Chris Burnett, successful, wealthy and married to the daughter of a multi-millionaire, receives severe brain injuries in a car accident. While convalescing, Burnett disappears for twenty-four hours, during which time a prostitute is brutally murdered and mutilated. Evidence found by a private inquiry agent points to Burnett. His wife, blackmailed by the inquiry agent, sets out to prove her husband’s innocence. This swiftly moving story of murder and suspense culminates in an unexpected and dramatic climax that is the hallmark of a James Hadley Chase novel

Ira Marsh, a provocative blond teenager, arrives at Paradise City, Florida’s crime-free, millionaires’ playground. Her arrival sparks off a cunningly devised plan to rob the Florida Safe Deposit bank, an impregnable fortress, acclaimed as the safest bank in the world. Ticky Edris, an anti-social, misshapen dwarf, directs the operation while Phil Algir, the handsome con-man aids and abets. The plan moves smoothly into action by the ruthless murders of a drug-taking call-girl, her pimp and the short-sighted teenage daughter of the Vice-President of the bank. Here is an absorbing thriller, written with a hard, swift economy of style. The Way the Cookie Crumbles hooks the reader, and keeps him hooked to the end

Serge Maisky has a record as long as your arm. In and out of jail all his life, he has dreamed for years of the Big Steal, that would set him up good. He recruits four professional accomplices and bribes one of the girls who works in the underground vaults of the Paradise City casino - for the take is going to be real heavy. No one is going to stand in his way, including the punk of a guard who appears at the time of the robbery. And it is just the tough luck of one of his partners-in-crime, if he gets shot in the belly, by the girl he was trying to rape. Or another partner, who is shot down by the cops. In fact, the lesser the number of partners, the more the share for Maisky. So when lovely, but sluttish Sheila and her unassuming husband, unwittingly take off with Maisky’s loot and bury it in their own garden, Maisky gets mad. Real mad…

It seemed like a good idea at the time to ex-paratrooper sergeant Harry Mitchell, home after three years in the deadly jungles of Vietnam. Head south to Florida, get a summer job, soak up some sun, relax a bit. But when he got to Paradise City he found himself drawn into a lethal set-up where dumped corpses, smuggling operations, over-ambitious cops, hired killers and a sexy little double-crosser called Nina combined to make life very unhealthy. It was just as well for Harry Mitchell that he’d learned to look after himself in Vietnam