An Eye for an Eye by Clarence Darrow
The story of Jim Jackson, who struggles with poverty and harsh circumstances, before finally murdering his wife in a fit of rage. Faced with the gallows, Jackson confesses: "If ther'd been forty scaffolds right before my eyes, I'd have brought down the poker just the same." This is the only fiction novel written by Clarence Darrow.

The Sins of Philip Fleming By Irving Wallace

                             Like many a man who has married early, Philip Fleming felt that he had been cheated of the delights that his bachelor friends boasted of, that his married friends took with guilty pleasure. Cheated because, after a decade of marriage, with money and stature as a studio writer, and an endless galaxy of desirable women available to him, he had never once been unfaithful to his wife. Philip told himself the dangers were too great, the involvement too complete. He did not tell himself that he was afraid.

Then one afternoon Peggy Degen, a young widow, walked into his living room. Philip took one look at her green-eyed, feline beauty, all promise and sensuality, and for the first time knew the consuming, not-to-be-denied need to be with a woman other than his wife.

Peggy, he soon found, was willing to give herself freely—not because she was wanton, but as the spontaneous expression of her genuine, outgoing love. But when Philip went to her, the inconceivable—the outrageous—the unendurable—happened.

Philip saw that if he ran from Peggy, there would be no stopping, ever. What had begun as a glamorous extramarital romance, in less than a week became a dark, headlong obsession, threatening him with total impotence as a human being…

Available ebook formats: epub

A Prince to Order by Charles S. Wayne

A tale of devious espionage and strrange events.  Not to be missed, this is a real page-turner.

A Plot for Murder by Frederic Brown

  It's set in New York City in pre-television times. Our hero (using the term very loosely) is Bill Tracy, a former hard-drinking newspaperman who's now a hard-drinking writer for a popular radio soap opera named "Millie's Millions." It's in the tradition of the silent-screen series "The Perils of Pauline" and every episode sees Millie facing new dangers and troubles and (to the huge relief of her fans) surviving by the skin of her teeth. It pays well, but cranking out five inane episodes a week is boring, soul-destroying work.

A Minion of the Moon by T. W. Speight 

One of Speight's best novels in this creepy romance tale of love and thrills.

A Creature of the Night by Fergus Hume.

Fergus Hume's Gothic mystery begins one evening in late-nineteenth-century Verona, when a young Englishman loses his way and finds himself lost in an eerie graveyard. Seeing a mysterious woman emerge from one of the tombs, he follows her to a deserted mansion, where he witnesses a murder worthy of the Borgias. How can such a crime take place undetected in the prosaic nineteenth century? And is the woman a vampire? a ghoul? or an altogether more earthly villain...?

A fin-de-siecle crime thriller from the author of The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, this is a classic Victorian mystery dripping with period atmosphere and and Italian romance.

A Bullet for Cinderella by John D. MacDonald.

Her veneer was big city … but one look and you knew that Toni Rassell’s instincts were straight out of the river shack she came from. I watched her as she toyed with the man, laughing, her tumbled hair like raw blue-black silk, her brown shoulders bare. Eyes deep-set, a girl with a gypsy look. So this was the girl I had risked my life to find. This was the girl who was going to lead me to a buried fortune in stolen loot.

42 Days for Murder by Roger Torrey

Lurid, sexy, gritty tale of police, detectives, and sex.

This EPUB is readable on all devices and on every web browser on every computer and cell phone. Kindle, Nook, Ipod, Ipad, Android, Windows, and Mac all support this format. The EPUB has no encryption, so one can safely and easily move it from one device to another, or share it with others.

32 Calibre by Donald McGibney is a detective thriller.

The narrator, a lawyer and amateur detective, is pulled into the complicated lives of his best friend, his friend's wife, and her war-profiteer lover, during their ensuing divorce.

This EPUB is readable on all devices and on every web browser on every computer and cell phone. Kindle, Nook, Ipod, Ipad, Android, Windows, and Mac all support this format. TheEPUB has no encryption, so one can safely and easily move it from one device to another, or share it with others.

A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

A Study in Scarlet is an 1887 detective novel by British author Arthur Conan Doyle. Written in 1886, the story marks the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who would become the most famous detective duo in popular fiction. The book's title derives from a speech given by Holmes, a consulting detective, to his friend and chronicler Watson on the nature of his work, in which he describes the story's murder investigation as his "study in scarlet": "There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colorless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it."
The story, and its main characters, attracted little public interest when it first appeared. Only 11 complete copies of the magazine in which the story first appeared, Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887, are known to exist now and they have considerable value. Although Conan Doyle wrote 56 short stories featuring Holmes, A Study in Scarlet is one of only four full-length novels in the original canon. The novel was followed by The Sign of the Four, published in 1890. A Study in Scarlet was the first work of detective fiction to incorporate the magnifying glass as an investigative tool.

A Strange Disappearance by Anna Katharine Green

Thrilling mystery and detective tale by Anna Katharine Green, the grandmother of the female detective and mystery novelists.  Anna Green was an early 20th century novelist. She was one of the first authors to write detective stories in America. Her stories are known for their well thought out plots and their legal accuracy. Although Green wrote in a genre previously dominated by men she didn't think much of feminists and opposed women's suffrage. Her second novel A Strange Disappearance was published in 1880. Other books by Ana Green include: The House of the Whispering Pines, Miss Hurd, An Enigma, Leavenworth Case, That Affair Next Door, and Sword of Damocles

The Big Fix by Ed Lacy

On the night Irish Tommy Cork's murder was planned, nothing very much out of the ordinary happened. Tommy was in the ring, taking a pasting-as usual. Back to the ropes, almost sitting on the second strand, Tommy crouched, gloved hands up in front of his face like a leather fence. He was fighting a strong youngster who was now whaling away with both hands in a moment of wild enthusiasm

Dead End by Ed Lacy

A lurid, sexy, pulp detective and mystery tale by Ed Lacy. Not to be missed by hard-boiled detective fans.
Two crooked cops, a red-hot blonde, and a million in cold cash!

Lead With Your Left and The Best That Ever Did It by Ed Lacy

Two Novels in One File

LEAD WITH YOUR LEFT
Dave Wintino is the youngest homicide cop on the force, and is constantly getting ribbed for it. When an ex-cop named Owens is found murdered while delivering some for a bond company, no one takes Wintino seriously when he suggests it could be more than just a random burglary. He starts investigating on his own, and discovers that Owens and his old partner were still working together. Could an 30-year-old case involving a bootleg still and a gangland killing have anything to do with Owens’ death? When Owens’ partner is found murdered as well, Wintino knows that there is more than coincidence at work here—if only he can get someone to take him seriously.

THE BEST THAT EVER DID IT
Two men are murdered on a New York City street. One is a guy who just won a thousand dollars in a slogan contest. The other is a cop. The wife of the cop hires Barney Harris to find the killer. But what possible motive could there be for the killing of these two total strangers? Of course, the cops are already on this one, but Barney gets lucky, and stumbles across a clue in a neighborhood bar. He finds a prostitute the two men had in common. But he still can’t figure out why a killer would go after them both. What linked these two men? And what kind of scheme prompts a gunman to go after a guy so squeaky clean that the boldest act of his life is planning a trip to Europe with his contest winnings?

A Bullet for Cinderella by John D. MacDonald

Her veneer was big city … but one look and you knew that Toni Rassell’s instincts were straight out of the river shack she came from. I watched her as she toyed with the man, laughing, her tumbled hair like raw blue-black silk, her brown shoulders bare. Eyes deep-set, a girl with a gypsy look. So this was the girl I had risked my life to find. This was the girl who was going to lead me to a buried fortune in stolen loot.
This EPUB is readable on all devices and on every web browser on every computer and cell phone. Kindle, Nook, Ipod, Ipad, Android, Windows, and Mac all support this format. This EPUB has no encryption, so one can safely and easily move it from one device to another, or share it with others.
We have several credit card processors, all 100% safe and secure.  We never see your information.

Blonde Bait by Ed Lacy

What should Mickey Whalen do after he drops anchor on a desolate key off the Florida coast and meets Rose, a platinum –blonde bombshell, calmly sitting on a suitcase filled with money, and peeling off her stockings and a ritzy summer dress. She was a little too hardboiled for the coy routine and wants to know if he can make Cuba in his boat. Should he find her presence there all too disconcerting? Should he realize that a babe like this on the run from the law or the mob is going to tie him up in knots and screw up his life?

Should he run for the hills cause this dame is plain crazy and she’s going to make him crazy as well? Or should he welcome her aboard and make a life with her for nine months on a tiny inlet on one of the Cayman Islands and accede to her wishes never to be brought into a city again, never to go anywhere she could be spotted? Should Mickey ever get comfortable or should he always be surprised to find her there when he returned? After all, “how many men come home to see a half-naked movie queen smiling at them from their bed?”

In “Blonde Bait,” Ed Lacy offers the reader a Caribbean adventure of boats and blondes and booze and of a man who can’t just lie back under the sun and wait for the money to run out, but has to poke around and get some answers. The first half of the book is a quiet, gentle sunset and flows at a relaxed pace, that is, until Mickey starts getting some answers to the questions that are bugging him about Rose, answers he may not have really wanted to get.

The second half of the book is a wild chase through the streets of New York and New Jersey with all kinds of post-WWII international intrigue thrown in. Lacy did a good job of keeping the solution to the mystery under wraps until the very end of the book.  The whole thing falls together and works well. An enjoyable thriller.

Cassidy's Girl by David Goodis
Cassidy's Girl" offers a portrayal of lost people in forgotten streets of Philadelphia in the years following WW II. The characters in the story are tormented and fallen. They struggle with alcohol and with their own demons.  They say that a man needs a woman to go to hell with. Cassidy had two. One was Mildred, the wife who kept him chained with ties of fear and jealousy and paralyzing sexual need. The other was Doris, a frail angel with a 100-proof halo and a bottle instead of a harp. With those two, Cassidy found that the ride to hell could be twice as fast. Cassidy's Girl has all the traits that made its author a virtuoso of the hard-boiled: a fiercely compelling ploy; characters who self-destruct in spectacularly unpredictable ways; and an insider's knowledge of all the routes to the bottom.

Zigzags of Treachery by Dashielle Hammett
When a prominent surgeon commits suicide and an unknown wife shows up, the Op and other agents follow suspect after suspect to untangle a decades-old conspiracy. . In a busy hour, a hit-and-run leads the Op to a print shop where he's mobbed

12 Chinamen and a Woman by James Hadley Chase
Lurid pulp fiction, thrilling and fun to read, with lurid hinted overtones of nasty sex and crime. A wild, fun book to read.  Apparently, a woman is kidnapped and put aboard a ship, wherein there are 12 Chinamen and her.  The sexual overtones are there, but this novel does not quite touch upon the fear of gang rape of the woman.  Rather, it allows the reader to imagine what might happen to the woman.  An interesting, very hard-to-put-down tale.  Recommended.
Only one woman could satisfy Glorie Leadler's craving for love and excitement.And though this golden-haired bit of feminine dynamite could have had a dozen men at her feet for the asking, it was a solitary Oriental who made her heart beat fast.   When jealous rivals tore that midnight lover from Glorie's arms, her overheated emotions burst forth in a volcano of love-stricken vengeance that rocked Florida and left a sizzling mark on many men's souls.
I you like a combination of the passionate writing of Donald Herderson Clarke and the violence and vogor of Dashiell Hammet you'll go for this great James Hadley Chase novel.Author of No Orchids for Miss Blandish, Chase is a master at mixing hard men, soft ladies, and the shocking impact of unexcpeted action.  Twelve Chinamen and a A Woman is a book we guarantee you won't lay down until the last thrill-packed page.

The Mysterious Three by William Le Queux
The story centers on a mysterious stranger who visits Sir Charles and Lady Thorold while they were out of the house. Upon arriving home with their daughter Vera and friend Mr. Ashton, their butler tells them a gentleman named Smithson had stopped by, and describes him as looking like the man in a portrait they have. A quality paperback of this edition is available HERE.

Martin Hewitt, Investigator

by Arthur Morrison

Martin Hewitt, Investigator by Arthur Morrison

The book page gives an excellent overview of Martin Hewitt and how he came to be an investigator, and the introduction by Otto Penzler expands on this. According to Penzler, after the success of Holmes, authors and publishers wanted another detective in the same mould, and, apparently, Arthur Morrison, with his character of Martin Hewitt was the first author in England to exploit the Doyle formula. He operates his own, very successful, detective agency, employing only a clerk on a regular basis, although he does use the occasional casual helper. He has a good relationship with the police and is a very likeable man, who seems to get on well with everybody and anybody. His cases are written up by his good friend, journalist, Mr Brett.

Hewitt is usually called in by private individuals when the police have failed to solve a crime. He doesn’t share any deductions or clues with Brett, the police or the reader, so the conclusions of the cases are all the more amazing for that. In one case he does give Brett a hint about a clue (The Case of Mr Foggatt), but it isn’t really a fair one to either Brett or the reader, as, again, we are not privy to all the information Hewitt has. Hewitt’s theory about clues is that “two trivialities, pointing in the same direction, become, at once, by their mere agreement, no trivialities at all, but enormously important considerations”. In “The Case of the Dixon Torpedo”, a sketch would have been very helpful, although it is easy to draw the plan for yourself.

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This book is actually a series of short stories. 

Martin Hewitt is like Holmes in that he stresses the power of observation to solve a mystery. He's also like Holmes in that he's a bit of jerk. But for me, he strays too far into the realm of arrogance. Holmes doesn't fault others for missing the clues, Hewitt calls them stupid.

The mysteries weren't all too tough, though I didn't solve all of them. This is another in the series of quick reveals and long explanation before the reader could really put the clues together that were popular in the 1890s. One thing I like about Mr. Morrison's mysteries was the fact that the majority of them didn't focus on murder. I always find it refreshing when an author doesn't kill someone for the sake of the mystery. 

This was a very quick read so that if you're into classical mysteries but don't really care for Martin Hewitt, Investigator you'll either be done with him quickly or will be able to stop after a story and not feel if your missing something. 

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

The timeless classic about England's most famous detective.

More Sherlock Holmes mysteries and other books by Arthur Conan Doyle are HERE.

Murder in a Black Letter by Poul Anderson

This is a Cock Robin Mystery introducing Trygve Yamamura--judo expert, Samurai sword connoisseur and private detective--triple threat to San Francisco crime. These combined skills enable him to keep his own head attached while finding out who removed someone else's with honorable Japaneses weapon. This is a good old-fashioned detective story, a genuine whodunit, with a good deal of suspense thrown in.

Poul Anderson Has Written Many Stories and Novels, Available HERE.

The Lone Wolf Returns by Louis Joseph Vance

 American screenwriter, short story writer and novelist. Vance's The Lone Wolf books feature Michael Lanyard as a charming sort of rogue, a European jewel thief with a soft spot for damsels in distress, trained in the criminal arts by the mysterious Irishman, Bourke. This is the fifth volume in his Lone Wolf stories. The book begins: I love you, said Michael Lanyard. He spoke in French; and that simple phrase, covered by the surging song of strings and woodwinds, was inaudible to other ears. Only the woman with him heard and, hearing, roused from the reverie into which she too insensibly had lapsed, turning back from the prismatic pageantry of the dance eyes whose grave regard gave never a clue to the emotions his words inspired.

Uncanny Stories by May Sinclair

Uncanny Stories is a collection of tales of the supernatural. Eerie, startling and, of course, macabre, they are also terribly civilized and incredibly filmic. May Sinclair was an innovator of the modern thriller fiercely admired by H.P. Lovecraft; a late Victorian who was also a precursor to Virginia Woolf. She combines the traditional ghost story with a twisted psychological approach incorporating the revelations of Freud and Einstein.
Two lovers are doomed to repeat their empty affair for the rest of eternity... A female telepath is forced to face the consequences of her actions... The victim of a violent murder has the last laugh on his assailant... An amateur philosopher discovers that there is more to Heaven than meets the eye....
It is best to read these tales in your bed on a dark, windy night while the Gothic and supernatural swirl about you. If your floorboards creak, then so much the better.

The Men From The Boys by Ed Lacy

Starts out with a bang: As if I wasn't feeling bad enough it had to be one of those muggy New York City summer nights when your breath comes out melting. With my room on the ground floor and facing nothing, I lay in bed and sweated up the joint. The summer hadn't been too rough till the last few days, about the time my belly went on the rocks, when it became a Turkish bath. I stared up at the flaky ceiling and wished the 52 Grover Street Corporation would install air conditioning. Almost wished I was the house dick at a better hotel. No, I didn't wish that—I had a sweet deal at the Grover. With my police pension, the pocket money the hotel insisted was a salary, and my various side rackets, I was pulling down over two hundred dollars a week in this flea bag— all of it tax free. Turning over to reach a cool part of the sheet, this warm, queasy feeling bubbled through my gut. I belched and snapping on the table light took a mint. All I had on was shorts, but they were damp and as I started to change them, there was a knock on the door. When I said, “Yeah?” Barbara opened the door, fanning her face with a folded morning paper. She never slopped around in a kimono or just a slip. Barbara was always neat in a dress and underthings, and shoes, not slippers. Which was one reason I let her work the hotel steadily. Her simple face might have been cute—ten years ago. Now it held that washed-out look that comes with the wear and tear. But her legs were still cute, long and slim. She closed the door and leaned against it. “My—what a lump of man.”