The men who bossed the city were running scared. Elections were coming up and the voters were rallying behind Richardson Caldwell, an idealistic reformer with the old-fashioned notion that criminals belonged in jails instead of public offices. But then a staggering development struck at the hopes of Caldwell’s supporters. He was found drunk in his apartment, and beside him lay a murdered woman whose reputation had been notorious gossip for years. Caldwell was arrested and charged with murder. The cell door swung shut on his career and the hopes of the city for decent government. It was then that Sam Terrell, a newspaperman, began a determined inquiry into the life of the...

Larry Kent stalked out of the house, determined to punish his wife by sowing a few wild oats. Then came the dawn — and with it a chance to reap the harvest...

When May Laval, a hostess able to satisfy most appetites, decides to “go public” with her diaries, her good friend Dan Riordan hires public-relations expert Jake Harrison to defend his honor. But when May is found murdered, Jake’s suspicions of Riordan’s perfect alibi send him on a roller-coaster ride through Riordan’s murky past. And even Jake’s hard shell begins to crack as the secrets exposed tell more about “society” than any memoirs might reveal.

This is a story of the most heart-rending of crimes — the kidnapping of a little child. First the author lets us see the crime itself. Then we watch the anguish of the parents as they discover their loss, the arrival of the ransom note, the payment of the money and all the cruel aftermaths of this cruelest of crimes.

“Murder on the Turnpike” takes place over a single night when a serial killer (before there was a term for that) is stalking, abducting, and killing motorists along a 100-mile length of interstate highway stretching south from New York. The state troopers patrolling the turnpike first notice an abandoned car followed by a dead body — with more mayhem to follow. Even still, it takes them awhile to piece together what’s happening. Adding to the tension is the fact that 45 miles of this highway will be traveled by the motorcade of the President of the United States later that night. Dan O’Leary is the earnest young state trooper who discovers the first abandoned car 200 yards away from a...

Black Dove... The identity of the notorious criminal, Black Dove, still baffles the officers of Interpol, the Surete and Scotland Yard. But there is nothing to connect him with Peter Churchman, an Englishman living quietly in Southern Spain with his bright new love. Until Angela reappears, fragile and evil, with her old power over him and her old craving for money...

When Mark Weir, a Chicago homicide lieutenant, starts investigating a series of murders of army servicemen, he comes on a smuggling “loop” set up by two army sergeants between Frankfurt, Germany, and Chicago. With the help of a striking Chicago newspaperwoman, his ex-wife, Lieutenant Weir begins to fit the pieces together... when he is suddenly gunned down. It is his father, a retired general who wants to assuage the bitterness that divided father and son during the Vietnam years, who decides to avenge his death — by taking on the son’s mission himself, as a matter of honor. Set against the backdrops of Chicago, Washington and NATO Europe, A Matter of Honor races with edge-of-the-seat...

The powerful story of a man and a woman who built their hope of heaven on murder.

William P. McGivern, a popular and prolific fantasy and science fiction writer in the 1940s and 1950s (under his own name as well as the pseudonyms Gerald Vance and P.F. Costello), later achieved fame as a noir and hardboiled mystery author of such classics as “The Big Heat.” The William P. McGivern Fantasy Megapack collects 25 of his early fantasy stories.

It was Jeff’s job to make sure the girl caught a train out of town. This time he earned his fee... the hard way!