JOE BARRY | |
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Bill August Mystery #1:
Bill August, retained by an airline to investigate a murder, almost lost his life on his first try, after which he learned a few things: Vikki Kane whose anatomical charms produced record high blood pressures in the opposite sex, had a theatrical career and a millionaire fiance to consider and wanted silence. Aristocratic Paul Daymon had several million dollars and wanted Vikki--with silence. Andrea Parrish, whose blood was probably blue because it never rose above 30 degrees Fahrenheit, wanted back what she had lost, namely Daymon's millions--and silence, too. Nobody wanted publicity and nobody wanted to talk.
Bill smelled blackmail and started to work on a theory. If he pushed all concerned about enough, somebody was going to crack. Somebody did crack--in fact, several people did--but not the way Bill expected. With a gun blasting at him, he made a couple of mental reservations--women are never a known quantity, blackmail can be practiced in more ways than one--and so can murder!
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Chase Coburn Mystery #1:
MURDER WAS THE CLIMAX OF A KISS!
What had seemed to be only a routine assignment had led unexpectedly to the kiss-and-kill death of Donn O’Mara’s partner. And when Donn took up the trail of the dame with the deadly embrace, he hadn’t suspected that it would land him straight in the center of a war between crime syndicates.
By that time it was too late to back out. Face to face with Mr. Big himself, Donn found that he was on a one-way street to the morgue. Then it was that he met that lethal girl again!
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Donn O'Mara Mystery #2:
MURDER WAS THE CLIMAX OF A KISS!
What had seemed to be only a routine assignment had led unexpectedly to the kiss-and-kill death of Donn O’Mara’s partner. And when Donn took up the trail of the dame with the deadly embrace, he hadn’t suspected that it would land him straight in the center of a war between crime syndicates.
By that time it was too late to back out. Face to face with Mr. Big himself, Donn found that he was on a one-way street to the morgue. Then it was that he met that lethal girl again!
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Rush Henry Mystery #1:
When Rush Henry, Chicago's ace crime reporter, joined the Marines, he took his furlough and grimly headed for home.
Somewhere in the little town of Weston, cooling-off spot for many of Chicago's tougher gentry, was the answer to the "why" which had stuck in his mind for sixteen years.
He meant to find that answer. And within a matter of minutes after his plane had landed in Weston, he learned that the men behind the scenes of Weston, too, meant business. Both sides were finally playing for keeps.
Even Uncle Mart Bannon, the newspaper publisher who had given a home to the orphaned boy, Rush, greeted him uneasily. Only Bannon's lovely daughters, Martha and Virginia, met him with undisguised enthusiasm, with a warmth not meant to be taken for sisterly affection.
Elsewhere the town of Weston preferred to drop its eyelids--and wait. All Weston knew why Rush Henry had come home. But Weston had had bitter lessons from the men who had whipped a town into line.
Swift, terse and smoothly plotted, "The Pay-Off" races to a climax as surprising to the reader as it was to Rush Henry, who was looking for the answer.
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Rush Henry Mystery #2:
Working for Army Intelligence on a more or less routine assignment to track down the source of birth certificates being faked in Detroit, Marine Lieutenant Rush Henry, former Chicago crime reporter, located the grubby little print shop which was turning them out wholesale.
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Rush Henry Mystery #3:
The door had scarcely closed on the mysterious young man who had sought protection from Rush Henry because he feared for his life when wealthy Paul Germaine, Sr., brought one of the strangest requests of Rush's hectic career as a private investigator. Rush was to keep Chicago mobsters away from Germaine's brilliant young daughter, Leslie, whose interest in criminal psychology had made- her determined to find out, first-hand, what made a gangster tick.
Five minutest later Rush found the mysterious young man stabbed to death in the alley outside his office. The dead man was Germaine's son, Paul Germaine, Jr.
Then a tall, cadaverous man in ministerial black informed Rush that he had seen the murderer run from the alley and instantly Rush knew that a strange mob had moved in. The tall man was Otho Brin, first of several San Francisco gangsters Rush was so soon to encounter.
Was Brin playing a lone hand, or was he connected with suave, cultured Bernard Jago and his lovely daughter, Myrna? Was the San Francisco gang bucking the Chicago mob? Which had been responsible for young Germaine's murder? And what was daring young Leslie Germaine's connection with her brother's death?
A swift, baffling mystery novel of underworlds at war-and of the fall guy caught between.
NOTE: This is the complete first edition book text, not the condensed/abridged version.
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Rush Henry Mystery #4:
He had been shot. He was in Des Moines, Iowa. He was a private detective from Chicago, and his name was Rush Henry. But all this meant nothing to the man on the hospital bed. His only memory was of a quiet tree-lined street and a solitary figure approaching. So began the strangest case in Rush Henry’s career, a case apparently blocked at every turn by the detective’s amnesia. Returning to Chicago he learned from his secretary, Gertrude, that he had been retained by a mysterious client who had never reappeared and whose name Rush had never mentioned. Pappy Daley of the Express helped Rush to identify the client as the millionaire George Marshall Simon, whose reunion with his long lost daughter, Ruth, had been a front page feature six months earlier. And now Simon himself was dead, the victim of an automobile crash that seemed more than an accident. Why had Rush gone to Des Moines, and what secret had he once known which marked him for death? Was the girl, once called Ruth Carr, really Ruth Simon? Back in Iowa, later in Tulsa and rural Oklahoma, finally in Chicago, and always with a killer at his heels, Rush sought the answers. A characteristic fast-moving Rush Henry mystery, culminating in the adroit trapping of the killer and the exposure of an amazing “triple cross.”
NOTE: This is the complete first edition book text, not the condensed/abridged version.
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Rush Henry Mystery #5:
A three-man crime syndicate had Forest City sewn up tight. Vice, gambling, drugs--there wasn't a racket that didn't pay off in big dividends for these evil men. And they were ready to kill to keep the money rolling in . . .
Private eye Rush Henry had no illusions about the danger when he took a ten thousand dollar fee to clean up the city.
He knew that strong-arm tactics wouldn't work, so he planned to let the syndicate wipe itself out by setting one against the other.
He got some unexpected help. First from gorgeous Gay, the temptress sent by the crime bosses to spy on him--she ended up in his arms . . . And then there was an unknown party whose contribution was murder!
But Henry had to find that killer fast--for though his plan was working out he had a hunch the final victim was slated to be himself!
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