The Gregg Press mystery series

Fredric Brown's The Fabulous Clipjoint comes from a now-vanished world of crime fiction that once satisfied the same appetites in the audience that are now fed by television programming. Neatly crafted and loaded with atmosphere and humor, The Fabulous Clipjoint, published in 1947, follows the exploits of an unlikely pair of amateur sleuths -- a teenaged boy and his uncle, who follows the carnival -- in solving a disturbing murder.The victim is a drunk, who seems to have gotten rolled and winds up lying dead in an alley. A cop discovers the body, and a routine inquiry turns up nothing more than sad and pitiful evidence -- another blasted life that ends in another random murder. But the victim has a son, 18-year-old Ed Hunter, who is not willing to let his father's death be dismissed so quickly. He has no one to help him, so he turns to the only person he can trust, his Uncle Ambrose, a carny he has not seen in years. Ambrose agrees to help Ed, and the two set out on a most unlikely murder investigation. It takes them down dark and abandoned Chicago streets, confronting a gallery of unsavory characters in the underworld, armed only with a crazy kind of courage and an ever-growing determination to discover the truth.The Fabulous Clipjoint was Fredric Brown's first full-length novel, though its assured skill comes from the author's experience in turning out hundreds of detective stories for magazines in the 1930s and 1940s. Ed and Ambrose are an couple of offbeat heroes, foolish enough to get themselves in extraordinary situations. Brown creates a rollicking world for them to explore, filled with vivid characters and plenty of danger -- a sleek, suspenseful read.

From Goodreads: "Murray Kirk runs his private investigation agency like the business it is: he isn't interested in justice or crusades, just the profit and loss account. When he's asked to act for a young policeman accused of bribery, because he knows something about police corruption in New York City, he isn't too keen. He just can't see the profit - until he meets the man's fiancee. And then Kirk's motives become uncomfortably confused, and he finds himself descending swiftly into a grey world of bookmakers, gangsters, grafters and corrupt politicians, a world where setting up an honest cop is all in a day's work."

Professor Charles Grimaud was explaining to some friends the natural causes behind an ancient superstition about men leaving their coffins when a stranger entered and challenged Grimaud's skepticism. The stranger asserted that he had risen from his own coffin and that four walls meant nothing to him. He added, 'My brother can do more... he wants your life and will call on you!' The brother came during a snowstorm, walked through the locked front door, shot Grimaud and vanished. The tragedy brought Dr Gideon Fell into the bizarre mystery of a killer who left no footprints.

"Some women give birth to murderers, some go to bed with them. Lina Aysgarth had lived with her husband for nearly eight years before she realized that she was married to a murderer." Johnny was delightful—and Lina loved him desperately. But his devastating charm was combined with a complete lack of both morals and income. Slowly Lina discovered what such a combination led to. The first indications seemed trivial, especially since, in his childish way, Johnny loved her. Not for along time did she realize that he had killed, and was planning to kill again. Made into the famous Cary Grant-Joan Fontaine motion picture Suspicion, this story has seldom been surpassed for sheer, blood-curdling suspense. As one reviewer said, "it induces such a There-butfor-the-Grace-of-God sensation that one remains shivering for hours."