Murder Room
80 total works
Someone in Glendale is murdering elderly housewives in their homes. The signs point to a serial killer but could the police be mistaken? In each case, the killer knew the victim's routine; but what possible connection can there be between victims at opposite ends of town and who could know just where all of them would be at a given time?
Vic Varallo is tasked with the investigation to discover the link between the victims. However, he has more than just murder on his plate, with a new baby to contend with as well as a nasty flu epidemic sweeping through the department.
'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune
'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune
As usual, crime is a boom industry in Los Angeles. A gunman walks into a café and shoots a waitress dead, seemingly at random. A schoolgirl is shot from a passing car. A prostitute trying to escape her job is killed by her pimp. Then there's the kidnapped daughter, the shot father and the strangled nurse who scrawls a clue to her assailant's identity.
The Glendale Police Department is being kept very busy with these cases and more off-beat conundrums, including a series of burglaries in which nothing is stolen and a string of break-ins that could only have been committed by midgets or contortionists.
The Manning Company is a big business, but although it was headed by Claire Manning, the founder's widow, before her death, her son John had been running the firm for many years and was the undisputed successor. So why did Claire leave almost everything to her third cousin, whom no one associated with the firm has ever heard of?
Enter Jesse Falkenstein, who is launched into an investigation of Claire Manning's past - and a litany of treachery, fraud, blackmail, abortion, impersonation and sudden death.
'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune
In the Hollywood Division of the L.A.P.D., chief of detectives Ivor Maddox and his team have their hands full. There are the routine cases, including the TV actress who overdoses on drugs and alcohol. There are the more complex cases, such as armed robber Dapper Dan, who always says thank you as he takes the cash.
And then there are the really bizarre ones: the body that turns up in pieces all over Hollywood; the midget burglar who keeps getting in through seemingly impossible spaces; and the poisoning of hamburger meat in a chain of supermarkets, which leads to a series of random deaths.
'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune
'A Luis Mendoza story means superlative suspense' Los Angeles Times
Two little girls have been raped and murdered and every available officer in The Los Angeles Police Department is on the case.
Lieutenant Mendoza's team meticulously make enquiries - there's house-to-house checking, and exact tracing of the girl's movements between home and school. No stone is left unturned, but what clues will finally reveal the children's fate?
'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune
The Glendale P.D. have their hands full again. What with an epidemic of motel hold-ups, a rapist with a fixation on hospital nurses, a teenager's suicide, an art gallery theft and a killing that leads to a zoo, there is no time for respite for Vic Varallo and co.
Delia Riordan is troubled by a very unusual mystery indeed, that of an old lady who dies suddenly of a most unexpected heart attack. Or does she? Riordan makes this her own special case, pursuing it beyond the call of duty and coming up with a most surprising answer.
'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune
Twenty years ago the five-year-old Traxler heir was kidnapped from his Hollywood home and never seen again. Now his widowed mother is overjoyed when a plausible young man claims to be her long-lost son, a claim supported by accurate childhood memories. Mrs Traxler accepts him unconditionally, and when her niece Charlotte dares to question him, she is cut out of the will.
Charlotte turns to Jesse Falkenstein, who is soon as suspicious of the man's claim as she is. After launching an intense investigation, one lead after another falls flat - and even the original kidnapper refuses to talk . . .
'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune
In the sixteenth century lived two queens about whom much has been written: Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart. However, there are more than just two countries in the British Isles and there is a third monarch, of whom there are no tales. This is his story.
All major characters in this novel bar two were real people. If chronology has not always been followed too strictly, it is because all this is long ago and far away and does not matter now. This is only a story for reading, but it is a true story.
The brutal and baffling murder of an elderly couple in their quiet suburban home, the kidnapping of two little girls, a bank hold-up, a jewel robbery from a big store - Vic Varallo and the Glendale police force are kept more than usually busy in this complex and exciting drama.
'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune
'This is a mystery readers' mystery novel, and a beauty' Anthony Boucher
Walt McLean, the proprietor of Walt's Malt Shop, had been found dead by his niece. The attack did not appear to be motivated by robbery, but who would want to murder such a harmless and popular man? And what could the message in green really mean?
A detective story delectably tied up with one of the greatest of detective classics-Agatha Christie's The ABC Murders
Sergeant Andrew Clock of Homicide is an honest policeman, but now there's a very grave charge against him: concealing evidence in a murder investigation in return for a bribe. The evidence seems damning, but Clock's friends, including Jesse Falkenstein, cannot believe it of him.
Falkenstein sets out to prove Clock's innocence, and is quickly entrenched in a battle between Clock's allies and his superior officers. The only other explanation is a set-up, but who has enough of a grudge against the sergeant to destroy him?
'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune
'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune
Vic Varallo and the Glendale P.D. are startled by the latest addition to their team: a woman detective no less, and a very smart one at that. Delia Riordan soon makes her mark with enthusiasm, flair and a capacity for sheer hard work.
And Riordan soon takes centre stage in the investigation of the killing of Mrs Endicott, the pastor's mother. The pastor has confessed, in an attempt to protect his wife who believes she is the killer, and it will take all of Riordan's womanly intuition to get to the bottom of this mystery.
Old Vandeveer is an odd client for the famous Jesse Falkenstein; dressed head to toe in shabby clothes it seems like he can hardly afford Jesse's standard fee to draw up a will. But when he and his wife are murdered a few weeks later, Falkenstein is launched on an intricate search for a fortune the old man has hidden away.
The miser's long-suffering daughter is the immediate suspect, but in an effort to clear her name, Jesse discovers a tale of sharp business deals, blackmail, pornography, a questionable legal marriage and murder.
'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune
'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune
In the quiet suburb of Santa Monica, eighty-eight-year-old Mabel Foster loses her husband to a stroke. Rather than move Mabel into a retirement home, the neighbours hire Josephine Slaney to take care of her. The immense nurse is a godsend, the cost of her help is a bargain.
Soon it becomes clear, however, that all is not right with Josephine. Mrs Foster, once bright and alert, falls quickly into a torpor and retreats into seclusion at Josephine's command. It is up to detective Dan Valentine to uncover a strange, lethal pattern among Josephine's former patients, and the race is on to stop her before she can strike again.
'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune
New York in the days preceding the American Revolution was a dangerous place to be. Just ask sixteen-year-old James Bethune, who seems to be constantly followed by trouble. Offered a job at a newspaper, James sees out the revolution through the eyes of the paper, surviving incredible odds. When trouble finally catches up to him again, how will he get himself out of it this time?
'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune
Ivor Maddox has his hands more full than ever, with his wife Sue expecting a baby. To add to this, he also faces several of the most complex and frustrating cases of his career: the killing of a thirteen-year-old whose grief-stricken father takes the law into his own hands, and the shooting of a wealthy businessman, which sends Maddox digging into the past.
Most extraordinary of all are the corpses that keep turning up under the floorboards of abandoned houses all over the country. And when the vital clue to the identity of the mass murderer turns up in Maddox's territory, it's up to him to solve one of the crimes of the century.
Mystery writer Brendan Monroe is tormented by the fear that his flamboyant fictional detective P. I. Roy Barron has come to life. Is the author losing his mind? Or is someone making it seem that way?
When Barron is found dead, Sergeant Dan Valentine of the Santa Monica police focuses his investigation on the local chapter of the Mystery Writers of America, where he faces the fascinating challenge of trying to trap a murderer whose profession is devising diabolical plots.
'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune
Robert Kinsolving is healthy, wealthy and forty-one, and has asked Jesse Falkenstein to draw up a will leaving everything to his sister, just in case. However, before signing, Kinsolving is found dead in an apparent suicide. Jesse is far from convinced, and discovers that Robert was actually not a Kinsolving at all, and anyone who may have benefited from his death is now seriously short-changed.
It now becomes Jesse's job to track down Robert's birth mother, and the mystery turns from a whodunit to a where-is-she.
'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune
'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune
The Wilcox Street precinct is as busy as ever. Sergeant Maddox and his team face three tricky murder cases, with motives that turn out to be as strange and bizarre as the crimes themselves.
But it is not only murder that is occupying Maddox. When policewoman Carstairs, who has vainly adored him for so long, begins to show interest in newcomer Sergeant O'Neill, Maddox discovers to his astonishment that he is jealous and will have to balance his time between romance and murder.
'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune
Ireland, 1749. Dennis McDermott, a witty, charming and daring young man with shades of the Scarlet Pimpernel, lives two lives in eighteenth-century Dublin. Fashionable society idolises him as a handsome, rakish man of their world, never suspecting that he is the mysterious leader of the Irish underground whose nightly missions continue to outwit the British authorities.
But Dennis' cover as an Anglophile who has renounced his Gaelic roots is under threat from an ever-more inquisitive policeman, and he also is embroiled in another cat-and-mouse game . . . falling in love.