Library of crime classics

Gilda Decker needs a new bag, what with her second husband being suddenly crippled and her ex-husband hiding himself and his money somewhere in the hinterlands of Mexico. Gilda's recently retained lawyer, Tom Aragon, Mexican himself, is the best man for the job. But the deeper Aragon digs into her ex-husband's past the more dangerous his job becomes. One of Millar’s few reoccurring characters and her only foray into the tradition of Chandler and Hammett, Tom Aragon, ranks among her best creations. A sarcastic but talented young lawyer with a few rough edges, Aragon finds himself navigating one entitled nest of vipers after another, not to mention racial prejudice.

"In this murder mystery, a woman can not remember the man who claims to be her husband following the murder of a young girl. The woman's uncle runs a mystery radio show, which brings up the questions of who committed the murder, why they murder the girl and who is the man claiming to be her husband."--Container.

Murder mystery featuring Hildegarde Withers. First published 1932.

John J Malone / Jake & Helene Justus #4 (1941) Abandoned by his nearest and dearest, John Malone is left to drink in the New Year solo among the crowd at Joe the Angel's bar. Then, in staggers a complete stranger, bellowing Malone's name and surreptitiously passing him a key--nondescript except for the "114" on its handle--before collapsing and dying from the knife wound in his back. Still hung over more than a day later, thanks to Captain von Flanagan's unconventional style of interrogation, Malone gets a cable from honeymooning Jake, requesting fare home from Bermuda. Worse, there's bride Helene right on Malone's doorstep. The honeymoon is decidedly over. Neither Justus wants anything to do with the other, except to demonstrate an innate superiority by independently solving the perfect-crime puzzle that defeated the entire trio after Mona McClane put it to them as a bet on the day of the wedding (The Wrong Murder, series book #3). But the dead house guest discovered at Mona's house shortly after Malone and Helene arrive for cocktails doesn't fit the terms of Mona's puzzle. Instead, he bears a knife wound that's an exact match for the bar stiff's. And a slip of paper reading only "114." Happy New Year.

Before he became a famous mystery novel and sci fi critic, Anthony Boucher wrote this locked room mystery under the penname H. H. Holmes. Voted by critics as the ninth best locked room novel of all time, it concerns an ultra-Catholic family, one member of whom was investigating a religious cult. Though most of the investigation is handled by a young journalist and the stalwart cops, the impossible murder is solved by Boucher's continuing character Sister Ursula, a nun who grew up wanting to be a policewoman. Sister Ursula unmasks the criminal using her religious knowledge. The novel in one way is a tribute to John Dickson Carr whose Hollow Man and its analysis of locked room possibilities are frequently referenced. Besides frequently quoting Shakespeare, devout Catholic Boucher contrives scenes to make Catholic customs and beliefs less mysterious to non-Catholics.

Two professors go missing from their California university. Dissatisfied with the efforts of the police, the devoted wife of one and the neurotic daughter of the other conduct their own investigation. A suave young man joins their search...for reasons of his own.

250 p. ; 18 cm

edited and with a preface by D.R. Bensen; foreword by Isaac Asimov. Contents: Strychnine in the soup -- The crime wave at Blandings -- Ukridge starts a bank account -- The purity of the turf -- The smile that wins -- The purification of Rodney Spelvin -- Without the option -- The romance of a bulb-squeezer -- Aunt Agatha takes the count -- The fiery wooing of Mordred -- Ukridge's accident syndicate -- Indiscretions of Archie.(Excerpt)

The orderlies do not need a straitjacket for Bill Crane. He is not violent, although he does have a bad habit of making embarrassing deductions about the doctors. This sarcastic, hard-drinking man has deluded himself into thinking he is Edgar Allan Poe’s great detective, C. Auguste Dupin. For this, he has been put away in a stately mental hospital on the Hudson. But Crane is not as delusional as he appears. Though he may not be Dupin, he certainly is a detective—one of the greatest, and occasionally drunkest, of them all. Sent undercover to investigate the theft of an inmate’s fortune, Crane finds the institution not as comfortable as he had hoped. When his fellow patients start dying, he must solve the murders, or risk losing his sanity after all.

Murder mystery featuring Hildegarde Withers. First published 1931. The transformation of a prim schoolteacher into an amateur sleuth begins with a school visit to the New York Aquarium.

Ward Reynard, a struggling writer equally at odds with the Establishment and with himself, turns on with LSD, tunes in to violence, and drops out at the home of his wealthy, protective parents. In his wake are a hospitalized son, injured as much spiritually as physically by his father's betrayal, and a badly shaken wife, Sherry, who has taken a room in a boardinghouse in order to be near her little boy.