What are the ingredients of a hard-boiled detective story? “Savagery, style, sophistication, sleuthing, and sex,” said Ellery Queen. Often a desperate blond, a jealous husband, and, of course, a tough-but-tender P.I. the likes of Sam Spade or...
In 1929, a new kind of magazine appeared on newsstands, the gang pulps! And no magazine that preceded them gave the pulps a worse reputation. Month after month, the stories luridly recounted the exploits of the most sadistic killers, the most craven...
Lew Archer #10 Strictly speaking, Lew Archer is only supposed to dig up the dirt on a rich man’s suspicious soon-to-be son-in-law. But in no time at all Archer is following a trail of corpses from the citrus belt to Mazatlan. And then there is...
The greatest crime fighter of the forties returns!
In the roaring heart of the crucible, steel is made. In the raging flame of personal tragedy, men are sometimes forged into something more than human.
It was so with Dick Benson. He had been...
As originally published in “The Shadow Magazine,” June 1, 1935.
With the relentlessness of the ticking of a clock, murder struck every hour — until it was time for The Shadow to...
Short story collection
"Killer in the Rain" "The Man Who Liked Dogs" "The Curtain" "Try the Girl" "Mandarin's Jade" "Bay City Blues" "The Lady in the...
When handsome, hard-boiled Ed Barlow, a Florida reporter, got the tip-off on an insidious gang of criminals that preyed on a certain kind of woman, he knew he was in for a gun-barrel full of excitement — and he liked it.
Against a background...
I swung the wet, flat money belt, enjoying the slap of it against my leg.
I had gone through a lot to get that belt. I had consorted with midgets and freaks. I had been lied to, framed, been offered the bribery of a beautiful but depraved...