Risultati letto da "Mark Peckham" in Tutte le categorie

The nice, mild man named Edward Tollman had a problem. His lovely wife was missing, and he wanted her back--fast. So he went to a fellow whose specialty was solving problems like that--a very private detective called Barney Burgess. Burgess' methods were not pleasant, but they got results. Burgess was used to sordid scenes and secrets.

All police sergeant Burt March wanted was a chance to recover from a recent brush with the Grim Reaper. Sun, fun, and a willing broad - that was all he needed. But the broad had along a sugar daddy with his own private squad of goons with guns. And when the fun began, Burt found himself the gunmen's number one target.

Dr. Harry Brown is a competent, respectable practitioner of the time-honored art of medicine--until the day old man Gresham, with his millions of dollars, failing heart, and young spouse, hires him. Suddenly it's money, luxury, and love. But what happens to a doctor when someone slips a corpse into his locked apartment? What can a man say when he finds himself a member of an organized crime ring? How can Harry tell his richest patient he's having an affair with a man's wife?

"Let's face it, Alex: you were the KGB's top assassin, and they paid you off. Just as we might. A cushy lieutenant-colonelcy in Tokyo, riding pour le sport , a yacht, your pick of Eurasian dolls... Like? We can do you better in the USA, Alex--come on over, and bring your secrets with you." That was FACE's pitch to the would-be defector, and it got results. Witness one hell of a nice courier slashed and dumped in a Tokyo alley.

The four of them had only two things in common - their name and a love for the ladies. John Boce was a no-account accountant who lusted after food, drink, cars, and women. John Thompson was a secretive librarian who liked his books and his women well-stacked. John Viviano was a fashion photographer with a great feel for a body - any body! And John Pilgrim was a poetic bum who had the girls hanging on his every stanza. All of them wanted the same woman, but which one wanted her enough to kill?

Police captain Bartholdi sometimes indulged himself in a harmless fantasy. His thoughts, he would imagine, were irresponsible imps that wriggled out of his head and scampered around with an abandon that was often embarrassing. A woman had been kidnapped. The woman was dead. Bartholdi was convinced that a murderer was at that moment having a grim laugh at his expense. He knew who the murderer was. He would have bet his pension and his sacred soul that he knew.

Disc jockey Tutter King has it made. Every time he spins a platter on King's Session, gold comes out: TV earnings, returns on his secret holdings in recording companies - the old payola that some bright young men think only their rightful due. Tutter is a gay young man-around-town who has the world dancing to his tune. He is also involved in some hanky-panky with his pretty blond assistant, Lola Arkwright.

When Barney Street, the fixer, was in Holland in World War II, his life had been saved by a German soldier. Now Barney is dead and his two million dollar estate is left entirely to the soldier who saved him, Milo Hacha. But that fortune comes with a death sentence, for Barney's widow, Estelle, won't rest until she gets back everything that is rightfully hers.

The Syndicate - led by gangster Larry Cutter - is trying to take over Iroquois. They want the town, mayor, and police chief in their pocket. So they kill chief Andy Saxon and one of his top men. Then they move into clean up. But they hadn't reckoned on the chief's son, Lieutenant Ted Saxon.

The coed missing from Tisquanto State is the daughter of Governor Sam Holland's rival for reelection - and best friend. But she is more than that. She is Laura Thornton, a human being - somehow the pawn and victim of angry student upheavals not even the governor understands...

All Hollywood producer Ben Sloane had wanted was to find Sol Dahlman, the mysterious film genius who had made The Wild Nymph - and now Sloane is dead. "Go up to Rockview," the governor tells Mike McCall, "and get me the killer!" But it isn't quite that easy. The Mann Photo Service, long rumored to be a center of the blue-movie industry, is torn by a strike, and nobody is talking to strangers.

Ellery Queen challenges you to solve these clues to death. A thin envelope - worth a man's life. A shattered display case - whose stolen contents a thief replaced with a strange manuscript. The murder symbol: 3HS wM …the queer cipher found to be an old mark of death. These are but a few of the baffling signs Drury Lane follows down a path of deception and murder to one of the most startling climaxes in mystery fiction.

The nine-word clue was one of nine cryptic notes that had been sent to taunt Inspector Queen and his son Ellery nine days after the murder. Nino Importuna had been obsessed with the number. He had lived by it. Now the killer who brought a trio of gory deaths to Nino's ninth-floor penthouse at Number 99 East was camouflaging his identity in a jungle of nines - and daring Ellery to find him. The case was destined to be a dazzling contest of wits - to the ninth degree!

With nearly 50 percent of marriages ending in divorce, a growing percentage of women over age 40 choosing not to have children, and more than three percent of the population identifying as LGBT, modern life is clearly in need of some modern relationship advice. Sex from Scratch analyzes the facets of contemporary relationships through the struggles, opinions, and experiences of a diverse group of individuals living in nontraditional relationships.

Drug lords, missing millionaires, corrupt cops… just another day for Carpenter and Quincannon Detective Services. Two missing bodies and two separate investigations take Carpenter and Quincannon from the heights above San Francisco Bay to the depths of Chinatown's opium dens. For John Quincannon, this is a first: searching a Chinatown opium den for his client's husband, missing in the middle of a brewing tong war set to ignite over the stolen corpse of Bing Ah Kee.

A debutante's missing body, murder most foul, and weird spectrallights in the fog make for a thrilling gas light-era tale of mystery and detection. In 1895 San Francisco young debutantes don't commit suicide at festive parties, particularly not under the eye of Sabina Carpenter. But Virginia St. Ives evidently did, leaping from a foggy parapet in a shimmer of ghostly light.

A con man always has a bag of tricks, ready to fool the unsuspecting, and almost everyone is unsuspecting until they get taken. When that happens, they turn to Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, to recover their money and what’s left of their dignity, and perhaps even to save their lives.

When a pleasant afternoon's bicycling through Golden Gate Park with a friend ends with the revelation of threatening letters, followed by a gunshot in a mansion garden, Sabina Carpenter knows this is a case that demands her immediate and undivided attention. The questions her partner John Quincannon has to unravel are not difficult: Wrixton, a wealthy banker, has met his extortionist's first demand, but the order to pay another $5,000 is too much to face. The banker's real problem is something he doesn't want to reveal.

Can the true identity of the Sherlock Holmes imposter be revealed at last? Sabina Carpenter and John Quincannon are no stranger to mysteries. In the five years since they opened Carpenter and Quinncannon, Professional Detective Services, they have solved dozens, but one has eluded even them: Sherlock Holmes or, rather, the madman claiming his identity who keeps showing up with a frustrating - though admittedly useful - knack for solving difficult cases.