One chance in 7,000,000 of getting away! Four hours to make good their escape! She had not the courage to go without him. He cannot go until he finds the person who committed the murder which can so “circumstantially” be traced to his door. And that person was one of 7,000,000 in New York City. Bricky, the small town girl, meets Quinn, a boy from her own Iowa town, a day too late. The long arm of coincidence brings them happily together — two lost “little” people in the vast city. The long arm of retribution reaches out to separate them forever. When Quinn, at Bricky’s behest, so that as free people they can take the morning bus back to Iowa, goes to return some money he has just stolen, he finds a dead man in the house. They spend the rest of the night finding the murderer. If they don’t the police will find Quinn! The story of the night’s adventure is fast moving and tense, building constantly to almost unbearable excitement

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

The author of Phantom Lady and Deadline at Dawn, both made into smash motion picture hits, presents here a superb collection of spine-chillers, each a polished example of the art of detection, in which Mr. Irish again proves his unique ability to let the reader share the agony of the hunted and the terror of the doomed. The themes range from the gory case of Ginger, the ten-cents-a-dance girl, heroine of the title story, to the trick which a light in a window played on a soldier who had faith that his girl would be waiting for him when he came home. Grim humor runs through some of the tales, taut suspense through them all; for William Irish is a master of the sinister and the macabre, and in a class by himself in the psychological horror story. The Dancing Detective represents him at his varied best

Anything can happen — and usually does — when a lying murderer tells the truth!

What happens when a decent, moral man falls under the baneful spell of a thoroughly depraved, delectable woman? A top mystery writer, in his first novel, traces the downward course of respectable Louis Durand as he tumbles to his ultimate degraded hell — an unforgettable story of suspense, terror, and fascination. This is the story of a man betrayed by his own loneliness and desire for romance. From the romantic beginning to the tragic, logical end, with subtle punishments and cumulative sins between, Louis Durand is trapped by his own passion. Completely credible is the power which his captivating, evil wife holds over him. From the moment Bonnie Castle arrives in New Orleans — with murder and deception lying just behind her guileless gaze and little-girl beauty — Louis Durand is a doomed man. His happiness is based upon a quicksand which soon gives way beneath him. Dragged down by his connivance in crime, tortured by his own doubts, Durand blindly follows his will-o’-the-wisp wife on the path that leads to murder, personal ruin, and final agony. Waltz into Darkness captures the magnolia-scented charm of New Orleans in the 1880’s, a nostalgic “period piece” of the days when ladies wore bustles and elaborate gowns, never smoked, never crossed their legs, rarely showed their ankles — and were capable of evil which is of no time or place. Filled with memorable scenes, peopled with strongly knit characters, expertly constructed, Waltz into Darkness will keep the reader on the edge of his chair to its final climax