A collection of suspense stories, puzzle stories, whodunits and tricky whydunits involving police detectives, private eyes, talented and sometimes lucky amateurs, armchair detectives, and ethnic detectives

Surrounded by the bandit horde of smooth Ayala and the lustful “Wolf,” the unarmed Americans were helpless — save for Dan Harder’s bare hands

Unfettered, unfiltered, unorthodox Bertha Cool and Donald Lam have four of the least likely and most popular private eyes in the business — and they’ve never been in sharper focus! It’s always exciting when Erle Stanley Gardner assumes his favorite pseudonym of A. A. Fair and lets her rip! This new mystery novel is exhibit A proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that Bertha Cool and Donald Lam are among the most ingenious and inventive characters in mystery fiction. Here is all the old sweet-and-sour, plus the catchiest plot ever dissected by the intrepid twosome. Bertha is at her toughest and funniest, and Donald is at top form knowing and debonair. Beware the Curves goes into high on page one and stays there through the fastest and most intriguing mystery A. A. Fair has ever created

A beautiful young woman seeks the help of the world-famous lawyer to free her frail, wealthy uncle from the clutches of a conniving half brother. But the police believe she may be a murderer. Could they be right? Or will Perry Mason and his clever assistants, Paul Drake and Della Street be able to prove her innocence?

A dynamic young businesswoman is in danger of losing control of her flower shop, and someone sends poisoned bonbons to a nightclub hostess. Mason must reacquire some stock and defend the businesswoman

Erle Stanley Gardner — creator of Perry Mason — was the bestselling author of detective fiction of all time. Many of his best early short novels originally appeared in the famous Black Mask magazine alongside Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Gardner’s most enduring hero was Ed Jenkins, also known as “the Phantom Crook.” So enduring was he that when the author considered discontinuing the exploits of this intrepid man, his fans overwhelmingly succeeded in ensuring his longevity. Working beyond the law, pursued by police and criminals, Jenkins’ undesired notoriety made him a prize target for blackmail, coercion and imprisonment. But those who tried to force his hand never knew the man he could be when his back was to the wall, fighting. This first ever collection of Ed Jenkins short novels represents the most thrilling adventures of Erle Stanley Gardner’s contribution to the hard-boiled detective genre

No suspense collection is complete without this anthology. Originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, the stories in this volume represent many of the biggest names in detective and suspense fiction: Ellery Queen, Harold Q. Masur, Celia Fremlin, Jack Ritchie, Patricia Highsmith and Bill Pronzini are only a few of the prize-winning authors in this amazing volume

a book to remember... In this book you will investigate crime with such Famous Detectives as Perry Mason Nero Wolfe Ellery Queen and read stories of detection and suspense by such Famous Mystery Writers as Agatha Christie John Dickson Carr George Harmon Coxe Charlotte Armstrong Hugh Pentecost and be surprised at tales of mystery and crime by such Famous Literary Figures as W. Somerset Maugham Ben Hecht, John Van Druten A book to remember, a book to read and reread — a book to treasure and keep permanently in your library

4 novelets and 3 short stories by the creator of PERRY MASON and the best-selling American mystery writer of all time

Erle Stanley Gardner, the creator of Perry Mason, was one of the leading writers for Black Mask, the legendary hard-boiled crime fiction magazine. Although Perry Mason never appeared in its pages, Black Mask in the early 1930s published a series of six short novels by Erie Stanley Gardner starring a crusading lawyer named Ken Corning who fought against injustice in a corrupt city Representing clients framed by crooked police arid bribed city officials, Ken Corning protected the rights of the underdog while relentlessly pursuing the guilty through a maze of violent subterfuge and sinister intrigue. Now, for the first time, all six Ken Corning short novels are collected in book form in Honest Money. These are good tight mysteries with lots of action — the stuff that made Erie Stanley Gardner justly famous. As a collection, they rank right up there with both Dead Men’s Letters and The Blonde in Lower Six

First came Perry Mason... then Douglas Selby the “D.A.”... and now TERRY CLANE, a new sleuth from America. Jacob Mandra had a million-dollar apartment on the fringe of Chinatown — and a reputation. Early one morning they found him dead. And a few hours later Terry Clane found himself in the District Attorney’s office — by request. Then the District Attorney began asking strange questions that Terry Clane didn’t care to answer, and when Terry finally sailed out of the D.A.’s office he realized that he and some of his friends were involved in the Mandra murder — up to their necks. But he was a brilliant young lawyer, had lived in the Far East, and knew how to apply Oriental wisdom to Occidental problems. Steeped in Chinese lore, he took life fatalistically and as a grand adventure. Terry Clane is one of the most exciting and successful characters Mr. Gardner has created. Using extraordinary methods to solve an extraordinary murder, he beats the D. A. to the punch in a mystery that is filled with surprise, cunning, and excitement. Mr. Gardner’s Chinatown background, incidentally, is authentic, and his plot is, as usual, as fast-moving and as tightly woven as any you will find in the galaxy of detective fiction

Gold is the pay dirt in all these rip-roaring western stories, more of Erle Stanley Gardner’s Whispering Sands series with their unique desert setting. Again the master storyteller features his rugged western hero, the philosophical prospector Bob Zane. In the title story Zane is true to form when he gets a spoiled rich kid to behave like a man and beat out claim jumpers in the desert. Men learn fast out there, or die, and Zane moves faster than any of them, rescuing a pretty hostage from Yaqui Indians, outwitting murderous gangsters in the Painted Desert, avoiding death from poisonous alkali springs, and hunting lost gold in Death Valley. Around camp at night, the sand whispers on the wind and the philosopher in Zane may start talking — but he always keeps his hand on his gun. The stories move at the headlong pace for which all Gardner adventures are famous, and Zane himself is an exceptional character who often reveals ideas that are clearly Gardner’s own about life, justice, and the debatable values of civilization. Says Zane: “The reason men don’t know the law of life is because they’re afraid to look Eternity in the face. Out in the desert they have to look at Eternity. It’s on all sides of them; they can’t turn their eyes away. That’s the spell of the desert.”

Otto Penzler rounds up the most cunning, ruthless, criminals in mystery fiction. The best mysteries — whether detective, historical, police procedural, cozy, or comedy-have one thing in common: a memorable culprit. For all the heroes in earnest pursuit, there are malefactors on the loose, determined to outfox their efforts and sow trouble in their wake. These are the rogues and villains who haunt our imaginations, but they often have more in common with their heroic counterparts than we might expect (and, as we shall see, some even moonlight as detectives or do-gooders themselves). The seventy-two handpicked stories in this collection introduce us to the miscreants who have schemed and slashed their way through the mystery canon over the past hundred and fifty years, captivating and confounding readers in the process. MEET DELINQUENT PSYCHES OF ALL STRIPES, INCLUDING gentleman thieves, calculating crooks, fearsome body snatchers, masters of disguise, morally-challenged lawyers, deceitful doctors, heinous hit men. charismatic con men, amoral adventurers, supernatural suspects, deviant detectives, vile villainesses, and cold-blooded killers IN UNFORGETTABLE TALES BY Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, Washington Irving, Jack London, L. T. Meade, 0. Henry, Sinclair Lewis, Edgar Wallace, Leslie Charteris, Erle Stanley Gardner, Edward 0. Hoch, David Morrell, Loren D. Estleman, and countless others

Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of Perry Mason and the world’s bestselling mystery writer, wrote for the leading magazines such as Argosy and Black Mask alongside Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Following the success of Dead Mens Letters featuring the exploits of Gardner s most enduring pre-Perry Mason hero Ed Jenkins — also known as “The Phantom Crook” — this collection continues with the intrepid man caring less for the letter of the law than for what he doggedly believes to be right. But to achieve his ends, Jenkins is forced to confront police and criminals while avoiding the pitfalls of blackmail, coercion and incarceration. In The Blonde in Lower Six, a full length novel, and three other short novels contained in this volume, Ed Jenkins still remains his own man to those who try to force his hand. The pre-Perry Mason Erle Stanley Gardner was one of the most popular authors of his day and the accounts of Ed Jenkins were among his very best early work. The Ed Jenkins sagas, collected in one volume for the first time, represent the author s most thrilling adventures in the hard-boiled genre

It was beautiful bait: two lovely thousand-dollar bills and a torn half of a ten-thousand-dollar note. Perry Mason swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker. They had gone to a lot of trouble. They had Mason’s private number, woke him up and persuaded him to meet them at his office in the middle of the night. There he found a man and a girl; a man who knew exactly what he wanted but wouldn’t explain; a girl who wore a man’s overcoat, a mask — and wouldn’t speak. It was the girl who kept the other half of the ten-grand note. When and if they needed Perry Mason he’d get her half. Not until then would he know who his client was. Perry suspected he was being played for a sucker, but he was too interested to swim away. The next morning, he felt the hook. It was murder, a murder obviously linked to his mysterious visitors. And the barb on the hook was that Perry couldn’t discover who his client was or what he was supposed to do. Della Street’s mocking jibes were hard to take. A racing Gardner story full of action, suspense and one of the most original plots Gardner has ever created

“I count eight,” said Perry Mason, meaning brunettes. They were almost identical brunettes, at that, all standing at consecutive corners on the south side of the street, and they added up to such a beautiful dark mystery that even Perry Mason, famous connoisseur of fine murders that he is, was so fascinated he almost began a new career — behind bars. Mathematically Eva Martell was perfect: her height was five feet four and one-half inches, her weight one hundred and eleven, her waist twenty-four, her bust thirty-two. Because of these dimensions, curiously enough, she attracted dead bodies... She has also attracted one of Gardner’s top voltage plots, the kind that keeps Perry Mason and Della Street sizzling around in bizarre clues, counter clues and extra-legal activities. The kind that keeps Gardner readers up till dawn convinced that at last they are going to out-mastermind him. Gardner knows how to make his characters come to life. He also knows how to kill them off under completely baffling circumstances. He doesn’t believe in tricking his readers; it might be dangerous. So he gives you all the evidence with machine- gun rapidity — and lets you trick yourself. Even the most successful lawyers and criminologists come to a bad end the minute they tangle with a Gardner plot. Which is what makes him so successful. With this thought in mind we leave you, on the brink of one more Perry Mason mystery that anyone can figure out — wrong

GUN OVERBOARD When Matilda Benson solicits the help of Perry Mason, her request seems simple enough: cruise to a gambling ship moored just beyond the twelve-mile limit and buy back the IOUs signed by Miss Benson's niece. But after Mason reaches the floating casino, he discovers problems aplenty--most notably the ship's owner with a bullet hole through his head. Strangely enough, Matilda and her niece are also on board that night . . . when someone tosses a gun over the railing. Does Perry Mason's client have something to hide? With the support of his trusty secretary, Della Street, and the ever-helpful Paul Drake, Mason dives into an ocean of menace

The new Perry Mason murder mystery has ...terrible pace... ...stirring court-room drams... ...a duck that can’t swims... John L. Witherspoon was accustomed to having — and paying — his way. There was a definite reason why he didn’t approve his daughter Lois’ love affair, and he hired Perry Mason to break it up. If Mason would investigate an 18-year-old murder, Witherspoon was sure the results would change his daughter’s mind. Perry took the job because several things about the old case intrigued him. And because he had a hunch that the answer to it might save Lois’ happiness. Mason, Delia Street and Paul Drake went to El Templo, Witherspoon’s great California ranch; they went into action at once, and soon they smoked out a string of crooked plots, brought several shadowy figures into too strong a light, and ran plump into murder-up-to-date with Mason caught in the middle

The receptionist told Perry Mason there were two men waiting in the outer office; one of them looked like a prosperous banker, the other a tramp. One wanted to see him about some corporation law, and the other had a damage claim. So Mason said, “I’ll see the tramp. Tell the banker I can’t be bothered with corporation law.” But it turned out it was the tramp who wanted to sec him about corporation law. And that, in turn, merged into the story of one of the famous Lost Mines of the desert region of Southern California; of a sinewy little desert prospector and his partner, who had struck it rich, “housed-up” and, losing his health, had forsaken the big red-tiled mansion in the fashionable district of San Roberto to spread his sleeping bag out in the cactus garden at the far corner of the grounds. And finally there was the mysterious drowsy mosquito — was it a harbinger of death? These characters, together with the lure of a fabulously rich gold deposit, discovered more than half a century ago, then lost, and lying untouched year after year, waiting only for chance and the ingenuity of Perry Mason to bring it back into the limelight, make for a fast moving, baffling Perry Mason yarn

A bright, shiny tin can in a dark, cobwebby corner of the cellar preserve shelf — unlabelled and empty! Mrs. Gentrie, the meticulous hose-wife, was annoyed but not too upset. Her sister-in-law Rebecca was exited and suspicious. Delman Steele, their new young boarder, was quietly interested... Then things began to happen. A man and his housekeeper were found missing from the house next door. Willful old Elston Karr, who used to run guns up the Yangtze and was now confined to a Wheel-chair in the flat above the missing man’s apartment, retained Mason to protect him from — well, Mason wasn’t quite sure himself. But his mind began to work fast. Then Mason heard about the empty tin can. It interested him — a lot. All our old friends are here, Della Street, Paul Drake, Lieutenant Tragg, in a mystery so fast and exiting that it has been called “even better than Gardner.”

Don’t look now — but there’s a mystery behind those funs. And there’s a horse behind that mystery... Take it from PERRY MASON and DELLA STREET, you’re about to witness the finest display of legal fireworks of the year — with Perry an accomplice in murder. It all starts quietly enough — with two cars side-swiping each other in the middle of the desert. And in the trunk of one of them, an indent jalopy, Perry Mason finds a fan-dancer’s wardrobe. (Item: 2 fans; Item: 1 pair of dancing shoes). The fans lead to one of the most beautiful clients Perry Mason has ever had... and to a body. A body on the end of a Japanese sword... They also lead to a beautiful mental teaser for you, with Gardner dropping his clues as fast as you can pick them — or his book — up. Here it is, a real legal twister!

Goldfish — a golddigger — and a valuable secret formula net Perry Mason the most baffling case of his career — and he nearly gets caught on his own hook... Humorless Harrington Faulkner was fit to be tied. That golddigger was making preposterous demands — but if he didn’t pay, his goldfish would die. And they were special goldfish — he’d developed the strain himself — Veil Tail Moor Telescopes, they were, the ‘fish of death’... Perry Mason thought he was a crank with a taller fish story than usual. And then the fish disappeared and a body was found on the bathroom floor — beside a shattered goldfish bowl... From then on Della Street and Perry Mason are in the case up to their necks, along with: SALLY MADISON: a beautiful girl with model proportions, definitely not as good as gold... TOM GRIDLEY: a chemist and an idealist — the inventor of formulas and trouble for Sally... JANE FAULKNER: the second Mrs. Faulkner, who turns out to be not as dumb as she looks... ELMER CARSON: cagey co-owner of Faulkner’s business with a proprietary interest in other things... GENEVIEVE FAULKNER: the first Mrs. Faulkner and the reason Harrington Faulkner was afraid of divorces... WILFRED DIXON: her business counsellor who knew how to bluff but didn’t like to be called... JAMES STAUNTON: a gentleman who underwrites more than insurance

This sparkling mystery novel reveals a sensational new discovery in the field of scientific criminal investigation... It all began with an auction. If Perry Mason hadn’t made a casual, five-dollar bid he wouldn’t have bought the personal effects of Helen Cadmus, missing secretary presumed a suicide... If the personal effects hadn’t turned out to be diaries and a photograph album, Benjamin Addicks wouldn’t have come into the picture... If Benjamin Addicks hadn’t been an eccentric millionaire, he wouldn’t have been conducting psychological experiments on gorillas... And that brings us to the most spine-chilling scene ever encountered in a Gardner mystery: Perry Mason creeping through a silent house, stalked by A MURDEROUS, GRINNING GORILLA!

A shot... A splash... A shout... and Perry Mason finds himself treading the deepest water of his career. This time, he nearly goes wider... Things were tense aboard Parker Benton’s yacht. About the only thing the group had in common was the bad weather and a highly controversial business proposition. When that subject came up, tempers came out — and in no time at all the spine-chilling cry “Man O-ver-boar-r-d” cut through the fog

It started as the case of the disappearing driver. Stephane Olger was hitchhiking to Los Angeles when the accident happened. When it was over she was found unconscious behind the wheel — alone. There was a manslaughter charge against her

When a murdered man is found in the home of shady insurance adjuster Walter Prescott, a simple divorce case turns into a courtroom puzzler, as Perry Mason follows the clues to catch a killer

Perry Mason is presented with a strange bag of tricks in THE CASE OF THE MISCHIEVOUS DOLL. Dorrie Ambler was a beauty. She also proved to be one of the most startling clients in Mason’s career — she insisted that he carefully inspect her appendectomy scar. Perry thought this sort of thing was much more in Paul Drake’s line — and indeed, Paul was delighted to oblige... But later, when Dorrie proceeded to make history — and the headlines — at the International Airport, both Mason and Drake realized that any future scars would he theirs battle stars, inflicted by Lt. Tragg and Hamilton Berger

Perry Mason, world-famous lawyer and sleuth, keeps a lady in mink under wraps in... Perry Mason and Della Street were in the middle of a rare steak when the mink coat appeared in the hands of a puzzled restaurant proprietor. The coat belonged, he said, to a waitress who had just taken it on the him... and he didn’t mean food. Now what to do with the coat? Perry Mason examined the mink he decided there was more than a moth-eaten patch to meet the eye — particularly when the cops arrived

A dazzling new Perry Mason mystery in which a black eye, a bewildered cabby, a pile of junk and a body beautiful add up to one of the most intricate puzzles of Mason’s career. It started with a body. The body was alive, female, seductive, and Mrs. Sybil Harlan was convinced that it was taking her husband right out from under her eyes. Mason is in rare form as he tackles one of the most obscure and tantalizing courtroom problems he has ever faced

An exceedingly profane green parrot, with wicked glittering eyes and a genius for saying the wrong thing... A pretty (if rather prim) young librarian with a curious interest in dangerous weapons... An eccentric multi-millionaire, with a penchant for books, trailers and birds... An apparently un-traceable murder, committed with a double-barreled derringer, obsolete in design but deadly in efficiency... These, and some other bizarre details, which we won’t reveal, plunge Perry Mason and Della Street up to their necks in one of the most exciting mysteries that Erie Stanley Gardner has ever written!

Horace Warren pays five hundred dollars to have Perry Mason attend a buffet dinner to observe his guests. He also wants Mason to investigate a fingerprint and suspects his wife is being blackmailed. Mrs Warren's mysterious past may hold the clues

The last of the Perry Mason mysteries features the headlong pace, wealth of red herrings, and sizzling courtroom scene characterizing the best of Gardner. There was something phony about the girl her cheap coat didn’t go with her smartly tailored suit, her hair-do didn’t go with her beautifully kept hands — and her face didn’t go with her story. It didn’t take Mason long to figure out that this so-called Sylvia Farr was no poor little girl from the country in search of her missing sister, but was indeed sister Mae herself — a girl in trouble of some sort, deep trouble. So Perry went to bat and soon found himself in a hot ball game — one called murder

The client had an extraordinary air of assurance about her — one could almost say a queenly air. There was no doubt that she was in some sort of jam, which had started years before when she had won a beauty contest. The question was, why was she trying to hide what had happened since — and who was trying to expose it? Perry Mason was intrigued, and soon found himself unraveling a past that led straight to a trial for murder. Erle Stanley Gardner is the world’s best-selling mystery writer for reasons this fast-paced story makes abundantly clear

Here’s a PERRY MASON story, with a murder hinging on as ingenious a trick as has appeared in a mystery in a long time, and containing some of the most exiting courtroom scenes Erle Stanley Gardner has even written. It’s about: Alden E. Leeds, millionaire and black sheep of the family, about to the torn limb from limb by a pack of gold-greedy relatives; Phyllis, old man Leeds’s niece and business manager; Ned Barkler, once his partner in Klondike days; L. C. Conway, who sold dice almost anyone could roll; blonde, hard Marcia Whittaker, who seemed to have said that all she wanted was a cozy little home; and, of course, wily Perry Mason, Della Street, his secretary, and lanky Paul Drake, the detective. Readers will find here the usual swift pace and ingenuity, the unexpected twists and surprises that have made Erle Stanley Gardner the most popular detective-store writer in America

It all began enough when, to get out of a shower, Della — Perry Mason’s “girl Friday” — dragger the lawyer-sleuth into a department store restaurant for tea. That was where they first saw Mrs. Sarah Breel and her niece, Virginia Trent. They where in a spot too, with the store detective on Mrs. Breel’s trail, and even Virginia admitting her aunt was a kleptomaniac. It all seemed so strange, naturally Mason got interested. And Della Street, trained by years of experience to read the how’s moods, realized he didn’t go far just on theory... that if he appeared to see more than met the eye, his perception was based on scene point in practical psychology. From this odd beginning, the vagaries of a whimsical fate catapult Perry mason into the case of the missing diamonds, the homey woman who didn’t look like a shoplifter, the methodical drunk, the thick reddish stain on a woman’s kid shoe, and beautiful Lone Bedford. No one knew much about her, but all the men wanted to know more — including Perry Mason!

When a stuttering bishop comes to Perry Mason's office for help, Mason becomes involved in a battle of wills with a woman and the long-lost daughter she believes to be a fraud. The key to the puzzle lies in the bishop--who, unfortunately, has disappeared

Perry Mason has been batting around the Orient, taking a well-earned vacation. (Yes, Della Street is along.) We pick up on his way to the roar of the city, the jangle of telephones, the blast of automobile horns, to clients who lie to him and yet expect him to stand behind them. And Perry can hardly wait to get back! He doesn’t have to wait to get home, however, for excitement to start. Just out of Honolulu, a fellow passenger comes to him with a very strange story. Mason has already noticed the party of three: the middle-aged man with the piercing gray eyes, the slender, graceful woman, and the daughter who looks so much like a famous movie actress. Now beside the ship’s rail, he listens to the queer tale a woman tells in a voice of nervous hysteria. Until two months before she was known as Mrs. Moar. But overnight her husband — and so we have: The Case of the Substitute Face

Before he created Perry Mason, Erle Stanley Gardner (1889–1970) was one of the most popular writers for the mystery and adventure pulp magazines, with their sensational covers, two-fisted heroes, and non-stop action. Among his toughest characters was Sidney Zoom, wealthy yacht-owner who prowls at night to help the downtrodden in the days of the Great Depression. “The weak and the helpless found in him a haven of refuge, a gigantic wall of strength. The oppressor found in him a grim enemy, tireless uncompromising, letting no man-made law stand between him and his prey.” “His soul craved combat,” Gardner writes, “as the soul of many men craves strong drink.” The Casebook of Sidney Zoom is the first book-collection of the Zoom stories, and they show Gardner’s pulp style at it hard-hitting best

Take two luscious redheads... add green-eyed blonde, mysterious burglary, and a bewildered fiancée... stir in a good measure of that unscrupulous attorney Alphonse Baker Carr... season with murder, and no wonder... “You’ve got to break an egg to make an omelet,” said Doug Selby, D.A. of Madison County, and he only hoped it would be one that old A. B. C. couldn’t digest. Plenty was on the fire, and Selby knew the only way to solve the case and save his reputation was to act faster than he ever had before... That was when he went to call on A. B. C. Sylvia Martin and Sheriff Rex Brandon do yeoman service as Doug smashes through to bring his most perplexing case to a triumphant conclusion

When we found Perry Mason, we called SEVEN! When we met the “D.A.” — Douglas Selby — we shouted ELEVEN! They’re both naturals — and though Perry Mason does not take part in this novel, it marks the appearance of Erle Stanley Gardner’s second famous mystery-story character — the fighting young D.A. of Madison City! The little clergyman had died — peacefully — in bed in the Madison Hotel. An overdose of sleeping powder! “Now listen, Doug, this is just a natural death, see?” the hotel proprietor said anxiously. But Douglas Selby, District Attorney, just elected on a reform ticket, suspected it was more than that, and sent for the clergyman’s wife. She said the dead man was not her husband — then Selby knew definitely something was wrong. So Doug found himself faced not only with a wily murderer, but with virulence from a hostile press and reluctant witnesses as well. Who was the little clergyman — why was he murdered — by whom? The fighting D.A. at last finds out, through methods entirely different from Perry Mason’s. But the Gardner technique, the pace and the excitement that have endeared Mason to thousands, are present every minute in this story of Douglas Selby

Crippen & Landru is proud to publish a collection of never previously reprinted stories from pulps, slicks and digests by Erle Stanley Gardner (1889–1970) the great creator of Perry Mason. Here we meet such Gardner characters as Snowy Shane, an unorthodox P.I.; Slicker Williams, an ex-convict who uses the tricks of crookery to rescue a damsel in distress; Major Copely Brane, a freelance diplomat; George Brokay, wealthy man-about-town, who becomes a gentleman burglar — with unanticipated results; and others who show Gardner’s mastery of unusual situations, lighting-paced prose, and ingenious gimmicks and plot twists

Debonair, quick-witted, and wealthy, he enjoyed the perks of his fortune, checking the newspapers in the comfort of his penthouse apartment for new burglaries and robberies to solve, and from which he could reclaim the stolen treasures. He has a valet, Beaver, nicknamed “Scuttle” by Leith, who is a secret plant of Sergeant Arthur Ackley. Leith, of course, is aware that his manservant is an undercover operative, using that knowledge to plant misinformation to frustrate the policeman again and again

Hillerman, author of the Joe Leaphorn mysteries, and Herbert, editor of The Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing, trace this short-story genre from its beginnings in the hands of Edgar Allen Poe through its development by the likes of Erle Stanley Gardner, Mary Roberts Rinehart and Anthony Boucher to its current practice by such masters as Marcia Muller. Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," which established a great many of the whodunit conventions, is indispensable to such an overview. Raymond Chandler's "I'll be Waiting" emits a doom-laden atmosphere right from the first line; William Faulkner shows unexpected economy of language?and a transparent plot?in "An Error in Chemistry." Ed McBain scores high marks in "Small Homicide," in which the tiny details of a baby's untimely death resonate uncomfortably. As represented in this competent, unstartling collection, Linda Barnes ("Lucky Penny") easily outsasses Sue Grafton ("The Parker Shotgun"). Hillerman makes a solid appearance with "Chee's Witch," and in "Benny's Space" Muller captures the full subtle force of her novel-length vision

Comely hula dancers go “around the island,” lanky cowboys go around the town, and the police go round and round, when Lester Leith interests himself in the mystifying case of the drugged guard

The day she told her husband he could go his own way, were it blonde or brunette, she became a happy woman. Freed from the duty of preserving a contour that would keep Mr. Cool home nights, she gave up dieting, and serenely watched her figure expand to balloon-like proportions. Inside, she was hard as nails, shrewd and unscrupulous, stingy, avaricious. She handled cases no decent agency would touch. She hired Donald Lam for two reasons he hod brains, and she knew he needed a job so badly that she could get him for practically nothing. She watched his expense account like a vulture and did her best to deduct legitimate expenses from his already meager salary. But deep inside that mountain of flesh must have been a heart, for in spite of these instincts she developed an affectionate, almost solicitous, loyalty for Donald. You’ll like Bertha Cool. She is lusty and gusty and has personality. Every runt gets pushed around Donald Lam was no exception. The difference between him and most runts was that the harder you pushed the faster Donald came back. He discovered early in life that his hands weren’t much use to him in a fight, so he used his head. And there was nothing soft about Donald’s head. He used his mind and trained it mercilessly. Sometimes it got him into trouble because he was just a little too far ahead of the other fellow. Nor was Donald too ethical. He’d learned that if nature had made you pint size, it was easier to trip a man up than knock him down. Some people called Donald “poison.” There was only one thing about him that worried Bertha Cool. She thought he was too susceptible to women. Maybe he was. There was no doubt that women made fools of themselves over Donald. Bertha didn’t understand why but she didn’t mind. Donald’s girlfriends were pretty useful

A new Gardner character — Bill Eldon! These two CLUE stories — each with a crime so calculated, so cold-blooded, that it came near being perfect — will establish human, kindly Sheriff Eldon as a dangerous rival for Perry Mason and Doug Selby. Rockville’s good-hearted, aging Sheriff was slowing up — or so some thought — and the crowd in the courthouse was out to get him. Rank inefficiency, they said, the way he boasts about studying people’s reactions more than material evidence. But Bill Eldon, patient under fire, proved the value of his method... The first clue... THE CLUE OF THE RUNAWAY BLONDE Sam Beckett found her body, lying face down in a plowed field, not far from the mansion where Marvin Higbee had lived and died, leaving his cunningly gathered wealth to a pack of quarrelsome relatives. She was beautiful — and a stranger. And there were no tracks in the soft earth around her, neither her own nor her murderer’s... A crime to cudgel with, this. But Sheriff Bill Eldon, moving slowly, relentlessly, found the answer — an answer that had the town reeling. Serialized as “Clues Don’t Count” in Country Gentleman, 1945. The second clue... THE CLUE OF THE HUNGRY HORSE When they found the body, the head caved in by the hoof of a restive mare, they identified it as Lorraine Calhoun. An accident, Calhoun said — and the district attorney agreed — a regrettable accident, nothing more. But Bill Eldon thought it was murder... And calmly untangling the skeins of human deception, he found a murderer masked by a sanctimonious face. Here are two fast-moving mysteries in one package. Here are shrewdly contrived plots, suspense, and a vital new investigator. Truly, Gardner at his customary best