Murder Room
25 total works
A dame has to have more than beauty and breeding to stop Slim Callaghan doing things his way. Mrs Riverton has plenty of both, but when she begins to interfere in Slim's search for her stepson, things start to hot up.
Slim's motto is: 'We get there somehow and who the hell cares'. The problem is that someone does ...
'The British, once they take the gloves off - once they forget to play cricket, to be English gentlemen - they are the toughest things on earth,' says one German espionage agent to another in Dark Duet. And the trouble with Michael Kane, hero of this spy thriller, is that he never plays cricket with Nazi spies ...
'Dark Duet seems to me damn good' Raymond Chandler
Three dazzling sisters are suspects in the killing of their own mother. If only Viola could have predicted the potential for danger when she drafted the will that prevents any of her daughters from being married strictly for her fortune.
But no case of murder and intrigue is too knotty for shrewd detective Slim Callaghan, who stirs up the calm waters of the tiny village of Alfriston, leaving chaos in his wake and a stunningly solved puzzle at this adventure's thrilling close.
Slim Callaghan, private detective, is drawn into a particularly dubious case - even for him. A Mrs Paula Denys says she paid a man to steal the priceless Denys Coronet from her husband's safe. Now the thief won't hand over the goods and is attempting to blackmail her.
Callaghan solves the problem for his client but, too late, discovers the luscious Mrs Denys is not all she seems. Callaghan is determined to get to the bottom of it all - and opens some dangerous cans of worms in the process.
Cara, Gayda, Pearl: sizzling dames. Travis, Clemensky, Clansing: desperate men. A set of secret papers. Bring in FBI man Lemmy Caution to recover the papers, and we have all the ingredients for a fast-moving story of espionage, deception and double dealing.
Lemmy Caution once again steers his way round the bodies of dead men and beautiful, very much alive, women to a successful conclusion.
In his tenth and final adventure, set just after the end of the Second World War, Lemmy Caution is in Paris investigating the theft of secret State Department documents. In the opinion of his chief, however, Lemmy has fallen down on the assignment given to him - to trail two suspected enemy agents, one a Frenchwoman and one an American - and he is ordered to bring them in.
The trail leads from Paris to England, and a thrilling conclusion in the Surrey countryside.
'Some wise guy - Confucius or somebody - said there was nothin' like the truth, which is a thing that I believe in - sometimes. Anyhow, I am goin' to try this nothin' but the truth stuff on this dame I spoke to. What can I lose, anyway?'
When Julia Wayles is kidnapped in the US and taken to England, FBI agent Lemmy Caution finds himself caught up in a tangled web of intrigue and international espionage. Julia is being held by two American mobsters, who may or may not be who they say they are. And as usual it's the dames in the story who distract Lemmy from business.
The fourth title in the Lemmy Caution series
In the morgue office there ain't anybody there at all. We go through the office into the corpse room. I switch on the light an' there we start pullin' out the trays with the stiffs on.
We found the morgue attendant all right. He was in number five try lookin' sorta surprised. Which he was entitled to be ... Somebody had shot this guy three times.
In the second Lemmy Caution novel, the FBI man is sent by his bosses to Casablanca to investigate the disappearance of two million dollars, which have seemingly vanished into thin air. There he meets Carlotta de la Rue, the eponymous Poison Ivy, whose character is based on a true-life femme fatale nightclub singer.
Lemmy soon uncovers a gang of gold smugglers, whose boss might be Rudy Saltierra, Carlotta's boyfriend. She, in turn, may or may not be on Lemmy's side ...
This is vintage Cheyney, with a stunning twist.
Blood's runnin' down my face from where this guy's just bust me, my nose feels like it's split in half. Then this dame gets up an' strolls over to me - I reckon I am not lookin' quite so good.
She says: 'Well for cryin' out loud.'
Is this my big day or is it?
She stands lookin' at me, sippin' champagne. 'So you're a big "G" man,' she says. 'Well, personally, if you hadn't got a lot comin' to you I would take a bust at you myself, you lousy, crawlin', gum-shoein' dick. Have a drop of liquor, big boy.' She pours the contents of her glass over my face. It stings like hell, but I'm tellin' you it was good liquor.
Agent Michael Kells is in pursuit of Nazi spies in London, who have been tasked with the job of pinpointing the actual landing places of V1 bombs to improve their accuracy.
Through the strange byways of Kells's sinister errand flit the mysterious 'Auntie', the alluring Janine, the beautiful Mrs Vaile and the delightful and unfortunate Alison Fredericks.
'Nobody eats or sleeps in the course of this tale. And you probably won't either' New Yorker
Quayle, the master of a British spy ring in World War II, is faced with the task of dealing with a man who has come from Morocco with what he says is important information about German troops there. But is the man what he seems?
Quayle puts his agents into action, not hesitating to risk their lives to discover the answer, but it is Quayle who ends up doing most of the work - and who is prepared to sacrifice everything for the cause of war.
Fourteen miles off the tail-end of Andros Island in the West Indies lies Dark Bahama. Many people have discovered they can find their heart's desires there; many have found, too, that even in paradise it pays to watch your step.
Viola Steyning is young, wayward, rich and good looking, and the sort of girl to cause her mother back home in England a certain anxiety. That is why Julian Isles has been sent out by Johnny Vallon of Chennault Investigations to bring her back alive - for beneath the tranquil surface of Dark Bahama's tropical beauty lurk sinister and dangerous undercurrents.
Shaun Aloysius O'Mara, intelligence agent for the British 'second bureau', has been ordered by his superiors to go to Paris to obtain information that will lead to the capture of the lone survivor of the Nazi espionage system.
So when Shaun arrives in Paris he becomes a crude and shiftless drunkard and entangles himself with a clever and ruthless spy, Tanga de Sarieux, who is as brave as the men that surround her ...
The Second World War has just ended and the Secret Service has 'mislaid' two lists of German war criminals. Peter Everard Quayle is the head of the Department concerned and he was responsible for the compilation of the list. Instead of handing the job over to his agents he decides to call in a group of people who operated behind enemy lines during the war.
Among them is Michael Frewin, Quayle's second-in-command, who appears to be a bit of a fop - but outward appearances are deceptive for he is a cold-blooded killer ...
No one asked Slim Callaghan to investigate - he just did it - and they had to like it. A £40,000 insurance claim, two beautiful women and possibly a fake suicide were at stake. Slim Callaghan, private detective, reckoned the situation looked very interesting indeed, but he didn't have a client.
Callaghan's motto was, 'We get there somehow and who the hell cares how'. He got there and got himself a client, eventually - an exquisitely beautiful client ...
Slim Callaghan had been hired by beautiful Cynthis Meraulton to stop her cousins getting her step-father's money. But when the old man is murdered, the only suspect with no alibi and a giant motive is Cynthis.
Slim always played his cases the way they came, but it turned out the Meraulton job had more twists than a hangman's rope.
'Slim Callaghan's quick wit and knowledge of rough and tumble place him in the top ranks of private eyes. What a man!' New York Times Book Review