUTHOR laid in. Clean copy. "The extraordinary tale of Edward Moon, stage conjuror and detective, his silent associate the Somnambulist, a mysterious and shadowy figure, The Sleeper, shrouded in inscrutable mystery and veiled behind half-truths and hinted-at destiny, and a devilish plot to bring the British Empire crashing down." (from the inside flap of the front cover).

Softcover. NY, Dell, 1st pbk., 1947, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Paperback, Dell #181. No marking, minor wear to covers, map on rear cover. Laminate peeling in rear. Pages light toning. Cover art by Gerald Gregg.

Hardcover. NY, The Literary Guild of America , BC Ed., Hardcover in a bright, lightly worn dust jacket. Book Club edition. The 2nd Tommy Hambledon adventure. When it was first published in 1941 in the U.S., A Toast to Tomorrow ( Pray Silence in Britain), along with its predecessor Drink to Yesterday, was heralded by famed critic Anthony Boucher as "a single long and magnificent novel of drama, intrigue and humor." Howard Haycraft, the dean of mystery historians, called the two books "superior" examples of the new wave of realistic spy-and- intrigue. Clean copy.

NY, Henry Holt , 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Raymond Chandler's incomparable private eye is back, pulled by a seductive young heiress into the most difficult and dangerous case of his career "It was one of those summer Tuesday afternoons when you begin to wonder if the earth has stopped revolving. The telephone on my desk had the look of something that knows it's being watched. Traffic trickled by in the street below, and there were a few pedestrians, too, men in hats going nowhere." So begins The Black-Eyed Blonde, a new novel featuring Philip Marlowe-yes, that Philip Marlowe. Channeling Raymond Chandler, Benjamin Black has brought Marlowe back to life for a new adventure on the mean streets of Bay City, California. It is the early 1950s, Marlowe is as restless and lonely as ever, and business is a little slow. Then a new client is shown in: young, beautiful, and expensively dressed, she wants Marlowe to find her former lover, a man named Nico Peterson. Marlowe sets off on his search, but almost immediately discovers that Peterson's disappearance is merely the first in a series of bewildering events. Soon he is tangling with one of Bay City's richest families and developing a singular appreciation for how far they will go to protect their fortune.

Hardcover. Roslyn NY, Walter J. Black, Book Club Ed., 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards. Three mystery novels in one volume. Detective Book Club Series. Clean, bright copy. No markings.

Hardcover. Roslyn NY, Walter J. Black, reprint, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, illustrated boards. Three complete unabridged mysteries in one volume. Detective Book Club Edition. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Sheriff Chick Charleston asks Jason Beard, a deputy, to investigate the murder of an oil company stenographer who secretly moonlighted as a prostitute.

Hardcover. London, Hutchinson, 1st thus, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. Here collected into a single omnibus volume is Len Deighton's s thrilling "Game, Set, and Match" trilogy. Following Bernard Samson, a middle aged and some WHat jaded intelligence officer working for the British Secret ServiceBerlin Game, first in the trilogy, featured in the ten best spy novels chosen by The Times in June 2020. This edition contains helpful maps of Berlin not included in the original versions. Due to bulky 857-pages DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Softcover. NY, Little, Brown & Company, reprint, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 237 pages. Clean, unread copy. Originally published in paperback by Fawcett Gold Medal Books, February 1965. To everyone he's every played dice with, Mitch Corley seems like the luckiest guy around. But in truth, Corley's fast hands are the only gift fate's ever given him. He's never held down a steady job, and when it comes to women, his luck might just be the worst of all -- his girlfriend and partner-in-crime Red would double-cross him in a heartbeat if she knew just how short on cash they really were. And if Red ever finds out about the wife Corley neglected to mention, there's a good chance that Corley might not survive the night. At first, Mitch was sure Texas would be the perfect place for him and Red to run their game -- there are players in nearly every back room and side-street across the state and here, the pockets run just a little deeper. But Corley forgot about one thing: Texans don't forgive easily. And there's nothing they hate more than a cheater. Texas by the Tail is a high-spirited, sexy, and ingeniously plotted novel of the grifting life, by a writer who is a virtual encyclopedia of the con, the scam, and the double cross.

Hardcover. NY, St Martin's Press, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. On Mardi Gras, civic leader and socialite Chauncey St. Amant is about to be crowned Rex, King of Carnival, when someone costumed as Dolly Parton shoots him dead from his best friend's balcony overlooking the parade. Is the killer aimless, promiscuous daughter Marcelle? Homosexual, mistreated son Henry? Helpless, alcoholic wife Bitty? Female rookie cop Skip Langdon uncovers a cast of intriguing characters, all as much Chauncey's victims as they are suspects in his murder, most of them inhabiting a "poison garden of corruption" and substance abuse where it's not just on Mardi Gras that everyone wears a mask. The first Skip Langdon Mystery. Clean copy. Edgar Award Wimmer, 1991.

Hardcover. NY, Scribner, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. McKinty's second novel is a brutal tale of revenge starring a young illegal immigrant from Ireland who chooses a criminal career in New York over unemployment in Belfast. Arriving in the city in the early 1990s, the antihero Michael Forsythe lands a spot as an enforcer for Irish mobster Darkey White. Though Forsythe at first keeps his hands relatively clean, he soon racks up a significant number of kills in skirmishes with rival crews as well as with Dominican gangs warring for control of the streets. An affair with his boss's girlfriend leads to a setup: he and his mates are trapped in a drug sting in Mexico and abandoned in a remote prison. "If someone grows up in the civil war of Belfast in the seventies and eighties, perhaps violence is his only form of meaningful expression," McKinty writes early in the novel, and the bulk of the story recounts Forsythe's grisly efforts to escape and avenge himself, including a stint with a Dominican group seeking to oust Darkey White. The pace is brisk and energetic, but Forsythe remains a cipher-a self-educated intellectual who listens to Tolstoy on tape during a stakeout but exhibits puzzlingly little interest in finding an alternative to the gun and the knife. Clean copy.

Softcover. Ann Arbor MI, University of Michigan Press, reprint, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 316 pages. The first known mystery written by an African-American, set in 1930s Harlem. Rudolph Fisher, one of the principal writers of the Harlem Renaissance, weaves an intricate story of a native African king, who, after receiving a degree from Harvard University, settles into Harlem in the 1930s. He becomes a "conjure-man," a fortune-teller, a mysterious figure who remains shrouded in darkness while his clients sit directly across from him, singly bathed in light. It is in this configuration that one of these seekers of the revelation of fate discovers he is speaking to a dead man. Thus a complex mystery begins, involving suspects and characters who are vividly and richly portrayed, and who dramatically illuminate for the reader a time, a place, and a people. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Orion, reprint, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 205 pages, Hardcover with dust jacket. A reissue of the auhor's first novel issued in 1986. SIGNED BY RANKIN on title page.

Hardcover. New York, Warner Books, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 312 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY MAYOR ON TITLE-PAGE. Minor wear to edges.

Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's Press, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 200 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR ON TITLE PAGE. Light edgewear and rubbing to pictorial dust jacket, else a very neat, tight copy, protected in clear mylar cover.

Hardcover. New York, Morrow, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 336 pages. Light edgewear to dust jacket, remainder mark on bottom edge. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Otto Penzler Books, reprint, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover reprint of author's first book originally in paperback. 256 pages. Black cloth cover, minor wear to edges. Dust jacket has wear and some fraying to top edges. Remainder line on bottom edge. Inside is nice and clean. A tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, St. Martin's Press, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 245 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Izzi's first book, a mystery set in Chicago.

Hardcover. New York, Mysterious Press, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 406 pages. Clean copy. The second novel in the L.A. Quartet from this master of noir that began with The Black Dahlia, followed by this second novel, then L.A. Confidential, and finally White Jazz. The Red Scare is in full bloom in the Los Angeles of 1950 in this dark tale of three men caught up in a massive web of ambition and deceit.

Hardcover. New York, Mysterious Press, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket, 229 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR ON TITLE PAGE. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. New York , Delacorte Press, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 386 pages. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page. White covers with grey band and silver lettering on spine. Dust jacket pristine. Comes with an acrylic cover for jacket.

Hardcover. New York , Random House , 1st, 1956, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 277 pages. Light edgewear, rubbing to bright dust jacket in protective mylar sleeve. Slight creases to pages 239-241. Clean, unmarked copy.

Hardcover. New York, Henry Holt, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 230 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY HIGGINS on title pg. Tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Crowell, 1st, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The third novel in Israel's mystery series featuring private detective B.F. Cage, this time investigating French professional basketball, drugs and the Paris underworld.

Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's Press , 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket.