A collection of suspense stories, puzzle stories, whodunits and tricky whydunits involving police detectives, private eyes, talented and sometimes lucky amateurs, armchair detectives, and ethnic detectives

Given its extraordinary span, its international scope, and its variant styles and groundbreaking stylists, A Century of Great Suspense Stories is a singular achievement. A bestselling master of suspense himself Jeffery Deaver had the enviable task of selecting from the thousands of stories written over the past one hundred years those which best represented the classic form, as well as the justly celebrated authors whose ironic twists and stunning payoffs left a lasting, vivid, and unnerving impression. The result is a triumph. In this ambitious anthology you’ll revel in the sardonic, overtly amoral plotting of Patricia Highsmith. You’ll rediscover the strangely poignant and surprising turns of Stanley Ellin, and the profoundly underrated Margaret Millar, a genius who mixed savage social satire with brooding horror. You’ll be treated to Stephen King at his chilling best. You’ll find yourself on the violent urban streets of Ross Macdonald and Mickey Spillane, and seeped in the ominous regional flavor of Sharyn McCrumb and Tony Hillerman. You’ll marvel at the cunning webs spun by Lawrence Block, Ruth Rendell, Anthony Boucher, and Sara Paretsky, all of whom defy expectations as they reinvent the genre. And you’ll understand the awesome reputations of those authors who set the standard, such as the legendary Harlan Ellison, Fredric Brown, the master of the twist ending, and James M. Cain, uncannily skilled at knowing what went on between men and women behind closed doors. (The darker the room the better.) Delivering everything from the one-two punch of the detective story to the ingeniously precise trappings of the police procedural, from the disquieting corners of the criminal mind to sheer dread-inducing horror, A Century of Great Suspense Stories is a rich anthology of this popular literary genre, a stunning tribute to the art of storytelling, and to the men and women who have done it best

This collection of short fiction, selected by the author, spans a writing career of more than 40 years and illuminates the heart and soul of the antihero. A lone castaway on a desert island commits a murder for which he is the sole suspect. A genealogist learns just how far rotten apples fall from the family tree. A con man, impersonating a minister, finds religion. A tabloid journalist must solve a murder to complete his story on the death of a major television star, who happens to be a dog. A self-made widower discovers how hard it is to get rid of a wife, especially when she’s dead

Supporting one and a half families is not the ideal situation for a man who makes his living as a writer... unless he comes up with a book so certain to be a bestseller that he doesn’t have to worry about money ever again. (Or maybe Mary will find a fella of her own who can start contributing to the support.) So Tom’s surefire bestseller, The Christmas Book is begun, and Tom’s troubles begin. His editor quits, Ginger doesn’t want to get married, Mary won’t give him a divorce, his new editor announces she’s pregnant (and quits), the woman in an iron lung enters his life, and a third editor begins work on the book. Then things really get complicated

Ed Topliss has a problem. Two and a half years ago, he was approached by a publishing executive of dubious credentials, who said, “If you can write a grammatical letter, you can write a sex novel.” Since then, Topliss (who also writes under the pseudonyms of Dirk Smuff and Dwayne Toppil) has written one sex novel each month for $1,000 per book. According to his formula, that’s 10 chapters of 5,000 words each with one sex scene in each chapter — or 280 various sexual acts in his entire career. But Ed Topliss has reached an impasse. Twenty-five years old, the only son of a cocktail waitress, a graduate of Monequois College, the father of a young girl named Elfreda who was conceived before matrimony, Topliss is haunted by an unflagging desire to be a serious writer. Beset by personal and financial crises, he suddenly discovers he cannot write on schedule. His wife leaves home, his fantasy life starts to merge with his real life, and indeed it seems as if his whole future hangs in jeopardy. In Adios, Scheherazade, Donald E. Westlake, best known for his novels of comic suspense (The Spy in the Ointment, The Hot Rock), turns his attention to a new area. With the same delightful style that won him the Mystery Writers Award for the best novel of 1967, Westlake creates a touching, funny, thoroughly enjoyable portrait of what happens when a small-time writer tries to “make it” in the world of big-time pornography

ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S HOW-TO-DO-IT BOOK Including: • How to solve your marital problems       —(poison) • How to dress properly when admitting to first degree murder       —(black tie) • How to take off a few pounds fast       —(a knife) • How to ruin a perfect friendship       —(a homemade bomb) And many, many other helpful hints from such specialists as: EVAN HUNTER, JOHN CORTEZ, RAY BRADBURY, RICHARD STARK, RICHARD MATHESON, HELEN NIELSON, DONALD WESTLAKE, RICHARD DEMING, JACK RITCHIE, JONATHAN CRAIG, C. B. GILFORD, JAY STREET, ROBERT ARTHUR, FLETCHER FLORA, CHARLES EINSTEIN

Branson, Missouri, is the home of Country Music, USA. Its main drag is lined with theaters housing such luminaries as Roy Clark, Loretta Lynn, and Merle Haggard — but you’d better get there early because the late show’s at eight. Branson is one big long traffic jam of R.V.’s, station wagons, pick-up trucks, NRA decals, tour buses and blue-haired grandmothers. Now Branson just got a little bit more crowded Because the murder trial of country and western star Ray Jones is about to begin, and the media has come loaded for bear. The press presence ranges from the Weekly Galaxy, the most unethical news rag in the universe, to New York City’s Trend: The Magazine for the Way We Live This Instant. In the middle of the melee stands Ray Jones himself, an inscrutable good ol’ boy who croons like an angel but just may be as guilty as sin — of the rape and murder of a 31-year-old theater cashier. Sara Jaslyn, of Trend, isn’t sure about Ray. The sardonic Jack Ingersoll, her editor and lover, is sure of this much: this time he’s going to do an- exposé that will nail the Weekly Galaxy to the wall. A phalanx of reporters and editors from the Galaxy are breaking every rule, and a few laws, to get the inside story on Ray Jones’s trial. Meanwhile, the IRS is there, too. They want all of Ray Jones’s money, no matter what the jury decides. Set to the beat of America’s down-home music, as raucous as a smoke-filled hanky-tonk, as funny as grown men in snakeskin boots, BABY, WOULD I LIE? is a murder mystery, a courtroom thriller, a caper novel, and a classic Westlake gem

John Dortmunder doesn't like manual labor. So when he gets the offer of money to dig up a grave, he balks . . . then he wonders why Fitzroy Guilderpost, criminal mastermind, wants to pull a switcheroo of two 70-years-dead Indians

When John Dortmunder sets out to rob a bank, he really means it. He steals the whole thing. With the help of his usual crew, as well as a sophomoric ex-FBI man and a militant safecracker, Dortmunder puts a set of wheels under a trailer that just happens to be the temporary site of the Capitalists' & Immigrants' Trust Corp. When the safe won't open and the cops close in, Dortmunder realizes he's got to find a place — somewhere in suburban Long Island — to hide a bank. "One of the funniest conceptions you're going to come across…the ending is hilarious." (The New York Times)

Brooklyn Noir is back with a vengeance, this time with the masters of yore: H.P. Lovecraft, Donald Westlake, Lawrence Block, Pete Hamill, Jonathan Lethem, Colson Whitehead, and more!

The worlds of Donald E. Westlake are filled with scrambling underachievers. With such books as Bank Shot, Help I Am Being Held Prisoner, Cops and Robbers, and Jimmy the Kid, he has shown us heroes whose comic desperation derives from their unfortunate habit of breaking laws. Now, in Brothers Keepers, the Westlake eye is turned on a whole other world: the serenity of a monastery, the calmness of a young monk named Brother Benedict, a world of placid repose. But Donald Westlake seems to hate repose. Into this pond of peace in a chaotic desert, he at once drops two rocks — real estate developers are about to tear the monastery down, and Brother Benedict falls in love with the landlord’s daughter. Even in a monastery, scrambling zanies can still be found. With a supporting cast of brown-robed monks including former burglars, a one-time lawyer, a retired boxer, an army drop-out, and a dozen more assorted quirky individuals, Brother Benedict struggles to save the monastery and his soul, and to keep his hands off the beautiful Eileen Flattery Bone. In the Search for the Missing Lease, the Discovery of the Arsonist, the Christmas in Puerto Rico, and the Grand Finale at the New Year’s Eve Party, Donald E. Westlake has written his most divine comedy

In 1977, one of the world’s finest crime novelists turned his pen to suspense of a very different sort — and the results have never been published, until now. Fans of mystery fiction have often pondered whether it would be possible to write a suspense novel without any crime at all, and in CALL ME A CAB the masterful Donald E. Westlake answered the question in his inimitable style. You won’t find any crime in these pages — but what you will find is a wonderful suspense story, about a New York City taxi driver hired to drive a beautiful woman all the way across America, from Manhattan to Los Angeles, where the biggest decision of her life is waiting to be made. It’s Westlake at his witty, thought-provoking best, and it proves that a page-turner doesn’t need to have a bomb set to go off at the end of it in order to keep sparks flying every step of the way

A castle is about to be dismantled and flown to Paris where it will be reassembled for an international exhibit of architectural styles. But a deposed South American dictator has hidden his entire fortune of cash, stocks, and jewelry inside twelve stones of the castle. Lida Perez, a sexy and fiery revolutionary who wants to get her hands on the loot to further her political cause, enlists the aid of British master-criminal Eustace Dench to mastermind the heist. And once again Donald Westlake perpetrates a criminally funny tale of international intrigue and hijinks

Tom Garrity and Joe Loomis are cops in New York — commuters to a job in a city where people often feel like animals. As cops, they’re at the center of it. The brutalizers and the brutalized. Unable to take much more of it, they invent a romantic dream for getting the hell out. The cops decide to become robbers. Joe discovers that a blue uniform will get you in anywhere; allow you, for instance, to hold up a liquor store without even being suspected. He and Tom decide to pull one big caper that will net them each a million. Then they’ll wait around a year, and after that pull out for good. They offer their services to the Mafia, because on their own they don’t know what crime to commit for that kind of money. A Mafia boss named Vigano points them in the right direction. After that there is no turning back, and no guarantee that they’ll make it. What happens to Tom and Joe and their families as they make their breakaway move is what COPS AND ROBBERS is all about. Here is a major novel on a major theme by Donald E. Westlake who, in telling a brand new kind of story, makes use of his proven ability to create suspense and entertainment

Tom Jimson, the burglar has $700,000 stashed away in a valley town, which has been converted into a reservoir, by the state of New York. Now, the money lies fifty feet below water and the only way in which Jim wants to retrieve it is to blow up the dam. With the fate of nine hundred people at stake, it falls on John Dortmunder to formulate an alternate plan for retrieving the loot. And, as each attempt by Dortmunder fails, Tom’s dynamite finger gets itchier… and itchier

Donalds E. Vestleiks Dūmi Fredijs Nuns ir zaglis un melis. Kādu dienu viņš kļūst ari neredzams. Viss iesakās kādā Ņujorkas labroratorijā -Tabakas pētniecibas institūtā. Tur divi zinātnieki, ceredaml kļut bagāti, eksperimentē ar furmulam, kas spētu pierādīt smēķēšanas un tabakas labvēlīgo Ietekmi uz cilvēka veselībubu. Tieši ši īpaša iestāde klust par Fredija kartēja upuri, savukart, pats Fredljs par ārstu Izmēģinājumu objektu. Iedzerot eksperimentālas formulas, viņš Izzūd dūmu mutulī. Neredzamība varētu būt priekšrocība zaglim, ja vien pec viņa netīkotu bēži, policisti un advokāti, pats Tabakas Petniecibas Institūts katrs saviem, sautīgiem nolūkiem, on ja vien Fredlja draudzene Pega varetu samierināties ar viņa neredzamību… Amerikanu rakstnieka Donalda E. Uestleika detektīvs ir jautrs, reize skumjš un smeldzīgs stāsts par cilvēku, viņa dabu, vēlmēm un sapņiem. Apbrīnojama ir autora spēja savīt spraigu, mistisku, noslēpumaino, trillerim līdzīgo sižetu ar vieglu ironiju, sarkasmu on cinismu, izklaidi ar dziļāku un filozofiskāko dzives tvērumu, bet taja pašā laikā nezaudēt gaišu optimismu un vieglumu. Pētergailis, 2002.no angļu val. tulk. Laimonis Streips ; red. Renāte Ālīte

No suspense collection is complete without this anthology. Originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, the stories in this volume represent many of the biggest names in detective and suspense fiction: Ellery Queen, Harold Q. Masur, Celia Fremlin, Jack Ritchie, Patricia Highsmith and Bill Pronzini are only a few of the prize-winning authors in this amazing volume

Following last year’s hilariously funny Dancing Aztecs, the prolific Donald E. Westlake now produces a pair of miniatures — two brief strokes of genius for the price of one — which is certainly ENOUGH for anybody. “A Travesty,” follows the twists and turns in the career of movie critic-cum-murderer Carey Thorpe, as he flails and connives his way through a plot so devious that it finally sums up the entire genre of the Mystery Story once and for all. Carey successively becomes the Detective’s Sidekick, the Least Obvious Suspect, the Amateur Detective, the Innocent Accused, several other detective story standbys, and ultimately the Murderer Himself. What happens to Carey when he accidentally kills his girlfriend (she shouldn’t have annoyed him) is as quick and twisty as a roller-coaster ride, an endlessly intricate Murder Mystery with a true Surprise at the finish. A fast and funny story, with enough cleverness and invention for two books, it is here only half the story of ENOUGH. Completing the abundance of ENOUGH is a total change of pace, “Ordo,” the sardonic brooding character study of Ordo Tupikos, a man dealing with an astonishment out of his own past. What would you do if you discovered the plain Jane you’d married (and divorced) sixteen years ago was now, under another name, Hollywood’s reigning movie star sex queen? What Ordo does, and what is done to him reach a level of power seldom found in comedy. A study in contrasts, ENOUGH displays a pair of totally different story styles from the same fertile brain. If you’ve never had ENOUGH, you have it now

Academy Award nominee Donald Westlake (The Grifters) returns with a never-before-published thriller based on his story for a James Bond movie that never got made with an afterword by Bond producer Jeff Kleeman. A formerly rich businessman thrown out of Hong Kong when the Chinese took over from the British decides to fix his dire financial problems and take revenge on the Chinese by tunneling under Hong Kong’s bank vaults and stealing all their gold, then using a doomsday device to set off a “soliton wave” that will turn the ground to sludge, causing the whole city to collapse. Only the engineer on his staff who designed the soliton wave technology (intending it for good purposes, to help with construction projects) can stop him, working together with a beautiful young environmental activist who gets caught up in one of the soliton tests and nearly killed. From the deck of a yacht near the Great Barrier Reef to Australia and Singapore and finally Hong Kong itself, it’s a deadly game of cat-and-mouse as our heroes first struggle to escape the villain’s clutches and then thwart his insanely destructive plan

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times — 1874 — and Gabe Beauchamps, the toughest Hell’s Kitchen thug Boss Twill ever threw out of New York, arrived in San Francisco with a great idea: to rob the mint with a little help from some very unusual local talent: Vangie. A delicate slip of a girl, the West’s loveliest and daintiest and deftest and most pessimistic pickpocket. Ittzy. San Francisco’s one-man spectator sport. The world’s clumsiest and luckiest escape artist. Francis (with an “i”). The fey dandy who designs cancan costumes and choreographs the entire San Francisco Fire Department into a lunatic frenzy. Flagway. The captain of the good ship San Andreas: the ancient mariner two has spent twenty drunken years at sea trying to find his way to a drugstore in Baltimore, Md. And Percival and Roscoe and Crung and the red-haired policeman who just may have been Mack Sennett’s grandpop— All mixed together and running like mad in the world’s first comedy romance suspense pirate western adventure novel— GANGWAY!

In Donald E. Westlake's classic caper novels, the bad get better, the good slide a bit, and Lord help anyone caught between a thief named John Dortmunder and the current object of his attention. However, being caught red-handed is inevitable in Dortmunder's next production, when a TV producer convinces this thief and his merry gang to do a reality show that captures their next score. The producer guarantees to find a way to keep the show from being used in evidence against them. They're dubious, but the pay is good, so they take him up on his offer. A mock-up of the OJ bar is built in a warehouse down on Varick Street. The ground floor of that building is a big open space jumbled with vehicles used in TV world, everything from a news truck and a fire engine to a hansom cab (without the horse). As the gang plans their next move with the cameras rolling, Dortmunder and Kelp sneak onto the roof of their new studio to organize a private enterprise. It will take an ingenious plan to outwit viewers glued to their television sets, but Dortmunder is nothing if not persistent, and he's determined to end this shoot with money in his pockets

Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner is the story of Harry Künt, a practical joker who winds up in the state prison when one of his hoaxes accidentally injures two Congressmen. In the jail he meets seven tough cons with their own private tunnel into the prison town, making them the world’s first prisoner commuters

You are in the jungles of Belize. You pick your way carefully along the overgrown trail until you come to the clearing. There, above you, rest the ruins of a Mayan pyramid. Is that a stone whistle at your feet? An idol of a bat-god? Riches surround you and Kirby Galway will be more than happy to smuggle your finds up to the United States in a bale of marijuana. Aren’t you glad you met Kirby? If you are Innocent St. Michael, wily Belizan bureaucrat, you’re not. After all, you sold Kirby the worthless land and know that there are no treasures — not to mention pyramids — on it. If you are Lemuel the curator, you’re not. After all, these artifacts should be protected — by you and in your own way. If you are St. Michael’s assistant Vernon, you’re not. After all, you are involved in a plot to overthrow the government and all the visitors Kirby is bringing in are making your job more difficult. Perhaps you are one of the two homosexual antique dealers with a secret to keep hidden, or maybe you are Valerie — loved, kidnaped, ordered to be executed and otherwise getting in the way. If you are, meeting Kirby didn’t do anything for your disposition, either. Now it is your turn to meet Kirby Galway and begin the most hilarious adventure of your life

Humans is a jumbo-sized fantasy thriller featuring angels, demons, all-too-human humans, and nothing less than the complete destruction of planet Earth! The world stinks. God is fed up. He’s ready to take action. One of His very best Angels has been given the contract. He’s sent to round up a disparate crew of human beings from every corner of the world — a Soviet joke-writer, a Kenyan prostitute, a Brazilian ex-superstar chanteuse, a Chinese student-dissident, and a career criminal from Omaha, among them — gently manipulate them into a rendezvous, and set the wheels rolling for them to bring about the End of the World as We Know It. Not an easy job, but you don’t get to be an Angel without learning a few dirty tricks. But — there’s Somebody who happens to like what the human race has been doing with the planet. And soon our Angel finds himself challenged by a very wily Demon — dispatched by the Arch-fiend himself — whose mission is to save the world. Deciding whom to root for is only one of the pleasures afforded by Donald E. Westlake’s brilliant new novel

Bungling burglar John Dortmunder and his merry band of thieves are back in another classic, comic crime novel from the award-winning author of the new hardcover Baby, Would I Lie? Dortmunder and his gang plan to kidnap precocious kid Jimmy Harrington with the help of a crime novel outlining the perfect caper

In Uganda in 1977, a particular trainload of coffee, mostly belonging to dictator Idi Amin, is worth six million dollars. As a group of scoundrels and international financiers hijack the train, the double and triple crosses pile up and the comic tension escalates in a brawling brew of buffoons, bumblers, beans and boxcars. This 1981 Westlake gem is back in print. A mile-long freight train steams through the heart of Idi Amin’s mad, tortured, magical, and corrupt Uganda, loaded down with kahawa (Swahili for coffee). What Amin doesn't know, what his most beautiful spy has not been able to wring out of her latest victim, and what the world’s coffee markets may be unable to swallow, is that the train and six million dollars worth of coffee are about to disappear into the hands of a conflicted, colorful, swashbuckling band of mercenaries and moneymakers. “Kahawa is such a splendid huggermugger that if you don't like it, there's something wrong with you…. No reader that I will ever want to meet should dare complain.”

Winston was a town where, as in a mobile, everything balanced precariously. It looked all right to visitors, and even to most of the people who lived there. Children got to school safely, and there wasn’t much union trouble, and the streets were fairly clean and well paved. A few people knew better about Winston — because they ran the town. KILLING TIME is the story of what happened when a couple of outsiders tried to interfere with those few people. The VIPs you’ll meet in the book are briefly described herewith. TIM SMITH — the only private eye in town — who maintained this status with a “little black book” JORDAN REED — the business big-wig who was mayor of Winston in everything but name DAN WANAMAKER — who had the name of Mayor HARCUM — the boy who was voted least likely to succeed — so of course became Police Chief JACK WYCZA — the councilman who believed in nepotism — when he needed it RON LASCOW — the town’s sharpest young lawyer or youngest sharp lawyer SHERRI — a girl who played both sides of the game once too often PAUL MASETTI — who came to town with the peculiar project of buying a man JOEY CASALE — the grocer with a family he could turn into an army — and did Of Donald Westlake’s first novel, The Mercenaries, one reviewer wrote: “Mr. Westlake’s clipped, breezy, bitter picture of a college man who found crime paid and was stimulating, too, marks him as a newcomer most certainly arrived.” “Clipped, breezy, bitter” could certainly be used about killing time. To this add: rough, tough, and fast as a bullet

Parker, el personaje más emblemático creado por Donald E. Westlake (Brooklyn, Nueva York, 1933), es un ladrón profesional y, eventualmente, un asesino. Un hombre frío y calculador, reservado hasta la exasperación y dueño de una inteligencia más que destacable. Dos años atrás, Parker se vio obligado a abandonar en la pequeña y apacible ciudad de Tyler, en el estado de Mississippi, los setenta y tres mil dólares de botín de un robo a un coche blindado. Ahora ha llegado el momento de recuperar lo que es suyo, y para ello se va a ver involucrado en una guerra entre las mafias que controlan la ciudad. Parker, acompañado por Grofield, su cómplice, tendrá que demostrar su profesionalidad y agudizar el ingenio para lograr su objetivo, tarea nada fácil dado el poder de sus adversarios… Escrita en 1974, La luna de los asesinos es, sin lugar a dudas, una de las mejores novelas de este gran escritor norteamericano que revolucionó el género policíaco al ofrecer una nueva concepción que se aleja de los lugares comunes y los viejos clichés que siempre lo habían acompañado. El estilo ágil y directo, sin florituras ni descripciones innecesarias, acompañado de un elegante sentido del humor, acentúa la tensión de la novela, que no deja de crecer desde la primera página, hasta resolverse en un final brutal e inolvidable que revela la precisión narrativa de uno de los principales escritores norteamericanos de novela policíaca del siglo XX

Levine is an episodic saga, a series of six novellas (including one written expressly for this volume) laying open for examination the life of a Brooklyn cop, a man dedicated to his job and living in constant fear of the moment when his ailing heart will finally stop. Each of the stories is a gem of police procedure and pits Levine against the full assortment of activities which makes up a policeman’s lot — from talking a jumper off a ledge to dealing with a child who believes her mother to be a murderer to facing a Mob gunman on a deserted spit of land. With every step Levine takes, with every confrontation, he listens to the sound of his own heart — to judge his actions as well as to record the missing beats, waiting for the one he won’t hear

Following the commercial success of the original Manhattan Noir, mystery titan Lawrence Block explores the historic literary roots of this dark island. Featuring stories by: Edith Wharton, Stephen Crane, O. Henry, Langston Hughes, Irwin Shaw, Jerome Weidman, Damon Runyon, Evan Hunter, Jerrold Mundis, Edgar Allan Poe, Horace Gregory, Geoffrey Bartholomew, Cornell Woolrich, Barry N. Malzberg, Clark Howard, Jerome Charyn, Donald E. Westlake, Joyce Carol Oates, Lawrence Block, and Susan Isaacs

Comic crime hero Dortmunder and his gang of bungling thieves are back in a hilarious caper -- out of print since 1979. Mishaps and misunderstandings force the gang to steal a painting not once but twice in this hilarious misadventure starring the inimitable Dortmunder

A dump truck and a boy are a perfect combination. All they need is a bit of dirt. But where do you find dirt if you live in an apartment seven floors above the ground? That is Philip’s problem — a problem he shares with thousands of boys. Philip does think of some ingenious ways of getting dirt, but he meets with adult disapproval at every turn. The unique and happy solution to his problem finally comes from Mr. Neep, the doorman. Mr. Neep’s solution is as clever and delightful as the whole story of Philip and his truck. Colorful illustrations by Arnold Dobrin show exactly how the city looks to a small boy who lives in it

The madman clung to the side of the hill, hidden by darkness and trees. Staring over his left shoulder he could see the lights in pairs crossing the bottom of the night, round whites when coming aslant, red dots when going. Only the circling red light atop the state police car did not move on, across the valley floor and out of sight. The ambulance had gone now, and the traffic jam had been broken up, but the state police car did not move on. Down below him, past the trees, he could see the headlights going by. He was waiting for the state police car with the circling red light to go on, to go away with the rest of the lights, and then he could move. But the state police car didn’t go away. And now more red lights came, borne on the stream of headlights. The madman reared up, almost losing his balance and rolling down the hill, and stared in hatred at the revolving red lights. Three more of them, all stopping by the first. Dimly amid the lights he could see men moving, and then a different kind of light appeared. A small nailhole of light in the darkness. Flashlights. Men with flashlights crossed the road down there and started up the hill, spreading out, opening like a fan. He lost sight of them all in the trees, and saw there a flicker of light, and there. And there. They were coming after him. The madman put his head down on the ground, his burning forehead against the cool dampness of the turf. Despair washed over him. Just after dinner he’d broken out, and before midnight he was to be caught again. They would make him scream for this, the shock every day, death and rebirth every day, going down and away to spasmodic shrieks and coming back to twitches and deafness and the cold blue eyes of Doctor Chax. (There was no Doctor Chax; all the doctors were Doctor Chax: all the doctors had the cold blue eyes and the warm brown voices, and told him while they tortured him that the torture was for his own good; he had made up the name, Doctor Chax. It was all of them.) He would not go back to Doctor Chax. He would not. He got away. He had the surface plausibility of the completely mad and a glittering intelligence. Also, he had no compunction about destroying anybody who stood in his way. PITY HIM AFTERWARDS is a terrifying tour de force of suspense

Jack Pine was born to be a Hollywood star. He has no morals, no scruples; he will not hesitate to do anything or love anyone if it might advance his career, get him the best roles, or project him ever more firmly into the spotlight. And success does come, beyond the imagination of Jack’s agents and co-stars — even beyond the hopes of his boyhood friend Buddy Pal, a man who carries with the dark secrets of Jack’s past. Buddy stands apart, aloof: he alone truly benefits from Jack’s careening ambition and his artful, charming conniving. Others who depend on Jack may fall by the wayside, but how can the affable star be blamed? In fact, Jack Pine can be excused anything — until he carries out the final sin, for which there can be no pardon

Due to a foiled burglary in a high-tech lab doing research for cigarette manufacturers, Freddie Noon, the thief, is now invisible. This condition has clear-cut advantages for a man in Freddie's profession, but now everybody wants a glimpse of Freddie. But Freddie doesn't dare show his face, his shadow, anything. Because Freddie Noon has gotten a taste of invisibility--and he can't quit now. From Publishers Weekly Yet another variation on the invisible-man notion doesn't sound like a promising prospect, but if any author can wring some fresh fun out of it, Westlake's the one. He doesn't fail. Freddie Noon is a sharp, likable burglar whose mistake is to break into the offices of two doctors doing so-called research for the Tobacco Institute. Catching him, they make him a human guinea pig for one of their formulas, and -- meet disappearing Freddie. Naturally, his life as a burglar gets much easier, but his girlfriend, Peg, isn't too comfortable with an invisible lover. In no time, Freddie is on the run: the Institute wants him for its nefarious purposes, the doctors want to study him further and a corrupt cop has his own reasons for pursuit. How Freddie and Peg run rings around the opposition, in New York and at an upstate hideaway, is the stuff of glorious Westlake comedy, in which Freddie's invisibility is merely one element in a caper full of hilarious characters, crackpot conversations and narrative sleight-of-hand. 

Cab driver Chet Conway was hoping for a good tip from his latest fare, the sort he could spend. But what he got was a tip on a horse race. Which might have turned out okay, except that when he went to collect his winnings Chet found his bookie lying dead on the living room floor. Chet knows he had nothing to do with it — but just try explaining that to the cops, to the two rival criminal gangs who each think Chet’s working for the other, and to the dead man’s beautiful sister, who has flown in from Las Vegas to avenge her brother’s murder

Nabbed midheist, Dortmunder has to do some fast thinking

For 25 years, Burke Devore has provided for his family and played by the rules. Until now. Downsized from his job, Devore is slipping away: from his wife, his family, and from all civilized norms of behavior. He wants his life back, and will do anything to get it. In this relentlessly fascinating novel, the masterful Westlake takes readers on a journey of obsession and outrage inside a quiet man’s desperate world

In this volume, guest editor Sue Grafton and series editor Otto Penzler offer up their choices for the best suspense, crime, and mystery stories of the year. Included in these thrilling tales is Scott Bartels’s dark and violent “Swear Not by the Moon,” in which a drug-addicted Creole is caught between good intentions and bad decisions. In Janice Law’s haunting “Secrets,” an Irish immigrant mother and daughter are faced with unexpected cruelties as they try to make a new life for themselves. And in Lawrence Block’s clever Edgar Award-winning story “Keller on the Spot,” a contract killer uncharacteristically saves a life and finds his assignment becoming increasingly complicated. The diverse styles and themes employed in this collection showcase an impressive array of talent certain to further the popularity of the genre. Already a bestseller in its first year, The Best American Mystery Stories, as evidenced by this year’s edition, promises to keep readers intrigued and coming back for more

Have yourself a crooked little Christmas with The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries. Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler collects sixty of his all-time favorite holiday crime stories — many of which are difficult or nearly impossible to find anywhere else. From classic Victorian tales by Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Thomas Hardy, to contemporary stories by Sara Paretsky and Ed McBain, this collection touches on all aspects of the holiday season, and all types of mysteries. They are suspenseful, funny, frightening, and poignant. Included are puzzles by Mary Higgins Clark, Isaac Asimov, and Ngaio Marsh; uncanny tales in the tradition of A Christmas Carol by Peter Lovesey and Max Allan Collins; O. Henry-like stories by Stanley Ellin and Joseph Shearing, stories by pulp icons John D. MacDonald and Damon Runyon; comic gems from Donald E. Westlake and John Mortimer; and many, many more. Almost any kind of mystery you’re in the mood for — suspense, pure detection, humor, cozy, private eye, or police procedural — can be found in these pages. FEATURING: — Unscrupulous Santas — Crimes of Christmases Past and Present — Festive felonies — Deadly puddings — Misdemeanors under the mistletoe — Christmas cases for classic characters including Sherlock Holmes, Brother Cadfael, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Ellery Queen, Rumpole of the Bailey, Inspector Morse, Inspector Ghote, A.J. Raffles, and Nero Wolfe

Otto Penzler rounds up the most cunning, ruthless, criminals in mystery fiction. The best mysteries — whether detective, historical, police procedural, cozy, or comedy-have one thing in common: a memorable culprit. For all the heroes in earnest pursuit, there are malefactors on the loose, determined to outfox their efforts and sow trouble in their wake. These are the rogues and villains who haunt our imaginations, but they often have more in common with their heroic counterparts than we might expect (and, as we shall see, some even moonlight as detectives or do-gooders themselves). The seventy-two handpicked stories in this collection introduce us to the miscreants who have schemed and slashed their way through the mystery canon over the past hundred and fifty years, captivating and confounding readers in the process. MEET DELINQUENT PSYCHES OF ALL STRIPES, INCLUDING gentleman thieves, calculating crooks, fearsome body snatchers, masters of disguise, morally-challenged lawyers, deceitful doctors, heinous hit men. charismatic con men, amoral adventurers, supernatural suspects, deviant detectives, vile villainesses, and cold-blooded killers IN UNFORGETTABLE TALES BY Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, Washington Irving, Jack London, L. T. Meade, 0. Henry, Sinclair Lewis, Edgar Wallace, Leslie Charteris, Erle Stanley Gardner, Edward 0. Hoch, David Morrell, Loren D. Estleman, and countless others

Engel had worked his way up to being Nick Rovito’s right-hand man, near the top of the Syndicate. And this was a delicate job — retrieving a very important jacket, loaded with heroin, from a fresh grave. But Engel found only an empty coffin

There’s no doubt that Charlie Poole was a completely innocuous, lazy, ambitionless young man until the night two of his uncle’s friends came to murder him. Charlie tended bar in his uncle’s Brooklyn saloon and was perfectly happy to do so. There weren’t many customers, but his uncle didn’t seem to care. Uncle, as a matter of fact, had very good connections with the Syndicate, so Charlie passed messages and mysterious packages about whose contents he never asked questions. He simply didn’t care. He lived above the saloon in a small apartment and read most of the day. Nothing uplifting, mind you, just time-killing. This, then, was his happy life until it was rudely interrupted the night that two of the Syndicate’s enforcers came to enforce him out of the world. Charlie simply wouldn’t believe it at first; some mistake had been made. He had done nothing. He never had done anything. He would get to his uncle in Manhattan and find him and clear the whole thing up. His uncle would call somebody, and the two thugs downstairs would be redirected. Charlie suddenly realized that the two thugs were no longer downstairs. They were definitely clumping their way upstairs to the apartment where Charlie had run when he realized they actually meant to kill him. He then did probably the most energetic thing thus far in his twenty-odd years of life. He jumped out of the window. What happens from then on, and the way Charlie runs, his encounters with his uncle who very specifically does not help him escape, his own growing astonishment at the menace all around him, his encounters with the higher-ups in the Syndicate, his encounters with the police, and finally his encounter with Chloe, add up to a breathlessly fast-paced and very amusing mystery, with a rare antic quality. All in all, THE FUGITIVE PIGEON is a delight, and Charlie Poole is a living doll

This Halcyon Classics ebook collection contains fifty science fiction short stories and novellas by more than forty different authors. Most of the stories in this collection were published during the heyday of popular science fiction magazines from the 1930s to the 1960s. Included within this work are stories by H. Beam Piper, Murray Leinster, Poul Anderson, Mack Reynolds, Randall Garrett, Robert Sheckley, Stanley Weinbaum, Alan Nourse, Harl Vincent, and many others. This collection is DRM free and includes an active table of contents for easy navigation

John Dortmunder left prison with the warm words of the warden ringing in his ears and not one chance of going straight. Soon Dortmunder was riding in a stolen Cadillac with venetian blinds, reuniting with old friends and scheming to heist a large emerald belonging to a small African nation. As always, his planning is meticulous. As always, the execution is not. Undaunted, Dortmunder is now chasing the gem by plane, train and automobile. Because this hot rock has a way of getting stolen — not just once, but again and again and again…

Pulp fiction has been looked down on as a guilty pleasure, but it offers the perfect form of entertainment: the very best storytelling filled with action, surprises, sound and fury. In short, all the exhiliration of a roller-coaster ride. The 1920s in America saw the proliferation of hundreds of dubiously named but thrillingly entertaining pulp magazines in America: Black Mask, Amazing, Astounding, Spicy Stories, Ace-High, Detective Magazine, Dare-Devil Aces. It was in these luridly-coloured publications, printed on the cheapest pulp paper, that the first gems began to appear. The one golden rule for writers of pulp fiction was to adhere to the art of storytelling. Each story had to have a beginning, an end, economically-etched characters, but plenty going on, both in terms of action and emotions. Pulp magazines were the TV of their day, plucking readers from drab lives and planting them firmly in thrilling make-believe, successors

John Dortmunder as a butler? Well, he’s not really a butler; he’s just playing one at the heavily guarded estate of crooked tycoon Monroe Hall. A corporate pariah surrounded by loot, including a fleet of priceless vintage cars, Hall soon finds his needs—from driving to cooking—eagerly fulfilled by Dortmunder and his gang. Dortmunder’s plan: to change in one fell swoop from loyal servants to merry robbers, and drive off with ill-gotten plunder. There’s just one problem. Monroe Hall has as many enemies as antiques. Before Dortmunder can go from serving to stealing, Hall disappears and the cops are knocking on the door. And after a violent crime is committed, Dortmunder is in the worst place possible. For as everyone knows, whenever there’s mischief in a mansion … the butler always did it!

Some days you just might be better off dead — at least, that’s what smart-aleck Barry Lee, an amiable schemer with a gift for grift, decides when yet another of his get-rich-quick schemes falls short of perfect and he finds he has only one asset left: his life. Or rather, the insurance on it. Collecting the benefits of life insurance, however, involves some painfully ultimate realities that Barry Lee would sooner avoid.　 So it is that Barry and Lola, his beautiful South American wife and partner in con artistry, set out to play the globalization of the insurance industry to their fiduciary advantage. All they need for a successful operation is a country where corruption comes disguised as efficiency, where copious paperwork passes for accurate records, and where a coroner doesn’t think it necessary to see the corpse in order to issue a death certificate. Lola knows just the place. She was born there. The story of Barry and Lola’s journey to her native Guerrera and their sure-fire scheme to pull off the perfect con, which begins with the staging of Barry’s spectacular and very public accidental death, becomes increasingly perilous as Barry attempts to negotiate his afterlife in a world he in no way understands. To his surprise, then, some of Lola’s more blunt-minded and ham-fisted cousins are figuring that if the whole family’s going to get rich with Barry Lee dead, he’s not dead enough

Can a peace-loving pacifist from a tiny downstate New York Village named Greenwich find happiness in the middle of a mob of dedicated assassins? This is the question our hero, J. Eugene Raxford, asks himself while ducking bullets, bombs, karate chops and-ultimately — swords, in this latest exploit on the rollicking edge of suspense from the author of The Fugitive Pigeon and The Busy Body. The answer to J. Eugene’s question, both hilarious and scarifying, will keep you simultaneously on the edge of your seat and rolling in the aisles, and if you think that’s a tough trick, wait till you see our hero pouring evaporated milk on the microphone in his refrigerator, or taking orders from his watch (it talks to him in a tiny tinny voice), or traipsing off into low adventure and high comedy with Angela Ten Eyck, the beautiful if not brilliant peacenik daughter of the world’s most pugnacious munitions manufacturer. Dragooned by a typographical error into as daffy a league for the destruction of the world as the world has ever seen, our hero is as disheartened as the FBI to discover that he and he alone is in a position to end the nefarious doings — from the inside. Given a crash program in spy survival techniques, J. Eugene Raxford is thrust into the breach, where he would have preferred not to have been honored. His adventures and escapes, the intricacy of the plot as slowly he unravels it and it unravels him, and the ultimate triumph of very good Good over absolutely villainous Evil, all add up to either the season’s most terrifying comedy or funniest hair-raiser, or maybe both

On a literary landscape filled with cunning criminal masterminds, Donald E. Westlake’s John Dortmunder is in a league of his own. With no scam too outrageous to contemplate, and no plan too simple to go wrong, this quirky career thief has stolen everything from money buried under a reservoir to a bank — the whole bank. Now the ultimate repeat offender returns in a first-time collection of short stories that prove that just like bagels and donuts, with Dortmunder it’s always better by the dozen... THIEVES’ DOZEN

The master of the comic caper is back with a new riotous tale of double identity. When Art Dodge falls in love with beautiful twins, he wants both all to himself. So, Art and Bart Dodge marry the girls, until he is exhausted and decides Bart has to go

John Dortmunder y su banda son contratados por un embajador africano para robar un famoso diamante, conocido como Balabomo, que cobija celosamente otro país africano. Dortmunder es extremadamente hábil y minucioso, pero lamentablemente desafortunado. Siempre fracasa. Con la suerte de espaldas, se ve condenado a planificar el golpe una y otra vez con una inercia y tenacidad casi religiosas. «La vida es un equívoco constante» parece decir el escurridizo diamante a la banda de Dortmunder. Ellos, impasibles, le intentarán dar caza por tierra, mar y aire. Un diamante al rojo vivo es una de las obras maestras del extraordinario Donald Westlake. Sin lugar a dudas, su novela más hilarante e ingeniosa. Una brillante comedia repleta de equívocos y llena de personajes inolvidables, con la que John Dortmunder, ladrón y gafe profesional, se presenta en sociedad. Todo un mito de la novela negra

It's the score of a lifetime: easy access to a lavish New York City apartment, hordes of valuables, and an absentee owner avoiding the lawyers of his unhappy ex-wives. But before they pull the job, Dortmunder's crew is startled to find their beloved gin joint, the OJ, in the clutches of the Mafia — who consider it perfect for a little fraud, courtesy of a nice big fire. For tactical and highly superstitious reasons, the fate of the OJ is ever more important to the crew than the enormous score. Now, Dortmunder and his gang are determined to split their time, fighting the mob and robbing the rich simultaneously

In his classic caper novels, Donald E. Westlake turns the world of crime and criminals upside down. The bad get better, the good slide a bit, and Lord help anyone caught between a thief named John Dortmunder and the current object of his intentions. Now Westlake's seasoned but often scoreless crook must take on an impossible crime, one he doesn't want and doesn't believe in. But a little blackmail goes a long way in… WHAT'S SO FUNNY? All it takes is a few underhanded moves by a tough ex-cop named Eppick to pull Dortmunder into a game he never wanted to play. With no choice, he musters his always-game gang and they set out on a perilous treasure hunt for a long-lost gold and jewel-studded chess set once intended as a birthday gift for the last Romanov czar, which unfortunately reached Russia after that party was over. From the moment Dortmunder reaches for his first pawn, he faces insurmountable odds. The purloined past of this precious set is destined to confound any strategy he finds on the board. Success is not inevitable with John Dortmunder leading the attack, but he's nothing if not persistent, and some gambit or other might just stumble into a winning move