mysteries mystery

Softcover. New York, Green Dragon Books, 1st, 1945, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, 124 pages. Paperback. Cover art by Hoffman. Light soil, wear and corner crease. First few pages separated from glued binding. Fragile.

Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's Press , 1st , 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright unclipped dust jacket.

Softcover. Cleveland OH, Arthur Westbrook Co., 1st US, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Paperback pulp detective mystery from about 1920. A sequel to the author's "The Coral Pin". Yellowing paper and a poor printing job, typical of these dime novels. An attractive color cover with light creasing, edgewear. Back cover missing.

Softcover. Greenwich, CT, Fawcett Gold Medal Publishing, 1st, 1958, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 159 pages. Paperback. Gold Metal Book #813. Cover art by Jerry Powell. Light creasing to paper wrappers.

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.

Softcover. NY, Pocket Books, 1st pbk, 1940, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Paperback, #69. Stated first printing, July 1940. VG to VG+ in black pictorial wraps with orange & white lettering & cover art picturing a suit with a knife in his chest. World War II spy story featuring Richard Hannay, basis for the film starring Robert Donat. Clean copy.

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. NY, Donald I. Fine, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The second mystery featuring maverick lawyer Steve Winslow. Clean, like new. This is the sequel to THE BAXTER TRUST, continuing the story of New Yorker Steve Winslow, a lawyer with only one client.

Hardcover. NY, Avon Books, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, pen note to owner on front flap. Very good, clean condition.

Hardcover. NY, St. Martin's Press, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Private detective Dwyer agrees to help Karen Lane, his high school crush, to recover a lost suitcase. Still lovely after 25 years, Karen is also greedy for money and status, but the disillusioned Dwyer takes the assignment, which puts his life in danger. When Karen dies suddenly, the detective goes after evidence that she has been murdered, and perhaps others with knowledge of the facts behind the death of their schoolmate, Sonny Howard, whose drowning has been officially declared a suicide. The tensions multiply, with Dwyer baiting a trap for criminals willing to buy the suitcase holding the source of blackmailer Karen's wealth. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Sherman French and Company, 1st, 1911, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, teal blue cloth covers with black and white stamping, top edge gilt, 200 pages. Ink name on front fly leaf, mild fading to spine, otherwise a clean, sound copy.

Hardcover. NY, Donald I. Fine, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. The first mystery featuring maverick lawyer Steve Winslow. Clean, like new. When out-of-work lawyer Steve Winslow enlists himself as a New York City cab driver to pay the bills, he thinks he's hit rock-bottom. That is until Sheila Benton, heir to a multimillion dollar fortune, finds his number in the yellow pages and calls upon Steve to defend her. Of course her case is only a minor one. It seems that a blackmailer was found in her apartment in an uncomfortable position -- with a knife in his back.

Softcover. NY, International Polygonics, reprint, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 365 pages. Known for her hard-boiled mystery plots combined with screwball comedy, Georgiana 'Craig' Rice was the author of twenty-three novels, six of them posthumous, numerous short stories, and some true crime pieces. In the 1940s she rivaled Agatha Christie in sales and was featured on the cover of Time Magazine in 1946. However, over the past sixty years she has fallen into relative obscurity. This mystery was first published in 1942. The murder of a show biz midget whom everybody feared and hated brings lots of plot twists and goofy suspects. Lots of surprises. Great fun. Clean, like new.

Softcover. NY, Pegasus Books, 2nd pr., 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 300 pages. In this classic crime novel, a panic-stricken young wife races against time to prove that her convicted husband did not murder his mistress. Writing in first person from the wife?s viewpoint, Woolrich evokes her love and anguish and, finally, desperation as she becomes an avenging angel in her attempt to rescue her husband from execution. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Ballantine Books, reprint, 1982, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, mass market paperback, 238 pages. When her husband is arrested for the murder of his supposed girl friend, a young woman struggles to prove him innocent and bring the true killer to justice. Name inside front cover, light wear to covers.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday Doran, 1st, 1928, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, bright orange cloth boards with black lettering.

Softcover. Berkeley CA, Black Lizard Books, reprint, 1989, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, mass market paperback, 171 pages. "No one writes a better crime novel than Charles Willeford" Elmore Leonard THE BLACK MASS OF BROTHER SPRINGER tells the story of Sam Springer, a drifter novelist who meets Jack Dover, the retiring Abbot of the Church of God's Flock. Dover's final official act is to ordain Springer and send him off to serve as pastor of an all-Black church in Jacksonville, Florida. Springer soon becomes entangled in the city's growing civil rights movement . . . and with the church deacon's earthy young wife, Merita. The Washington post calls this darkly humorous novel by Charles Willeford, one of the great crime writers of the 20th century, "his masterpiece." Light wear, book store stamp, price on first page, crease to rear cover. Otherwise clean.

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. NY, Random House, 1st, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, lightly worn dust jacket. The second and hardest-to-find book in Jackson's highly-praised mystery-crime series featuring Detroit Detective Sgt. Fang Mulheisen, this time dealing with the murders of five railroad trainmen in a spectacular freight train crash and a hijacked boxcar loaded with automatic rifles as well as several distractions such as a dozen Cuban revolutionaries, a greedy mob boss and a luscious Polish housewife. Light tan spotting area to front fly leaf and front board. Otherwise clean.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 2nd pr., 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 270 pages. The final Lew Archer mystery, in which the detective investigates a missing painting and uncovers buried secrets that echo the violence of the past. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, Doran and Co. Crime Club, 1st, 1930, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Poor, Hardcover in black cloth with red stamping. Poor dust jacket with chunks gone from front panel and spine. A group of jewel collectors and dealers gather in the Adirondacks to bid on the mysterious Blue Rajah diamond. Naturally, a murder ensues.

Hardcover. NY, Scribner, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. SIGNED BY DUNNING on title page. Cliff Janeway, a book dealer, agrees to collect a woman who has skipped bail in Seattle. But when he arrives, he realizes he's been employed to find a rare edition of "The Raven". He also learns that those who are known to have owned copies of the book have met untimely deaths. The second book in the Cliff Janeway series. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Scribner, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. When wealthy horse trainer H. R. Geiger dies, Denver bookman Cliff Janeway encounters the legacy of the man's wife, Candice, a true bookwoman who left behind an assortment of rare first-edition children's books. Sent to assess the collection, Janeway soon finds that several titles are missing, replaced by cheap reprints -- while other hugely expensive pieces remain. Why would a thief take one priceless book and leave an equally valuable volume on the shelf? Suspecting foul play, Janeway follows the trail of Candice's shadowy past to California's Golden Gate and Santa Anita racetracks, where he signs on as a racehorse hot walker. Eavesdropping on the chatter among the hands, he doesn't like what he hears. And when he goes to the house where Candice died to look for answers, Janeway finds much more than he bargained for.

Hardcover. NY, Viking Press, 1st, 1982, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. A captive British Intelligence Agent, after he is freed in a prisoner exchange, goes after the ones that betrayed him.