In his spirited Introduction to a topnotch collection of Great American Detective Stories, Anthony Boucher says: “The detective short story belongs to us. It started in America and it started off magnificently. In five stories, Edgar Allan Poe created the form and almost all its possible variants... There are as many kinds of detective short stories as there are of detective novels — and you’ll find most of them here, from the ethical poetry of Melville Davisson Post to the brash foolery of Frank Gruber.” A glance at some of the titles of the stories included confirms Boucher’s modest words and guarantees that you’ll find plenty of good reading here

It’s a cinch that when there’s, trouble brewing, Johnny Fletcher and Sam Cragg will be mixed up in it. Trouble blew in with the hot wind of Death Valley the night the stranger with a bullet hole in his chest died at their feet on the lonely highway. And trouble followed them to Las Vegas — blonde trouble, cop trouble and murder. Johnny and Sam, no strangers to violence, determined to find out who shot the unknown man. Impoverished, but inexhaustible they arrived in Las Vegas with a purple gambling check, a match pack and a deck of cards as the only clues to his identity. Their curiosity was soon rewarded — with a right to the jaw. THE HONEST DEALER is Frank Gruber’s latest mystery. It is a story of one of America’s most famous gambling towns — the crazy pattern of its nights and days — its glitter and godlessness. Put Johnny Fletcher and Sam Cragg in this setting and you’ve got a volcanic eruption and a swell story

Johnny Fletcher and Sam Cragg have faced many a tough problem in their lives, but never one so dismal as the one they come up against now. Circumstances beyond their control (and for once, beyond their ability to twist, sidestep, or disregard) force the boys either to take jobs in order to cat or to sit out a Chicago winter on a park bench. So, fighting every inch of the way, they become the employees of “the Leather Duke,” Chicago’s biggest operator in the leather business. Most leather workers grind drearily along for years with nothing to break the monotony. Not so Johnny and Sam. Before they’ve been there half a day, Sam finds a corpse where he should have found a barrel of leather counters. Then the uproar begins. Whether they’re fighting in poolrooms in Little Italy, mixing it up at Turnverein dances, or merely adding a fine new lustre to their well-developed art of deadbeating, these two lads are at it every minute. Johnny Fletcher fans will find this full of excitement. So will everybody else

Excursions and alarms! Johnny Fletcher (some might call him a con man) and Sam Gragg (he calls himself the “strongest man in the world”) are on the loose again! The raffish pair are stony broke as usual and they take very temporary jobs as collection agents in New York City to try to fatten up their non-existent income. Almost at once they walk smack into a case of murder — simply because they accept a coin bank, in the shape of a goose, in lieu of full payment for an overdue bill. Very much involved in the affair is the wealthy Carmichael family, as well as assorted blondes, fiancées, and relatives. The key to the whole tangled situation is right in the forefront all the time, but it is Johnny himself who puts the puzzle together — and comes up with the right answer and the murderer. There’s lots of fast talk in this one, speedy action and near mayhem — there always is when these two arc on the job

Did you ever spend your spare time planning a caper which involved robbing a safe deposit box? Neither did Tommy Dancer, but as a lock and key expert he found himself involved in someone else’s plans. Tommy was a young man with deft fingers and not too many morals and THE LOCK AND THE KEY is the story of what happened to him when he listened to a man with more cunning than locksmithing ability. THE LOCK AND THE KEY is a fast and fascinating story with a very unusual background. We particularly recommend it to bank presidents (a warning), bank robbers (how-to-do-it) — and to the thousands of readers who would no more miss a new Gruber than rob a safe deposit box

The Los Angeles police department has often suspected that private detective Otis Beagle is not above making “business” to bring in a profitable client. And they are quite right. But not even Otis and his hired hand, Joe Peel, would have meddled in the affairs of the Iowa Lee Lonely Hearts Club had they realized it would mean murder, blackmail, and the old-fashioned badger game. However, there are compensations in the shape (or shapes) of three lovely ladies — Iowa Lee herself; the perfect secretary, Linda Meadows; and her roommate, Susan, whom everyone is trying to find. Joe pays a call on one of the ladies in posh Hillcrest Towers — and almost at once the first corpse turns up. There’s plenty of action and lots of humor in this fast-moving and ingenious thriller

Frank Gruber’s amateur and usually unwilling sleuths — Johnny Fletcher, book salesman extraordinary, and Sam Cragg, his side kick — have a knack of getting into trouble. This is the third time and the trouble is even more desperate than in the hair raising days of THE FRENCH KEY and THE LAUGHING FOX. Thrown into jail for vagrancy in a little Minnesota town, Johnny and Sam wake up to find that one of their cell mates has been murdered in the night. That was bad enough, but the murdered boy was Tom Quisenberry, heir to the Quisenberry clock fortune. In the confusion, Johnny and Sam wasted no time breaking jail because they knew they would be charged with the murder. They did the only thing they could do; they started out to solve the murder to clear themselves. Working their way east, they went to the fantastic Quisenberry estate outside New York City, home of the remarkable Quisenberry family and of the Quisenberry collection of thousands of valuable clocks. They followed the erratic wanderings of the Talking Clock, the incredibly valuable item stolen from the collection. Johnny hoped that the answer to all their troubles would be found in what the Talking Clock said

Here are those two old favorites, Johnny Fletcher and Sam Cragg, in their usual strategic position, up to their necks in the soup. The boys are back at that beloved caravanseric, the Forty-fifth Street Hotel, and appear likely to stay there for some time since Mr. Peabody, the manager, is lurking in the corridor with the French key. Then things take a turn for the better — not for the lovely across the airshaft who skims master phonograph record into their window before being throttled — but for Johnny and Sam themselves. They get Sam’s pants out of hock (luckily) and they’re off. Now you see them and now you don’t. But when the eye is quick enough to follow their activities, you’ll find them kiting checks, pawing wrist watches, getting beat up, busting in where they’re not wanted, and driving Mr. Peabody — among many, many others — crazy. We don’t know how they — and Mr. Gruber — do it, but they are actually, if incredibly, faster, furiouser, and funnier titan ever