Murder Room
38 total works
Fletcher Wyant and his wife Jane had been married for fifteen years. They had built the perfect marriage - two wonderful kids, a warm beautiful home, and their own private never-ending love affair.
Fletcher thought he knew Jane completely. No dark secrets. No hidden past. Then one hot summer week everything changed. And suddenly, brutally, Jane became a cold stranger.
Indicted by the state of New Jersey for the murder of retired Colonel William Farber. Dr Carl Coppolino had been having an affair with Farber's wife, Marjorie.
Did he kill Marjorie's husband and his own wife so he could marry Marjorie? If he did, he may have regretted it, for Marjorie Farber became the prosecution's star witness, claiming her former lover had hypnotized her into becoming an unwilling accomplice in the death of her husband.
Famed attorney F. Lee Bailey led the defense and concluded that Marjorie Farber was a classic case of a woman scorned. But did the jury agree?
The stage was set. Harry Mullin had hit town first. But he had just made the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, and he was a little nervous about being seen. With him at the rented house where they planned to case the job was a girl named Sal.
Then the Ace turned up. He'd been good in his day but had lost something in the guts department. But the last one in town was Ronnie. Ronnie had killed 12 men and two women in seven years and had gotten to like his job - maybe a little too much ...
Her name was Cindy, and she was his neighbour's wife - the woman next door in the kind of suburbia that didn't make headlines. These were real people, nice people like Cindy and Carl who fought with the desperation of the damned to keep from wanting each other.
Suddenly, though, it was the right time, right place. And there was no room left for pretence. In that moment all innocence drained out of their lives. Two real people, two nice people, became creatures of passion - and guilt.
In life, Jane Ann never had much use for a halo, but in her violent death she finally earned one. When they found a suspect, everyone relaxed except Hugh MacReedy.
Maybe he should have stayed out of it, but MacReedy owed a big debt to the patsy they were sending to the electric chair in a week. And he would have stayed out of it, if he'd known what his chances were of coming out alive ...
On the surface, they seem like three very different people: Danny Bronson, a cunning ex-con struggling to go straight; his brother, Lee, a former Gridiron star turned college professor; and Johnny Keefler, a crooked parole officer who lives for revenge. But they all grew up in the same corner of town, a grim little slum known as 'The Sink', where life is cheap and might makes right.
And a story that's just as dark unfolds when their paths cross as men - at the intersection of brutal violence, illicit liaisons, a 'foolproof' scam and the intoxicating allure of cold, hard cash.
American bachelor Miles Drummond, living in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and running out of money, half-heartedly places an ad in a few US newspapers announcing a summer art workshop. Much to his surprise, thirteen students write for details, and arrive in Cuernavaca a few weeks later.
The hotel Miles has rented is crumbling. The VW bus he borrowed is a disaster. The two instructors he hired hate each other on sight. But the students - young and old, single and married, rich and poor - aren't simply looking for an education. Some are fleeing private anguish. Others are seeking romance. All will find more adventure than they ever dreamed possible.
Step by step, Dwight McAran built a wall of vicious hate around himself. It was easy. He was a man who could slap one woman to death because she loved him, and hum a love song to another while he raped her.
Sure, he did some time in jail. He sat in a cell and simmered for five long years until his hate hardened to a core of white-hot evil. Revenge was all he craved - and a plan was what he had - a plan just cruel enough to please him, and just crazy enough to work.
Her employers are the high priests of Las Vegas and she is their handmaiden. Her job is to lead the lambs to the sacrifice, to keep them happy at the tables, where her partners slaughter the suckers. She longs to be free of the entertainers rubbing elbows with thugs at the craps tables, the divorcées hocking their jewels next to all-night marriage chapels, and the little white balls bouncing along the roulette wheels twenty-four hours a day.
But no matter how hard she tries to escape her past, she's fated to be caught for ever backstage in the sick glitter of the infamous strip with nothing but sand and neon and money, money, everywhere.
Welcome to the Eternal Church of the Believer, where devout workers operate state-of-the-art computer equipment to process the thousands of dollars that pour in daily and where hundreds of prayers are offered by armies of believers.
Roy Owens arrives there after his journalist wife disappears while doing an exposé on the Eternal Church of the Believer. Embroiled in a desperate search for her, it is not long before he uncovers a multimillion-dollar organization that hides the vices and human failings of the people behind the church.
Three men and a beautiful girl on a cross-country terror spree - a coast to coast rampage of stealing, kidnapping, rape and killing.
Who were they? Where did they come from? Why did they do it?
With chilling detail, John D. MacDonald unwraps the grotesque inner world of these four young psychopaths, and brings into terrifying focus the random, violent lusts that lie hidden between mischief and madness ...
Lucille Hanson had rid herself of the wrong man - her rich husband who lived casually and loved carelessly. Then she found another man she hoped would be right. She was putting together the pieces of her life - until all of her hopes came to rest at the bottom of a lake, where her body was found.
It must have been an accident was what most people said. It might have been suicide, was what others wanted to think. But among her mourners just one person refused to believe it was anything but murder ...
In Flower City, a sleepy resort town on Florida's Gulf Coast, wealthy Elizabeth Stegman is murdered in a jewel heist gone bad - her missing jewels insured for £750,000.
It falls to hardboiled ex-cop Cliff Bartells to find the killer, retrieve the jewels and console the decedent's niece and only heir, beautiful and headstrong Melody Chance. But complicating Bartell's best efforts is a local police force that proves to be less than cooperative.
When Mike Rodenska, a former journalist and recent widower, visits his old friend Troy Jamison in Florida, he's shocked at what he finds. For despite the parties, the shapely women, the devil-may-care air that surrounds Troy and his friends, Mike can see a life slowly coming apart. The only question is: why?
Putting together the pieces of his friend's life - and downfall - turns an ordinary visit into a mystery that Mike Rodenska is compelled to solve ...
Sam Brice, the perfect rugged hero, is involved with a young widow named Janice Gantry. But when she vanishes, Janice leaves behind a trail of blackmail, murder and a man at war with his own sense of duty.
Sam is too curious to steer clear of the mystifying disappearances off the Florida Keys, too stubborn to avoid making enemies with a cunning criminal and killer, and perhaps too enraged to do what he knows he must to save the one woman who matters: become as cold, impersonal, and deadly as an assassin.
Dillon Bryant, a successful engineer, is off on assignment after finishing his honeymoon. But news from home comes that his new bride, Laura, a beautiful woman whom he had met only weeks before proposing marriage, is in deep trouble.
By the time he gets to her, Laura has been murdered. Filled with grief and rage, he cannot leave it up to the police to solve the case - he wants his own kind of revenge against the killer ...
Four years ago Gevan Dean found his fiancée Niki Webb in his brother Ken's arms and fled his hometown for a peaceful life in the Florida sun. But now Ken is dead - murdered by a thief, the police say - and Gevan is desperately needed to keep their company, Dean Products, from falling apart.
Everywhere Dean turns he finds only questions and confusion. But he doesn't suspect the truth behind Ken's murder or the real goings-on at Dean Products until the stakes get too high to ignore - and the truth explodes violently in his face ...