FICTION · DETECTIVE AND MYSTERY
George Harmon Coxe
Also known as: George H. Coxe, George Harmon 1901- Coxe
Most acclaimed
Deadly image
When Jack Casey, number one photographer at the Morning Express, dropped in at the Melody Lounge he wasn't looking for trouble. But this time, as they so often did, people who were already in trouble came to him. The first was Shirley Farrington, who asked Casey to escort her home from the party where her husband was rapidly getting drunk. The second was Donald Farrington himself. Casey knew Farrington as a wealthy stockbroker whose private life was impeccable. Now someone was trying a little game of blackmail and Farrington needed help. When Casey started asking questions, the answers didn't add up. Who was Shirley seeing at the Melody Lounge? Why had Farrington's sister paid $1,000 to a sleazy private eye on Meridian Street? In the next few days, the trail led Casey from the top strata of society to the shabby underworld of showgirls and scandal photographers. Then the game got rough. A man was found dead, and Casey was caught between the cops and an unknown killer—with a story he couldn't tell to anyone until he had all the answers.
Dangerous legacy
Hungry for work, an ex-air force pilot takes a deadly assignment in Manila. Despite three years of exemplary service flying for his country in the South Pacific, Spence Rankin can't find work. He's losing a bar fight in San Francisco when his old friend Ulio Kane appears. A former companion of Rankin's, Kane was born in Manila and spent the war organizing guerilla warfare against the Japanese. They killed his family during the occupation, so Kane faked his death and set about preparing for peacetime life. But now Kane has received a plea for help, signed by his father -- who's supposed to be dead. Is the note genuine, or is it a trap lain by his enemies in the mining business? He must return to Manila to be sure, and wants to hire Spence as a bodyguard. The pilot agrees to take the job, for death in the tropics is preferable to boredom in California.
Death at the Isthmus
Jim Russell had always known that some day he would have to pay off the debt he owed Max Darrow. That this obligation, incurred on the island of Luzon in 1945, should take him to Panama City nine years later didn't seem particularly strange. Yet once there, Darrow seemed reluctant to talk, and by the time he changed his mind, things had broken wide open. First there was the slim girl with the high-cheekboned face and the suntanned legs. Then the man with the tinted glasses and his friend with the gun. Finally there was the indestructible Max Darrow, indestructible no longer, sprawled on the floor of his apartment in front of his rifled safe. Jim's promise to Darrow was hard to explain to the police, but he was most concerned about the girl. Emeralds, gunrunning and jealousy mixed together make a dangerous brew, and too many people seemed to have sampled it.