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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...
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It's part casino, part nightclub, and part circus. For its new owners, Jake Justus and his socialite wife, Helene, it's also a gamble. Luckily they have Jay Otto. Next to a bouncy burlesque bit, Otto's high-wire act is the hottest draw in the joint. But the crowd isn't the only thing left breathless. The performer has just been found in his dressing room, doped up, dead, and hanging by eleven silk stockings. The method is fetching. The probable motive?...
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For a Windy City attorney, the clues to a triple murder lie somewhere between the sinking of the Titanic and the dead letter office. Rodney Fairfaxx is influential and wealthy enough for his family to ignore the Chicago magnate's one little quirk: Ever since his sweetheart sank with the Titanic three decades ago, he's been anxiously awaiting her letter assuring him she's dry, on the mend, and coming home soon. Now, attorney John J. Malone is defending...
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John J. Malone, defender of the guilty, is notorious for getting his culpable clients off. It's the innocent ones who are problems. Like Holly Inglehart, accused of piercing the black heart of her well-heeled and tyrannical aunt Alexandria with a lovely Florentine paper cutter. No one who knew the old battle-ax liked her, but Holly's prints were found on the murder weapon. Plus, she had a motive: She was about to be disinherited for marrying a common...
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Eccentric brothers Frank and George Faulkner are hosting a weekend house party at the legendary Ravensmoor estate. The guests include a pair of struggling newlyweds, a brutal criminal attorney, a fading chorus girl, and a freeloading couple who live off the fat of their friends. All of them are acquaintances save for a mousy stranger who's more shadow than man. Then, one by one, each visitor makes the same startling discovery: George's corpse snuggled...
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The snarky and debonair actor George Sanders (who would go on to win an Academy Award for his performance in All About Eve) has had enough of playing a B-movie detective in the Falcon film series. He's thrilled to land a role against type in an epic historical adventure opposite the hottest bombshell in Hollywood. Then, as the shooting begins . . . the shooting begins. During an all-too-authentic action scene, a background sap in a glue-on beard takes...
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When club owner Jake Justus and his wife, Helene, flee a sweltering Chicago summer for rural Jackson County, Wisconsin, they expect sweet-as-apple-pie locals and calm lakes for fishing. Instead, they become the bait: When the town's two-term senator is shot to death, Jake and Helene are held as material witnesses-and, if the fathead sheriff has anything to say about it, suspects. Attorney John J. Malone comes to help out his friends, but in a town...
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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...
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A Chicago cad blackmails a torch singer in this thriller: "Why can't all murders be as funny as those concocted by Craig Rice?" (The New York Times) 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...
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A supermodel's beauty secrets trigger an ugly series of murders in this "pretty damn wonderful" mystery (The New York Times). From her velvety voice to a pair of legs that say walk this way, Delora Deanne is the most divine creation ever put on earth to sell moisturizer. As Chicago attorney John J. Malone's new client, the notoriously reclusive model has requested a rare one-on-one. Imagine Malone's surprise when he's greeted by Hazel Swackhammer,...
11) The Right Murder
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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...
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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...
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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...
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A Chicago lawyer gets swept up in a conspiracy of spies, double-crosses, brainwashing, and murder. Defense attorney John J. Malone may be a habitué 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...
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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...
16) The Wrong Murder
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Press agent Jake Justus doesn't care if all of Chicago drops dead. He's just tied the knot with debutante Helene Brand, and a Bermuda honeymoon is only three in-flight martinis away. But the shooting death of a man in broad daylight, on the busiest shopping day of the year, with plenty of witnesses, is particularly ill timed. Jake's pal, attorney John J. Malone, agrees. Only a day before, wedding guest Mona McClane, notorious jetsetter and tipsy big-game...
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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...
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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...
19) To Catch a Thief
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A mysterious Robin Hood targets Wall Street titans in this "exciting” novel by the author of the John J. Malone Mysteries (The Cincinnati Enquirer).
Thanks to a financial scheme by a small circle of very rich men, countless people have suffered. Now one man intends to make the Wall Street moguls pay. He hovers on the edges of their social events, where their wives and daughters sport priceless jewels even as others in the city struggle just to...
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