From Hollywood’s Black Dahlia to the Arkansas Bluebeard: an anthology of true-crime profiles by “the grand dame of mystery” (Ed Gorman)

Whether venturing into a blood-spattered farm in Texas, down a lonely mountain road in Alabama, or into the deceptively sunny Ohio suburbs, acclaimed mystery writer Craig Rice lends her hard-boiled style and a wicked irony to this gallery of real-life murders. Among them …

A saintly middle-aged widow bludgeoned to death in her New Jersey home; the headless torsos of two women found floating in the Lake of the Ozarks; a New Year’s fire in Pennsylvania set to cover the traces of a more ghastly crime; a traveling evangelist on a divine mission blown to bits in Berkley; an aspiring starlet tortured, bisected, and dumped in a vacant LA lot; and a New York couple poisoned to death by the mysterious “Veiled Murderess,” a convicted killer who never revealed her motives–or her true identity.

Culled from Rice’s work as a crime reporter, “the stories in 45 Murderers have withstood time” as a century-spanning, cross-country tour of the sinister underbelly of the American Dream (Jeffrey Marks, author of Who Was That Lady?).

A Chicago lawyer gets swept up in a conspiracy of spies, double-crosses, brainwashing, and murder.

Defense attorney John J. Malone may be a habitue of Windy City dive bars, but he’s never lost his balance–until now. Not only is he shaken by the contract killing of his latest client, but one of his best friends, socialite Helene Justus, is turning into a complete stranger.

At the urging of a mysterious old college chum, the job-phobic heiress has suddenly taken a low-level position at a top-secret chemical research lab. What’s more, Helene is spending her mornings on the couch of an esteemed hypnotherapist. It’s confusing as hell to her husband, Jake. To Malone, too. The last time he saw Helene she had no idea who he was.

Now it’s up to Malone to shed some light on the shadows of Helene’s secret life. Somebody’s playing mind games–and the power of suggestion is turning Helene into its most dangerous pawn.

A Chicago attorney scours the Big Apple for a missing bride and a wedding-night murderer in a mystery that’s “Miss Rice at her best” (The New Yorker).

On a break from the Windy City, aspiring crime novelist Jake Justus and his wife, Helene, are acquainting themselves with Manhattan’s finest cocktail lounges when they befriend Dennis Morrison, a blind-drunk groom. The handsome former male escort thought he’d found his bounty in homely heiress Bertha Lutts, but while their wedding night may have been a bust, the morning after turned out to be the real horror. It seems Bertha has vanished from their bridal suite and in her place is an unidentified beheaded woman. Having taken a shine to Dennis, Jake and Helene call on his best defense: Chicago attorney John J. Malone.

Winding his way through both the city’s low lives and its high society, Malone quickly discovers a link between the nameless victim, the missing bride, and a slick gigolo: a bohemian Greenwich Village poetess who is free with her verse, knows more than she realizes, and is becoming more frightened with every New York minute. But when Dennis disappears as well, Malone’s left with the itchy feeling that another dead end is right around the corner.

A midway murder sends a terrified eyewitness running for her life–from a cop, a con, and her own secrets–in this mystery by the author of the John J. Malone series.

The best carnival barker in the business couldn’t have drawn a crowd like the one now gathered around the Ferris wheel on the pier. In one of the cabs, still rocking with the ocean breeze, is a dead man–a bloody knife protruding from his back. Why the notorious gambling boss Jerry McGurn was killed is no mystery. Who did it is. And there’s only one probable witness to the crime.

As bystanders go, Ellen Haven comes across as innocent: pretty enough, plus her blue eyes well up with tears at the mere mention of something as awful as murder. Homicide detective Art Smith wants to believe she didn’t see a thing. Why would she lie? Then again, why else would she suddenly vanish? And Smith isn’t the only one looking for her; so is a brutal ex-con, fresh out of San Quentin, with a score to settle. Smith knows he’d better find her first, but Ellen is leading both men into a hall of mirrors where illusions of guilt and innocence can shatter with a single gunshot.

A former crime reporter, Craig Rice was “the first writer of detective fiction to make the cover of Time magazine. Her hardcover sales figures matched those of her bestselling contemporaries Rex Stout, Ellery Queen, Erle Stanley Gardner, and Raymond Chandler. She’s worth remembering” (Jon L. Breen, Edgar Award-winning author).

Being framed for murder is the least of a Chicago attorney’s problems in this dizzying thriller.

Attorney John J. Malone, steadfast, barfly, and proud defender of the guilty, has a lot enemies, but few more formidable than Chicago financier and anti-vice crusader Leonard Estapole. So it doesn’t look good when Estapole’s corpse turns up in Malone’s office, liberated from this life by a bronze Buddha to the skull. But when the stiff’s stepdaughter is kidnapped, and Malone is implicated, it’s a frame job gone too far. Especially when Malone is suddenly saddled with the obnoxious abductee–a dimpled little extortionist who refuses to go home.

If only Malone could count on his friends, Jake and Helene Justus. Unfortunately, Helene’s disappeared from a Wyoming dude ranch and her friendship with Estapole’s trophy-wife widow is too coincidental for comfort. Now, with every blindsiding twist of the case, Malone is starting to feel more and more like a hostage himself.

The first mystery writer to ever make the cover of Time magazine, Craig Rice is a “composite of Agatha Christie’s ingenuity, Dashiell Hammett’s speed, and Dorothy Sayers’s wit” (Louis Untermeyer). And in Knocked for a Loop, she’s in “top form” (Jon L. Breen, Edgar Award-winning author).

There has never been a woman as beautiful as top model Delora Deanne. But Delora Deanne doesn’t really exist. Unknown to the panting public, Delora is a composite of many women. Her face is played by Gertrude Bragg. Torso and legs by Eula Stolz. Hands, Eva Lou Strauss. Brains, Hazel Swackhammer.

But now, Delora is coming apart. Hazel Swackhammer receives the first in what is to be a series of beautifully wrapped presents. Inside, she is surprised to find a pair of pale lavender gloves … containing the hands of Delora Deanne.

The Big Midget is the hit of the show in Jake Justus’s night club, until someone puts an abrupt end to the Midget. Why were eleven unmatched silk stockings used as a noose? Who conked Jake when he got on the killer’s trail? John J. Malone finds all the answers with the energetic and hilarious assistance of Jake Justus and the beautiful Helene.

Radio star Nelle Brown is known coast-to-coast for her sweet and sultry voice. But her press agent and manager, Jake Justus, is familiar with another side of the darling of the airwaves: her crackpot marriage to a penniless tycoon, disastrous string of lovers, and propensity for flying into spectacular fits of rage. Now, it appears she’s being burned by an ex-flame who’s holding her scandalous love letters for ransom. The missives could ruin Nelle’s career, but so could the scoundrel’s murder. For Nelle and Jake, reporting the crime is out of the question–not to mention pointless, as the corpse has vanished along with the incriminating evidence.

John J. Malone, Chicago’s rumpled yet resourceful legal beagle, is tasked with finding both. But as every new unscrupulous lead turns up dead, Malone isn’t sure whether Nelle is orchestrating a killer cover-up to save her pretty neck or if she’s about to belt out her own swan song.

One postman! Two postmen! Three postmen! All murdered!

John J. Malone sticks his nose into the case of the dead postmen and picks up a crack on the head, an Australian beer hound, and six redheaded twins. It all begins when he takes on a new client, Rodney Fairfaxx. Rodney was tabbed for the postmen murders because he hadn’t received a letter from a dead girl for more than thirty years. Malone doesn’t think that this is enough reason to kill, but he can’t prove it.

Wrongly convicted of murder, a death-row chorus girl lives for revenge, in this novel from “the grand dame of mystery mixed with screwball comedy” (Ed Gorman).

Anna Marie St. Clair was a normal Wisconsin-farm-girl-turned-mistress when she was framed for the murder of her racketeer boyfriend, one of Chicago’s sleaziest politicians. Sentenced to death, and only hours from getting fried, a lucky hitch sets Anna Marie free, but she blackmails the corrupt warden into informing the tabloids that she took her volts like a real trouper. What better payback than to haunt the lives of those who tried to steal hers? As the shapeliest ghost in the Windy City, she’s going to prove that dying well is the best revenge.

Even luckier for Anna Marie, she has enthusiastic backup: attorney John J. Malone, who’s got a soft spot for scrappy dames; her best friend, nightclub stripper Milly Dale; and crime reporter Jake Justus and his wife, Helene, who are always game for adventure. But when navigating the criminal underworld gets a little too spirited, there’s no telling who’s going to end up dead.

Ten stories featuring the Chicago attorney-turned-sleuth from “the grand dame of mystery mixed with screwball comedy” (Ed Gorman)

From suburban cocktail parties to music halls to the precarious ledge of a high-rise, Chicago attorney John J. Malone is willing to take on any case–as long as it’ll pay his bar tab.

In this ten-story collection of murder most offbeat a wedding anniversary party turns deadly for an unlucky housewife, a client’s supposed innocence hangs by a thread after a suicide attempt, a forlorn ballad may contain the key to a mystery, a relatively harmless lady wrestler gets pinned for cracking her husband’s skull, an old flame’s diary reveals a poisonous past, and a surprising obituary forces Malone to investigate his own suspicious death.

A dozen murders and counting–and any one of them could lead a Chicago attorney to a hotheaded female tycoon.

It’s 11:59 p.m. on New Year’s Eve and criminal lawyer John J. Malone is nursing his blues in a Chicago dive bar. He’s been two-timed by his inamorata and abandoned by his favorite gumshoe partners, crime reporter Jake Justus and socialite Helene Brand, for their Bermuda honeymoon. But Malone’s not lonely for long. Suddenly, a stranger staggers into the bar, calls out the attorney’s name, and drops dead–stabbed in the back. In his possession is a key that could unlock the cold heart of Mona McClane, a wealthy and beautiful thrill-seeker who once challenged Jake in a high-stakes gamble: She’d bet him she could get away with murder.

Is this dead man a pawn in Mona’s game? If so, thank goodness Jake and Helene’s honeymoon turned as a sour as a margarita. They’re already back in town, at odds, yet ready to play. With a crazy wager like Mona’s, Malone fears they’ll be ringing in the New Year with a countdown of corpses.

In this novel, two New York City street photographers develop a deadly get-rich-quick scheme.

Resourceful Bingo Riggs and his partner, Handsome Kusak, are in the sucker-bait business, snapping candid pics of tourists off Central Park. Their fly-by-night enterprise can be irresistible to souvenir lovers, but with one camera in a pawnshop and their developing room in the bathtub of a two-room dump near Hell’s Kitchen, their venture is wretchedly underexposed–until they stumble upon an insurance fraud scheme between the allegedly dead eccentric Mr. S. S. Pigeon and his business partner and beneficiary.

There’s only one way for Bingo and Handsome to muscle in on that half-million-dollar claim: kidnap Pigeon and blackmail his coconspirator. Unfortunately, their foolproof plan comes with mobsters, a dodgy chorus girl, multiple murders, a refrigerated corpse, and the strange Mr. Pigeon himself, who, it seems, likes being a hostage. In fact, he has no intention of escaping. It’s the surest way to protect his own secret–which could be Bingo and Handsome’s biggest threat.

This Thanksgiving, two birds of a feather are about to get plucked.

Former con artist photographers Bingo Riggs and Handsome Kusak are en route from the grit of New York City to the glitter of Sunset Boulevard when their dreams are waylaid in a tragic roadside accident with an errant turkey. But getting stuck in the off-the-map community of Thursday County, Iowa, has an upside: a blushing farmer’s daughter with a promising sob story. To help her ailing grandma, the Halvorsen family turkey farm is up for grabs. With Thanksgiving just around the corner, Bingo and Handsome plan to make a bundle off the gobbling herd.

But these two city slickers should’ve known that small towns hide big secrets–and Thursday’s secrets go back more than a decade. Before long, Bingo and Handsome get tangled up in a bank robbery, face off with an escaped convict, follow the trail of a buried fortune, are wrangled into a fowl conspiracy, and come to a dead end when they become suspects in a murder. As Thanksgiving day nears, it could very well be their heads on the chopping block.

From the author of the John J. Malone Mysteries: An estranged relative becomes heir to a Chesapeake Bay fortune–and his family’s ghostly history.

If it hadn’t been for his great-uncle Philip, David Telefair would’ve grown up unwanted, forlorn, and poverty stricken in a New England parsonage. But for twenty years, David’s generous benefactor paid for his education, yearly summer camps, living expenses as he grew older, and any amenities he ever needed. Odd that David had never spoken to him in his entire life. Odder still that after all this time, the aging Philip has now extended an invitation for David to meet him at his isolated estate on Telefair Island in the Chesapeake.

From the moment David arrives, something feels … off. First was the local minister’s daughter’s queer way of describing David’s visit: inevitable; then the unaccountable loathing in the eyes of a Telefair servant; and finally a perilously pale female cousin who welcomes David with a warning: “You ought never to have come.” This is less a family reunion than an ingeniously designed trap of murder, madness, and nasty family secrets.

This stand-alone novel by Craig Rice, the first mystery writer ever to appear on the cover of Time magazine, is “an incredible tale … where ghosts still pull the strings of human lives, where revenge and hate outlast a generation and punishment is insidiously prolonged … a haunting sense of impending gloom” (Kirkus Reviews).