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Cage Five Is Going to Break by E. Richard Johnson. New York. 1970. Harper & Row. 149 pages. hardcover. Jacket photo by Vince Alosa.  

DESCRIPTION - His name was Stacy Tate, and he'd left a string at forty robberies around the country and had been convicted on only four of them, which had been enough to put him in Murphy Farm. Stacy was a solid-looking man, as hard and as tough as any man the steel-mill slums of Pittsburgh had ever put on the pistol circuit. He had the fight-scarred hands and snake-quick temper to prove it, and he'd had to prove it a few times during his first year at Murphy. That, plus his ability to keep his guts intact, had made him cage boss. A Yankee cage boss in a Southern prison. A prison that hadn't much going for it-cockroaches, bean fields, shotgun guards, and the ‘Smith & ‘Wesson Line.' And Captain Hans Hartmann and his Hundred - who were as tough as Stacy or tougher. In spite at which, Stacy had made a Plan . . . a plan that would, he hoped, get him out at Murphy Farm. Him and his five cell mates. He supposed that if everything worked right, absolutely right, all six of them might make it. But that was a pretty big ‘if' to be tossing around.  E. RICHARD JOHNSON, whose earlier novels have won him the respect of critics and the growing interest of readers across the country (and overseas), has written a rough, exciting novel which pulls the reader into and along with it-and which might just shake up a few people and places in our Southern prison system.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Emil Richard Johnson (born 1938 in Prentice, Wisconsin ; died December 1997 ) was an American writer of crime fiction. Johnson came from a large family; his ancestors were German immigrants. After graduating from the school in his hometown, he volunteered for the army . There he served in different positions at various locations and was eventually promoted to the rank of Sergeant. Johnson left the army in 1960, but had trouble integrating into civilian life. With no fixed abode, he entered into a life of crime. In 1962 during a robbery in Minnesota Johnson shot a security guard. He already had two convictions and as a result was sentenced to forty years in prison at the State Prison of Stillwater in Minnesota. In prison, Johnson began writing out of boredom. As a recreational hunter and angler he wrote articles about these topics, in addition to short stories and puzzles for children's magazines. His debut novel, Death on Silver Street ( Silver Street ), proved to be his literary breakthrough. Audiences and critics alike were enthusiastic, and the novel won an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America in 1969. He shared the prize with Dorothy Uhnak for the novel Murder girl with reservation ( The Bait ). His success as an author made Johnson wealthy. In the seventies however, he started taking drugs and stopped writing. In 1979 he had a number of overdoses, but survived and ended his dependence. He married and began to write again before he was pardoned in 1989. The marriage failed, and Johnson began to drink. He was found dead in his apartment on 18 December 1997.

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A Dog's Ransom by Patricia Highsmith. New York. 1972. Knopf. 0394480694. 275 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Wendell C. Minor.  

DESCRIPTION - A dog disappears. A ransom is demanded. The well-meaning, middle-aged New York couple - childless, generous - pay up. And pay again. The kidnapper - angry, perhaps psychotic - tricks them. The decent young policeman, obsessed with the case, falls deeper and deeper into involvement with the criminal, and with his victims. A ‘minor' crime inexorably grows into an agonizing and violent tragedy. This is the material from which the brilliant and subtle Patricia Highsmith has created another novel of psychological depth and tension. It confirms the judgment of her work expressed on the publication of her last book by The Times Literary Supplement: ‘She is the crime writer who comes closest to giving crime writing a good name.'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1921, Patricia Highsmith spent much of her adult life in Switzerland and France. Educated at Barnard College, where she studied English, Latin, and Greek, she had her first novel, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, published in 1950 and saw it quickly made into a movie by Alfred Hitchcock. Despite receiving little recognition in her native land during her lifetime, Highsmith, the author of more than twenty books, won the O. Henry Memorial Award, The Edgar Allan Poe Award, Le Grand Prix de LittErarure Policière, and the Award of the Crime Writers' Association of Great Britain. She died in Switzerland in 1995, and her literary archives are maintained in Berne.

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Red Dragon by Thomas Harris. New York. 1981. Putnam. 039912442x. 349 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Ron Walotsky.  

DESCRIPTION - In the realm of psychological suspense, Thomas Harris stands alone. exploring both the nature of human evil and the nerve-racking anatomy of forensic investigation, Harris unleashes a frightening vision of the dark side of our well-lighted world. In this extraordinary tale  - which preceded The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, Harris introduced the unforgettable character Dr. Hannibal Lecter. And in it, Will Graham  - the FBI man who hunted Lecter down  - risks his sanity and his life to duel a killer called . . . The Red Dragon A quiet summer night.a neat suburban house.and another happy family is shattered  - the latest victims of a grisly series of hideous sacrificial killings that no one understands, and no one can stop. Nobody lives to tell of the unimaginable carnage. Only the blood-stained walls bear witness. All hope rests on the Special Agent Will Graham, who must peer inside the killer's tortured soul to understand his rage, to anticipate and prevent his next vicious crime. Desperate for help, Graham finds himself locked in a deadly alliance with the brilliant Dr. Hannibal Lecter  - the infamous mass murderer who Graham put in prison years ago. As the imprisoned Lecter tightens the reins of revenge, Graham's feverish pursuit of the Red Dragon draws him inside the warped mind of a psychopath,, into an unforgettable world of demonic ritual and violence, beyond the limits of human terror.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Thomas Harris (born April 11, 1940) is an American author and screenwriter, best known for a series of suspense novels about his most famous character, Hannibal Lecter. All of his works have been made into films, the most notable being the multi-Oscar winning The Silence of the Lambs, which became only the third film in Academy Award history to sweep the Oscars in major categories.

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The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John Le Carre. New York. 1964. Coward McCann. 256 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Ben Feder Inc.

  
DESCRIPTION - This brilliant novel adds John le Carre's name to the microscopically small list of really great writers of espionage fiction. In truth, it does a great deal more. It is the spy novel to end all spy novels. It dis- patches the spun-sugar secret agents of recent fame back to their comic-opera Graustarks forever. Its central figure, Leamas, whose mission is to trap the top spy of East Berlin, is a creation of astonishing reality and authenticity. The plot he sets in motion, and later becomes the principal victim of, is a thing of magnificent complexity. Also of far-reaching implications. For the tension within Leamas is strikingly contemporary. It is the tension of a committed man unable to come to terms with the utterly ruthless machine he serves. Only in Arthur Koestler's DARKNESS AT NOON and Graham Greene's ‘burnt-out cases' can any comparison be found. THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD IS a novel of the first order - terrifying in its significance, impressive in its actuality, awesome in its high political import. It happens also to be immensely thrilling.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - David John Moore Cornwell (born 19 October 1931), pen name John le CarrE, is a British author of espionage novels. During the 1950s and the 1960s, Cornwell worked for the British intelligence services MI5 and MI6, and began writing novels under a pen name. His third novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) became an international best-seller, and it remains one of his best-known works. Following the success of this novel, he left MI6 to become a full-time author. Le CarrE has established himself as a writer of espionage fiction. In 2008, The Times ranked le CarrE 22nd on its list of ‘The 50 greatest British writers since 1945'. In 2011, he won the Goethe Medal, a yearly prize given by the Goethe Institute.

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Funeral in Berlin by Len Deighton. New York. 1965. Putnam. 312 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - FUNERAL IN BERLIN is a spy novel by Len Deighton. The protagonist, who is unnamed, travels to Berlin to arrange the defection of a Soviet scientist named Semitsa, this being brokered by Johnny Vulkan of the Berlin intelligence community. Despite his initial scepticism the deal seems to have the support of Russian security-chief Colonel Stok and Hallam in the British government's Home Office. The fake documentation for Semitsa needs to be precisely specified. In addition, an Israeli intelligence agent named Samantha Steel is involved in the case. But it soon becomes apparent that behind the facade of an elaborate mock funeral lies a game of deadly manoeuvres and ruthless tactics. A game in which the blood-stained legacy of Nazi Germany is enmeshed in the intricate moves of cold war espionage. 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Leonard Cyril Deighton (born 18 February 1929) is a British military historian, cookery writer, and novelist. He is perhaps most famous for his spy novel The IPCRESS File, which was made into a film starring Michael Caine. Deighton was born in Marylebone, London, in 1929. His father was a chauffeur and mechanic, and his mother was a part-time cook. At the time they lived in Gloucester Place Mews near Baker Street. Deighton's interest in spy stories may have been partially inspired by the arrest of Anna Wolkoff, which he witnessed as an 11-year-old boy. Wolkoff, a British subject of Russian descent, was a Nazi spy. She was detained on 20 May 1940 and subsequently convicted of violating the Official Secrets Act for attempting to pass secret documents to the Nazis. After leaving school, Deighton worked as a railway clerk before performing his National Service, which he spent as a photographer for the Royal Air Force's Special Investigation Branch. After discharge from the RAF, he studied at St Martin's School of Art in London in 1949, and in 1952 won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, graduating in 1955. While he was at the RCA he became a ‘lifelong friend' of fellow designer Raymond Hawkey, who later designed covers for his early books. Deighton then worked as an airline steward with BOAC. Before he began his writing career he worked as an illustrator in New York and, in 1960, as an art director in a now defunct London advertising agency, Sharps Advertising. He is credited with creating the first British cover for Kerouac's On the Road. He has since used his drawing skills to illustrate a number of his own military history books. Following the success of his first novels, Deighton became The Observer's cookery writer and produced illustrated cookbooks. In September 1967 he wrote an article in the Sunday Times Magazine about Operation Snowdrop - an SAS attack on Benghazi during World War II. The following year David Stirling would be awarded substantial damages in libel from the article. He also wrote travel guides and became travel editor of Playboy, before becoming a film producer. After producing a film adaption of his 1968 novel Only When I Larf, Deighton and photographer Brian Duffy bought the film rights to Joan Littlewood and Theatre Workshop's stage musical Oh, What a Lovely War! He had his name removed from the credits of the film, however, which was a move that he later described as ‘stupid and infantile.' That was his last involvement with the cinema. Deighton left England in 1969. He briefly resided in Blackrock, County Louth in Ireland. He has not returned to England apart from some personal visits and very few media appearances, his last one since 1985 being a 2006 interview which formed part of a ‘Len Deighton Night' on BBC Four. He and his wife Ysabele divide their time between homes in Portugal and Guernsey.

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Tremor of Intent by Anthony Burgess. New York. 1966. Norton. 240 pages. hardcover.  

DESCRIPTION - TREMOR OF INTENT is an espionage novel by the English author Anthony Burgess. First published in 1966, it was in many ways a reaction to the heavy-handed, humorless spy fiction of John Le CarrE, and to Ian Fleming's James Bond, a character that Burgess felt to be a relic of imperialism. In YOU'VE HAD YOUR TIME, the second part of his Confessions, Burgess relates that the title came to him on a hungover morning when his hand began to shake. ‘That,' his wife said, ‘is tremor of intent.' The subtitle, ‘An Eschatological Spy Novel,' refers to the novel's depiction of the Cold War as a form of hostile symbiosis, an ‘ultimate conflict' in which ‘good' and ‘evil' are no longer adequate terms. In Burgess's view, Russia and the West formed a duoverse, a yin and yang. The novel confused critics at the time, as it straddled the lines between serious and comic fiction, popular genre storytelling and metaphysical philosophy. The completely amoral Agent Hiller of MI6 journeys to the city of Yarylyuk aboard a passenger ship called the ‘Polyolbion.' His mission is to infiltrate a convention of Soviet scientists and bring back to Britain his childhood friend Roper, who has defected to Russia. Along the way, he meets the sexually precocious 16-year-old Clara, the voluptuous femme fatale Miss Devi, and the shadowy tycoon Theodorescu (modeled loosely on Orson Welles).

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - John Anthony Burgess Wilson,(25 February 1917 - 22 November 1993) - who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess - was an English writer. From relatively modest beginnings in a Manchester Catholic family in the North of England, he eventually became one of the best known English literary figures of the latter half of the twentieth century. Although Burgess was predominantly a comic writer, the dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange remains his best known novel. In 1971 it was adapted into a highly controversial film by Stanley Kubrick, which Burgess said was chiefly responsible for the popularity of the book. Burgess produced numerous other novels, including the Enderby quartet, and Earthly Powers, regarded by most critics as his greatest novel. He also worked as a literary critic, writing studies of classic writers, most notably James Joyce. He was a longtime literary critic for The Observer and The Guardian. Burgess was also an accomplished musician and linguist. He composed over 250 musical works, including a first symphony around age 18, wrote a number of libretti, and translated, among other works, Cyrano de Bergerac, Oedipus the King and Carmen.

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Journey Into Fear by Eric Ambler. New York. 1940. Knopf. 276 pages. hardcover.  

DESCRIPTION - Returning to his hotel room after a late-night flirtation with a cabaret dancer at an Istanbul bar, Graham is surprised by an intruder with a gun. What follows is a nightmare of intrigue for the English armaments engineer as he makes his way home aboard an Italian freighter. Among the passengers are a couple of Nazi assassins intent on preventing his returning to England with plans for a Turkish defense system, the seductive cabaret dancer and her manager husband, and a number of surprising allies. Thrilling, intense, and masterfully plotted, JOURNEY INTO FEAR is a classic suspense tale from one of the founders of the genre. Eric Ambler is often said to have invented the modern suspense novel. Beginning in 1936, he wrote a series of novels that were touted for their realism, in which he introduced ordinary protagonists who are thrust into political intrigue they are ill prepared to deal with. In the process he paved the way for such writers as John Le Carre, Len Deighton, and Robert Ludlum.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Eric Clifford Ambler (28 June 1909 - 22 October 1998) was an influential British author of spy novels who introduced a new realism to the genre. Ambler also used the pseudonym Eliot Reed for books co-written with Charles Rodda.Ambler's best known works are probably The Mask of Dimitrios (1939) (originally published under the title A Coffin for Dimitrios), which was made into a film in 1944, and The Light of Day (1962), filmed in 1964 as Topkapi. He was also a successful screenwriter and lived in Los Angeles in his later years. Amongst other classic movies based on his work are Journey into Fear (1943), starring Joseph Cotten, and an original screenplay, The October Man (1947). He wrote the screenplay for A Night to Remember about the sinking of the Titanic, along with many other screenplays, particularly those concerning stories and adventures at sea. He published his autobiography in 1985, Here Lies Eric Ambler. A recurring theme in Ambler's books is the amateur who finds himself unwillingly in the company of hardened criminals or spies. Typically, the protagonist is out of his depth and often seems for much of the book a bumbling anti-hero, yet eventually manages to surprise himself as well as the professionals by a decisive action that outwits his far more experienced opponents. This plot is used, for example, in Journey into Fear, The Light of Day and Dirty Story. In Ambler's books, unlike in most other spy novels, the protagonist is rarely a professional spy, or a policeman or counter-intelligence operative. A number of Ambler's characters feature in more than one novel: Andreas Zaleshoff and his sister Tamara in Uncommon Danger and Cause for Alarm, Charles Latimer in The Mask of Dimitrios and The Intercom Conspiracy, Arthur Abdel Simpson in The Light of Day and Dirty Story, and Zia Haki appears as a Colonel Haki of the Turkish secret police in The Mask of Dimitrios and Journey Into Fear and is mentioned as a General Haki in The Light of Day.

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The Viper's Kiss by Paris Aristides. Philadelphia. 2001. Intrigue Press. 1890768383. Translated from the Greek by Rebecca Koutsoudis. 294 pages. hardcover. Cover: Paul Kepple & Timothy Crawford.  

DESCRIPTION - One of the three premier releases in Intrigue's new WorldKrime series, THE VIPER'S KISS is a refreshing return to the hardboiled, masculine edge of detective fiction, as well as an exciting example of the international mystery. Middle-aged private eye Chrisostomos Zaras is given a break from chasing adulterers when a whiskey smuggler hires him to find a missing thief along with a lost fortune. Leaving his native country of Greece for the tension-filled shores of Cyprus, Zaras immediately seeks out the island's criminal network. Zaras' only link to the nefarious underground operating in the town of Limassol is the beautiful and elusive Lena, secretary and mistress to the mob, whose motives, though plainly stated, he suspects are far more dubious. With the help of his taxi-driver side-kick; Zaras uncovers a plot involving Greek mobsters, drug trafficking, corrupt officials, and murderous Turks, with hidden agendas around every corner.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Paris Aristides was born in Cyprus inn February, 1958. He studied Political Science in Athens and Paris. The Viper’s Kiss was published in Greek by Nea Sinnora Publications in 1988. It went on to become a 24-episode Greek television series.

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With My Knives I Know I'm Good by Julian Rathbone. New York. 1970. Putnam. 217 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Jay J. Smith.  

DESCRIPTION - This dazzlingly, original suspense-adventure stars a new kind of hero. His name is Aziz Milyutin; he is an Azeri Turk from the Caspian Sea, and he is by profession a knife thrower. Currently touring with a carnival through the Middle East, his great dream is to save enough money to one day own his own piece of land in his native Turkey - to regain the dignity of his farming forefathers. When he is offered a lucrative job in a nightclub in Beirut, his suspicions are not at first aroused, but then too many people become interested in him, watchful and questioning. And when among the ruins of Baalbek he witnesses a murder, he discovers that he has been dropped into a world of intrigue, seduction and sudden death. Bewildered, on alien soil, unable to identify his enemies - or even to understand why he is a target - Aziz finds himself completely alone. But on his side he has a strange assortment of weapons: the luck of the innocent; an unshakable, inbred desire for revenge; his own strong character, earthy, but honorable, simple, yet cunning - and four gleaming silver knives.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Julian Christopher Rathbone (10 February 1935 - 28 February 2008) was an English novelist. Julian Rathbone attended Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he was a contemporary of Bamber Gascoigne and Sylvia Plath. At Cambridge he took tutorials with FR Leavis, for whom, without having ever been what might be described as a 'Leavisite', he retained an abiding respect. After university Rathbone lived in Turkey for three years, making a living by teaching English. While in Turkey he heard that his father had been killed in a road accident at the age of sixty, an event to which Rathbone would return when himself the same age, in Blame Hitler. On his return to England jobs in various London schools were followed by the post of Head of English at the comprehensive school in Bognor Regis, West Sussex. Having originally aspired to be an actor or a painter, Rathbone had also taken up writing and by the end of the 1960s had had three novels published, all set in Turkey and informed by a background of which he had intimate knowledge. In 1973 Rathbone finally gave up teaching and left for Spain with the woman who would become his wife and lifelong companion, determined from then on to make his living by writing. Back in England and after some financially lean years Rathbone found his tenacity beginning to pay off. Booker Prize short-listings in 1976 and 1979 brought critical recognition, and although major commercial success remained elusive Rathbone's work appeared regularly, gaining a loyal readership and increasing popularity both at home and abroad. His novels continued to display interests and talents across several genres, from mainstream through thrillers to historical fiction. His novel of 1066, The Last English King, published 1997, achieved considerable commercial success and has been optioned for film several times without having yet made it to the screen. As a writer of non-fiction Rathbone made a lasting and original contribution to Wellington and Peninsular War studies with his Wellington's War, 1984. Various threads run through Rathbone's novels over their forty-year span. Standing firmly in the 19th Century tradition with its belief in the primacy of the writer's imagination and its consequent freedom to explore human life in all its aspects, Rathbone always refused to be tied to a single genre, time or place or character in undertaking this exploration. An ostensible thriller may be just as much a study of relationships, an apparently mainstream novel an investigation of crime, a work of historical fiction a meditation on contemporary issues. In blurring and blending genres in this way, for three decades or more in which the book market became increasingly obsessed with the typecasting and branding of books and their authors, Rathbone can be seen as having explored and questioned the nature of genre itself, its scope and limitations. Wherever the definitions of a particular genre threatened to restrict his enquiry into the human condition, Rathbone never hesitated to push it into wider territory. In a climate of increasing specialisation expected of novelists by the marketplace, this was an unfashionable approach to take, with arguably a heavy commercial cost over the years as Rathbone went his own way and refused to seek or accept any label or badge of identification which might increase sales but confine his activities as a writer. Rathbone in fact created four characters who appear in more than one of his books, permitting a certain grouping around each of them while never taking over the heterogeneous spirit of his work or deflecting him from the pursuit of wider fictional interests. First was Inspector Jan Argand (The Euro-Killers, Base Case, Watching The Detectives). Then the ‘Joseph' of Joseph (Booker nomination 1979) makes his reappearance as Charlie Boylan in A Very English Agent and later as Eddie Bosham in Birth Of A Nation, as Rathbone follows the thread of events from the war in the Peninsula through the world of German exiles taking refuge in early Victorian London and on to the early years of the modern USA. Two books for Serpent's Tail - Accidents Will Happen and Brandenburg Concerto - focused on Renate Fechter, head of a German squad of Eco-police. Then finally Rathbone created a British private investigator, Chris Shovelin, for the two recent books Homage and As Bad As It Gets for Allison and Busby. Although diverse and strong characters in themselves, none of these four ever seemed likely to take over the oeuvre as a whole. Rathbone remained committed to diversity of inspiration rather than the formulaic approach to which concentration on a single character can lead. Leavis, although Rathbone never shared his cultural aridity, was a long-term presence in the novelist's background as a man who insisted on the power and importance of imaginative literature. In A Last Resort, written around the time of Leavis's death and giving a brilliant portrayal of a Britain making itself ripe for Thatcherism, the ferocious Cambridge don makes a brief appearance in the intellectual life of a gifted English student at a school not unlike the one Rathbone had taught in until a few years previously. As a writer perhaps the nearest Rathbone came to an acknowledged antecedent was Graham Greene, whose weaving of the thriller and mainstream strands of fiction, together with in-depth exploration of wider spiritual and political issues often set in foreign locations, clearly struck many chords both with Rathbone's vocational subject-matter and belief in the novelist's ability to address himself to all aspects of human life on as broad a front as he likes, with the finished work of fiction as the only credential he needs. Greene remained an icon with Rathbone throughout his writing life, as did the different figure of James Joyce, object of Rathbone's greatest reverence although rarely exercising any overt influence in his writing. A Last Resort is probably the most Joycean of Rathbone's books, in its use of accumulation of mundane detail to build up an almost surreal portrait of a country whose identity is dissolving in front of its face. To Joyce himself Rathbone paid the ultimate compliment of constantly rereading without seeking to imitate. Rathbone was a man of what might be called the classic Left. After public school and Cambridge three years in Turkey told him all he needed to know about poverty, and the next decade and a half of teaching in British secondary schools made him expert in the class system of his own country. His politics were those of tolerance and libertarianism, with an innate distrust of self-serving hierarchies and a cynicism towards power-structures and their manipulation of the world, in particular the world of the helpless. In his fiction, much influenced by Greene, he always made social and historical context part of the weave of the narrative. Twenty years ago, in Zdt and The Pandora Option, he dealt with food as a new weapon in the armoury of the superpowers, and in the early 1990s (Sand Blind) with the capacity of those same superpowers to fabricate wars in the interests of their own technologies and consumer needs. In Trajectories (1998) he presents a nightmare vision of Britain in 2035 which seems more recognisable and likely with every year that passes. Over a writing career of forty years, during which the world might be said to have changed out of recognition, it is notable how few of Rathbone's preoccupations and perceptions have dated, while many have been prescient and remain as relevant as they ever were. In his latest book The Mutiny, dealing with the Indian rising against British rule in 1857, the same commitment to clarity of vision is evident, an equal openness to all experiences and forces involved in the events of the time, which continues to mark Rathbone down as unashamedly in the line of the great novelists of the 19th Century. The critic who took Rathbone to task for appearing to claim a superiority of approach to the professional historian in dealing with such contentious historical material was raising a question which Rathbone's whole career, and The Mutiny itself, was dedicated to answering. For a man of wide intellectual interests Rathbone produced relatively little outside his long list of novels. Much travelled, and loving foreign places, he always aspired to produce volumes of travel writing, but nothing in this direction ever came to fruition commercially. His one non-fictional publication was Wellington's War (1984), product of a fascination with Wellington which dated back to schooldays. Following within fifteen years of Elizabeth Longford's two-volume biography, which re-established Wellington as a subject for serious study, Rathbone's book is a radical and original departure from the normal run of biographical accounts. Based on detailed research into both Wellington's collected correspondence and the battlefields of the Peninsular War, it counterpoints extracts from the letters with Rathbone's own elucidations and comments. As well as uniquely conveying the immediacy of events through Wellington's thought-processes and human voice, Wellington's War does more than any other book on the subject to illustrate the dimension and brilliance of Wellington's genius. The Duke himself has a habit of cropping up in various of Rathbone's fictions, notably in Joseph and A Very English Agent and, more hauntingly, in Blame Hitler, the novel in which Rathbone writes about his own father. Rathbone described his own interest in Wellington as ‘probably Oedipal‘, and the Duke as ‘the ultimate father-figure'. Wellington's War remains unique not only in Rathbone's own work but also in the growing contemporary literature on Wellington.

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Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned by Walter Mosley. New York. 1997. Norton. 0393045390. 208 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Debra Morton Hoyt. Jacket photograph by Harold Sinclair/Photonica.  

DESCRIPTION - ALWAYS OUTNUMBERED, ALWAYS OUTGUNNED introduces Walter Mosley's most compelling new character since the debut of his immortal detective Easy Rawlins: one Socrates Fortlow, a tough, brooding ex-convict determined to challenge and understand the violence and anarchy in his world - and in himself. Three decades ago, the young Socrates had, in a burst of drunken rage, murdered a man and a woman with his huge ‘rock-breaking hands.' Twenty-seven years of hard time in an Indiana prison followed. Now Socrates lives in a cramped two-room apartment in an abandoned building in Watts, scavenging bottles and delivering groceries for a supermarket. In each of the linked stories that comprise this richly brooding work, Socrates, like his namesake, explores philosophical questions of morality in a world beset with crime, poverty, and racism. He is an unforgettable presence and his perceptions cast a glow of somber lyricism upon an often harsh world. He is a creation of stunning originality; the book he inhabits is Mosley's most powerful and eloquent to date.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Walter Mosley is the author of more than forty books, including eleven previous Easy Rawlins mysteries, the first of which, DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS, was made into an acclaimed film starring Denzel Washington. ALWAYS OUTNUMBERED was an HBO film starring Laurence Fishburne, adapted from Mosley's first Socrates Fortlow novel. A native of Los Angeles and a graduate of Goddard College, he holds an MFA from CCNY and lives in Brooklyn. New York. He is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, a Grammy, and PEN America's Lifetime Achievement Award.

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Fear of the Dark by Gar Anthony Haywood. New York. 1988. St Martin's Press. 0312017960. Winner of the Private Eye Writers Of America Best First Private Eye Contest. 192 pages. hardcover.  

DESCRIPTION - Winner of the 1988 Best First P.I. Novel Contest, this promising debut introduces black private investigator Aaron Gunner, hired to find the white man who walked into the Acey Deuce bar in South Central Los Angeles to blow away the owner, J.T. Tennell and Buddy Dorris of the Brothers of Volition, a black activist group. Buddy's sister, Verna Gail, feels the murder isn't getting enough police attention and hires Gunner, a P.I. who's trying to quit the business. He discovers that the killer is Denny Townsend, a white supremacist working on the fringes of a campaign to elect Lew Henshaw, a politician running on a law-and-order platform. Before Gunner can talk to Townsend, he finds him shot to death in Gunner's car. The cops are suspicious of Gunner, who soon is framed for the killing of Townsend's friend and possible accomplice, Stanley Ferris. To save his own neck, and to keep L.A. from erupting into racial violence, Gunner must find the connection between the politician, a local drug dealer and the Brothers' charismatic leader, Roland Mayes.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Gar Anthony Haywood (born May 22, 1954) is the award-winning author of three Aaron Gunner novels: YOU CAN DIE TRYING, FEAR OF THE DARK, and NOT LONG FOR THIS WORLD, as well as the Loudermilk series. He lives in Venice, California, with his two daughters.

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Detour by Helen Nielsen. Berkeley. 1988. Black Lizard Books. 0887390803. Originally Published In 1953. 152 pages. paperback.

  
DESCRIPTION - Danny Ross, kid hitch-hiker trapped by circumstantial evidence . Now he was a fugitive, alone and friendless .His one ally lay on the seat of the stolen car, the gun he s ripped from the sheriff s holster when he escaped. The sight of it brought sweat to his forehead, made him want to toss it out the window. But he could not .Now it was all he had, and he was going to need it.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Helen Nielsen (October 23, 1918, Roseville, IL - June 22, 2002, Prescott, AZ) was an author of mysteries and television scripts for such television dramas as Perry Mason and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. She was born in Roseville, Illinois, and studied journalism, art and aeronautical drafting at various schools, including the Chicago Art Institute. Before her writing career, she worked as a draftsman during World War II and contributed to the designs of B-36 and P-80 aircraft. Her stories were often set in Laguna Beach and Oceanside, California where she lived for 60 years. Some of her novels were reprinted by Black Lizard, including Detour and Sing Me a Murder.

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Case Histories by Kate Atkinson. New York/Boston. 2004. Little Brown. 0316740403. 312 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograph by Angela Wyant. Jacket design by Yoori Kim.  

DESCRIPTION - A triumphant new novel from award-winner Kate Atkinson: a breathtaking story of families divided, love lost and found, and the mysteries of fate. Case One: Olivia Land, youngest and most beloved of the Land girls, goes missing in the night and is never seen again. Thirty years later, two of her surviving sisters unearth a shocking clue to Olivia's disappearance among the clutter of their childhood home. . . Case Two: Theo delights in his daughter Laura's wit, effortless beauty, and selfless love. But her first day as an associate in his law firm is also the day when Theo's world turns upside down. . . Case Three: Michelle looks around one day and finds herself trapped in a hell of her own making. A very needy baby and a very demanding husband make her every waking moment a reminder that somewhere, somehow, shed made a grave mistake and would spend the rest of her life paying for it--until a fit of rage creates a grisly, bloody escape. As Private Detective Jackson Brodie investigates all three cases, startling connections and discoveries emerge. Inextricably caught up in his clients grief, joy, and desire, Jackson finds their unshakable need for resolution very much like his own. Kate Atkinson's celebrated talent makes for a novel that positively sparkles with surprise, comedy, tragedy, and constant, page-turning delight.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Kate Atkinson (born December 20, 1951) is an English author. She was born in York, and studied English Literature at the University of Dundee, gaining her Masters Degree in 1974. She subsequently studied for a doctorate in American Literature. She has often spoken publicly about the fact that she failed at the viva (oral examination) stage. After leaving university, she took on a variety of jobs from home help to legal secretary and teacher. She lived in Whitby, North Yorkshire, for a time, but now lives in Edinburgh. Her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, won the 1995 Whitbread Book of the Year ahead of Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh and Roy Jenkins's biography of William Ewart Gladstone. It went on to be a Sunday Times bestseller. Since then, she has published another five novels, one play, and one collection of short stories. Her work is often celebrated[by whom?] for its wit, wisdom and subtle characterisation, and the surprising twists and plot turns. Her most recent work has featured the popular former detective Jackson Brodie. In 2009, she donated the short story Lucky We Live Now to Oxfam's ‘Ox-Tales‘ project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Atkinson's story was published in the Earth collection. In March 2010, Atkinson appeared at the York Literature Festival, giving a world-premier reading from an early chapter from her novel Started Early, Took My Dog, which is set mainly in the English city of Leeds. Atkinson was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2011 Birthday Honours for services to literature.

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Keep Still: A Marti MacAlister Mystery by Eleanor Taylor Bland. New York. 1996. St Martin's Press. 0312143184. 216 pages. hardcover. Jacket and illustration by James Wang.  

DESCRIPTION - In her fifth novel, Eleanor Taylor Bland, ‘one of the best of the too-few black women writing crime fiction' (Los Angeles Times), gives Illinois police detective Marti MacAlister a case that demands all her expertise as a former Chicago cop and widowed mother of two. When an old woman dies after falling down her basement stairs, the coroner proves she was pushed, and suspicion centers on her two grown sons. A few days later, another woman is found dead in a motel pool. Although her death doesn't have the marks of a random murder, Marti and her partner, Jessenovik, have little to work with: the woman, a former teacher, left few possessions and no family behind. Through careful digging and help from unexpected sources, Marti and Vik discover a connection between the teacher and an abused young girl who disappeared eight years ago. The girl was never found, and Marti suspects that her troubled family knows more about the disappearance - and both of the recent murders - than they can admit. But as Marti works to coax important clues from people closest to the victims, the secrets she learns may drive a desperate killer to strike again. ‘Marti MacAlister is a most welcome addition to crime fiction.' - Sara Paretsky.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Eleanor Taylor Bland (December 31, 1944 - June 2, 2010) was an African-American writer of crime fiction. She was the creator of Lincoln Prairie, Illinois (based on Waukegan, Illinois) police detective Marti McAllister. Eleanor Taylor Bland was born in Boston, Massachusetts. But after marrying at the age of 14, she moved to the Naval Station Great Lakes in North Chicago, Illinois, with her husband, Anthony Bland, who was serving in the US Navy. Taylor was her father's name, not her maiden name. She and her husband remained together for 31 years, before parting. Although she was diagnosed with Gardner syndrome in the 1970s and given a short time to live, she managed to overcome the disease. In later years, however, she fought several bouts with cancer. Bland received a BA from the University of Southern Illinois in 1981, and from 1981 to 1999 worked as an accountant. She had two children and several grandchildren, and resided in Waukegan, Illinois, during the later years of her life. Bland died of Gardner's syndrome on June 2, 2010, at Vista Medical Center East in Waukegan.

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The Bomber by Liza Marklund. New York. 2001. Pocket Books. 0743417836. Translated from the Swedish by Kajsa von Hofsten. 326 pages. hardcover.  

DESCRIPTION - When a bomb destroys Stockholm's new Olympic stadium just months before the summer games in Sweden, worries erupt about a terrorist on the loose, but when journalist Annika Bengtzon begins to investigate, she uncovers a secret source that could reveal the truth behind the bombing and put her on the Bomber's hit list.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Eva Elisabeth ‘Liza' Marklund (born 9 September 1962) is a Swedish journalist and crime writer. She was born in Pålmark near Piteå, Norrbotten. Her novels, most of which feature the fictional character Annika Bengtzon, a newspaper journalist, have been published in thirty languages. Marklund is the co-owner of Sweden's third largest publishing house, Piratförlaget and a columnist in the Swedish tabloid Expressen. She is also a Unicef ambassador. The Postcard Killers, a crime thriller written in collaboration with American bestselling author James Patterson, is Marklund's twelfth book. It was published on January 27, 2010, in Sweden, and became number one on the Swedish bestseller list in February 2010. It was published on 16 August 2010 in the United States. At the end of August, it reached number one in the New York Times best-seller list, making Liza Marklund the second Swedish author (the first one being Stieg Larsson with the Millennium Trilogy) ever to reach the number one spot. Marklund lives in Spain with her husband Mikael. Since her debut in 1995, Liza Marklund has written eight crime novels and co-authored two documentary novels with Maria Eriksson and one non-fiction book about female leadership with Lotta Snickare. Marklund's crime novels featuring crime reporter Annika Bengtzon have become international bestsellers. She won the ‘Poloni Prize' (Polonipriset) 1998 for ‘Best Swedish Crime Novel by a Female Writer' and ‘The Debutant Prize', (Debutantpriset) 1998 for ‘Best First Novel of the Year' with the crime novel Sprängaren (The Bomber), published in 1998. Marklund was named Author of the Year in Sweden 1999 by the Swedish trade union SKTF, won the radio network RixFM's Swedish Literary Prize in 2007, and was selected the fifteenth most popular woman in Sweden of 2003 and the fourth most popular woman in Sweden of 2004 in a yearly survey with 1,000 participants, conducted by ICA-kuriren, a publication published by a Swedish supermarket chain. Her books have been number one bestsellers in all five Nordic countries. In 2002 and 2003, two of Liza Marklund's crime novels were listed on the international bestseller lists by the online magazine Publishing Trends, Prime Time ranking #13 and The Red Wolf ranking #12. In Scandinavia and Germany, her non-fiction novels have become the center of a heated controversy.

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A Killer is Loose by Gil Brewer. New York. 1954. Fawcett Gold Medal. 152 pages. paperback. 380. Cover by Lu Kimmel.  

DESCRIPTION - Behind a helpless man and girl his gun terrorized the town. A KILLER IS LOOSE. He shot Jake Halloran in the head, then turned to me, smiling, the Luger held loosely in his right hand. ‘Hello, pal,' he said. ‘My name's Ralph Angers. What's yours? That's how I met him, this grave-looking, clean-cut, totally mad young man, who walked through my town with a gun, leaving a wake of tears and agony and murder behind him. 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Florida writer Gil Brewer (1922-1983) was the author of dozens of wonderfully sleazy sex/crime adventure novels of the 1950's and 60's, including Backwoods Teaser and Nude on Thin Ice; some of them starring private eye Lee Baron (Wild) or the brothers Sam and Tate Morgan (The Bitch). Gil Brewer, who had not previously published any novels, began to write for Gold Medal Paperbacks in 1950-51. Brewer wrote some 30 novels between 1951 and the late 60s - very often involving an ordinary man who becomes involved with, and is often corrupted and destroyed by, an evil or designing woman. His style is simple and direct, with sharp dialogue, often achieving considerable intensity. Brewer was one of the many writers who ghost wrote under the Ellery Queen byline as well. Brewer also was known as Eric Fitzgerald, Bailey Morgan, and Elaine Evans.

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To Die in California by Newton Thornburg. Boston. 1973. Little Brown. 0316843881. 312 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Paul Bacon.  

DESCRIPTION - David Hook had not been born into the farmer's life, he had chosen it - because he cherished its rugged simplicity, because on a farm he could be the strong, idiosyncratic man he was, and watch his family grow with hard work and dignity. His wife Kate's premature death had nearly destroyed him. And now he stood immobile. The coffin bearing the body of his eldest son, Chris, disappeared into the ground. The California police had said it was suicide. David Hook knew that was a lie. Silently, he turned away and boarded a plane for Santa Barbara. To Die in California is the story of Hook's search for the truth about his son's death. In Santa Barbara, where Chris Hook tumbled over the edge of a cliff, several people tell a convincing story  - convincing, at least, to the police. But Hook knows it is not the truth, and the casual evil of their lies infuriates him. He encounters, in particular, a professional politician named Jack Douglas and Douglas's stunning, cynical mistress, and, obsessed with pride for those he loves deeply, he becomes their tireless, cagey adversary. He hounds them incessantly, determined to expose them, until, suddenly, he holds in his hands the means of their destruction, and of his own. This is a thrilling work: a story which draws its relentless suspense from the struggle among people violently different in motive, character and degree of courage. In David Hook is embodied the continual fight for the survival of what a man finds honorable and worth loving.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Newton Thornburg (May 13, 1929, Harvey, IL - May 9, 2011, Bothell, WA) was an American novelist and screenwriter. Born in Harvey, Illinois, Thornburg graduated from the University of Iowa with a Fine Arts degree. He worked in a variety of jobs before devoting himself to writing full-time (or at least in tandem with his cattle farm in the Ozarks) in 1973. His 1976 novel CUTTER AND BONE was filmed in 1981 as Cutter's Way. The New York Times called CUTTER AND BONE ‘the best novel of its kind for ten years.' His other novels include KNOCKOVER, GENTLEMAN BORN, BLACK ANGUS, TO DIE IN CALIFORNIA, VALHALLA, DREAMLAND, A MAN'S GAME, EVE'S MEN, and THE LION AT THE DOOR.

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The Price of the Ticket by Jim Nisbet. Yucson. 2003. Dennis McMillan Publications. 0939767430. 230 pages. hardcover. Cover art by S. Clay Wilson.  

DESCRIPTION - Pauley's done a few bad things in his life and he's been around the block a few times, too; in fact, he's been inside the Big Block for most of his life. But now, age 52, he's got an honest job, making h1gb-class torture racks and other exquisite playthings for a gay S&M outfit in San Francisco. He's also got a super-hot 25-year-old girlfriend who wears a glow-in-the-dark mood bone in her nose and keeps him on the straight and narrow. His only real problem right now is that his old Ford Econoline van has finally pooped out, and he's got to find new wheels posthaste. The State Franchise Tax Board is also breathing down his neck and the rent is due; but things will work out  - they usually do. But, unfortunately for all concerned, today isn't usually; it's the day he's going to look at a small, used Toyota pickup truck advertised by one Martin Seam. Sometimes a ticket to Hell only costs $600 . . . nonrefundable, of course.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jim Nisbet (January 20, 1947 – September 28, 2022) was an American author, Nisbet received a degree in literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before settling in San Francisco, California, where he wrote poetry, short stories, plays, and novels. He also ran a studio designing and building “electronics furniture”—consoles and cabinetry for audio and video production studios. He was the author of 13 published novels and six books of poetry, and he contributed to many collections and journals. His work was published in the U.S., France (by Rivages, under legendary editor François Guérif), Germany, and Italy. Nisbet's writing used the conventions of crime fiction and noir to support a dark, cerebral, and harrowing narrative, laced with humor and carried off in unexpected directions by exuberant wordplay. He incorporated themes as wide-ranging as sailing, particle physics, mathematics, ancient Rome, modern jazz, and urban subculture. Jim Nisbet died in Sausalito, California, on September 28, 2022, at the age of 75.

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Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett. New York. 1943. Pocket Books. 227 pages. paperback. 241.  

DESCRIPTION - Red Harvest (1929) is a novel by American writer Dashiell Hammett. The story is narrated by the Continental Op, a frequent character in Hammett's fiction, much of which is drawn from his own experiences as an operative of the Pinkerton Detective Agency (fictionalized as the Continental Detective Agency). The plot follows the Op's investigation of several murders in a corrupt Montana mining town, which had been taken over by gangs following a labor dispute. Some of the novel was inspired by the Anaconda Road massacre, a 1920 labor dispute in the mining town of Butte, Montana. . . A BLOODY HUMORESQUE - RED HARVEST is a lurid thriller . . . the most real I and vivid picture of gang warfare we have ever had there h~ never been a detective story like it it contains the most remarkable collection of detestable characters ever devised by the brain of a fiction writer . . . it is told in choice underworld vernacular . . . it is doubtful if even Ernest Hemingway has ever written more effective dialogue . . . Hammett's characters race through the story with the rapidity and destructiveness of machine guns . . . RED HARVEST is just what its name implies . . . a harvest of ill-grown crimson weeds. The foregoing won4s are a composite of the. opinions expressed by Warden Lawes, Carl Van Vechten, the Bookman, the New York Sun, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and The Outlook.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Samuel Dashiell Hammett (May 27, 1894 - January 10, 1961) was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories, a screenplay writer, and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon), Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man), and the Continental Op (Red Harvest and The Dain Curse). In addition to the significant influence his novels and stories had on film, Hammett 'is now widely regarded as one of the finest mystery writers of all time' and was called, in his obituary in The New York Times, 'the dean of the... 'hard-boiled' school of detective fiction.' Time magazine included Hammett's 1929 novel Red Harvest on a list of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005.

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Digger's Game by George V. Higgins. New York. 1973. Knopf. 0394483162. 218 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Hal Siegel.  

DESCRIPTION - With all his brilliance of suspense, verisimilitude, and ‘dialogue so authentic it spits,' George V. Higgins floodlights the murky area of the city - his setting once more is Boston - where the borders between legitimate and criminal enterprise vanish in a fog of greed, and violence is just around the corner. This is how a slick (Beacon Street) setup like the Regent Sportsmen's Club, Inc., works. It's an air charter operation: package tours to top casinos. What its clients - respectable businessmen hooked on gambling - don't know is that in addition to the front man, a seemingly respectable ex-stockbroker, one of the partners is a Mafia connection and the third, put in by the Mob, is ‘the Greek,' the loan shark who collects the markers. A smooth enterprise, neat, profitable, until. . . That's where the Digger comes in. The Digger is Jerry Doherty, proprietor of a workingman's bar, who supplements his income with occasional odd jobs like stealing live checks or picking up hot goods. He contrives to stay out of jail (his brother, a priest, has political clout). But they've hooked the not-so-respectable Digger with a bargain fare on a half-empty plane to Vegas, and now he owes $18,000 and the Greek is crowding him. The partners are scared the Creek isn't up to tangling with a tough proposition like the Digger. The Don himself is nervous. The smooth enterprise gets rough - and one thing seems more and more certain: whether it's the Digger or the Greek or the ex-broker or the Mafia man, someone's going to die. In scene after scene - as the novel rushes toward its violent climax - Higgins makes overwhelmingly real the world of the loan shark, the world of the Mafia-connected businessman, the machinery of their operations, and the inevitable semi-pros who, like the Digger, grease, and sometimes jam, the gears.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - George V. Higgins (November 13, 1939 - November 6, 1999) was an American author, lawyer, newspaper columnist, and college professor. He is best known for his bestselling crime novels. His full name was George Vincent Higgins II, after an uncle living in Randolph, but he dropped the numeric (unofficially) in mid life. His books were all published as by George V. Higgins.

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Kill the Boss Good-By by Peter Rabe. New York. 1956. Fawcett/Gold Medal. Paperback Original. paperback.  

DESCRIPTION - They wanted to feed on the lion's flesh - these jackals of the underworld. PANDER wore dark glasses and fancy suspenders and he moved into the San Pietro rackets like a sandblaster gone berserk. FELL, the boss, was mysteriously away and Pander grabbed the chance to bury his hands in the heavy money. Then Fell carne back. At his side was Cripp, the human adding machine with the beautiful face and the twisted leg. With them came murder - wholesale. Another novel of underworld violence told with the frightening quietness that has established Peter Rabe among the masters of suspense.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Peter Rabe aka Peter Rabinowitsch, (1921–1990), was a German American writer who also used the nom de plumes Marco Malaponte and J. T. MacCargo (though not all of the latter's books were by him). Rabe was the author of over 30 books, mostly of crime fiction, published between 1955 and 1975. Born Peter Rabinowitsch on November 3, 1921, to Michael Rabinovitch (a Russian Jew; the spelling is the Russian version) and Elisabeth Margarete Beer, in Halle, Germany. Shortly after his birth the family moved to Hanover, Germany, where Peter's father worked as a doctor and surgeon. When the Nazis came to power and summoned Michael Rabinovitch to a Gestapo office and confronted him with transcripts of political conversations between him and his patients, he decided it best to emigrate to the United States before Peter turned 15 and face possible internment. Michael also had his doctor's license revoked by the Nazis. Michael and Peter left a few months before Kristalnacht in October, 1938, sponsored by Michael's brother Robert Rubin, and they lived with the Rubin family in Detroit, Michigan. At Rubin's suggestion, Michael changed the family name to 'Rabe,' by combining his name (the 'Ra' from Rabinovitch) and his wife's maiden name (the 'Be' from Beer). He took over the practice of a retiring obstetrician in New Bremen, Ohio, a German American town. Margarete, a Lutheran, brought her other two sons, Valentin and Andreas, on the last ship of refugees before World War II broke out in 1940. Peter earned his bachelor's degree from Ohio State University, then served a stint in the Army. He attended Western Reserve University in Cleveland and was awarded a Masters degree and a Ph.D. in psychology. While at Western Reserve, Rabe met Claire Frederickson, also a psychology student and member of a family who had left Europe ahead of the Nazis. Claire introduced Peter to fellow student Max Gartenberg, who would eventually become Peter's literary agent. Claire and Peter married and moved to Bar Harbor, Maine, where Peter worked as a researcher for Claire's brother, Emil Frederickson. Peter was uncomfortable experimenting on animals and after the project ended the couple moved to Los Angeles to try to establish Peter as a therapist. It was hard to break in and after a short time the couple returned to Cleveland. Peter did blue-collar work in a factory but was soon asked to work on the company's advertising layouts. This work served him well as Peter used these skills to write and illustrate his first book, From Here to Maternity (Vanguard Press, 1955; originally appeared in McCall's Magazine, September 1954, as 'Who's Having This Baby?'), a humorous look at the birth of his and Claire's first son, Jonathan, born April 5, 1953. After his first book, Rabe wrote almost exclusively crime fiction, the exceptions being three soft core books for Beacon in the early sixties, and a novelization of the war movie Tobruk for Bantam in 1967. In an essay included in the book Murder off the Rack, edited by Jon L. Breen, Donald E. Westlake opens with the line, 'Peter Rabe wrote the best books with the worst titles of anybody I can think of.' When Gold Medal changed the titles of Rabe's first two books from The Ticker and The Hook to Stop This Man! and Benny Muscles In, a pattern was set that would last throughout his career. Stop This Man! appeared in August, 1955 (Gold Medal 506), followed closely by Benny Muscles In (Gold Medal 520, September, 1955), and A Shroud for Jesso (Gold Medal 528, October, 1955). Clearly capable of writing books quickly, Rabe published eighteen books by 1961. In 1962 came one of his best books, The Box (one of only two Rabe books to use his own titles, the other being A House in Naples). Then there were the three soft core books for Beacon, the last two under the pseudonym of Marco Malaponte. After this came the three books about his second series character, Manny DeWitt, the novelization of Tobruk, and then the final books to appear under his own name These were a pair of Mafia related books, again for Gold Medal (War of the Dons (Gold Medal M2592, 1972), and Black Mafia (Gold Medal M2939). The last books Rabe published before he backed off from his writing career were novelizations of episodes of the television series 'Mannix' using the pseudonym 'J. T. MacCargo.' This was apparently a house name for Belmont, with an unknown author penning the first and third books of the series. Rabe wrote the second and fourth books, A Fine Day for Dying and Round Trip to Nowhere, both appearing in 1975. They were the last of his books to be published in his lifetime. In the late '50s, Rabe had gastro-intestinal problems that led to a mis-diagnosis of terminal cancer. He moved to Europe for treatment where his marriage eventually ended and he moved back to the United States. He had met Lorenzo Semple, Jr. in Spain and later, after Semple began work for the Batman television series, Rabe wrote two episodes: 'The Joker's Last Laugh' and 'The Joker's Epitaph.' He went on to two other marriages, neither of which lasted, and left the writing life to become a teacher of psychology at California Polytechnic State University. His only other children were also with Claire, who published some fiction of her own in the 1960s, later collected in 1989's Sicily Enough and More. Also in the 1980s Black Lizard began reprinting some of Rabe's earlier classics. Beginning in 2003, Stark House Press has been reprinting Rabe works in two for one trade paperback editions. Rabe settled down in Atascadero, California until his death from lung cancer on May 20, 1990. Although Rabe left the writing life for his teaching career, he didn't stop writing. This led to two unpublished novels probably written between 1987 and 1990, The Return of Marvin Palaver and The Silent Wall. Shortly before his death, Rabe had sent these to writer Ed Gorman in an effort to see them published and in 2010, both works will appear in a single volume from Stark House Press. Rabe may only have written two short stories in his career. One, “Hard Case Redhead,” is an excellent story with a debatable ending, hard core and noirish up to its final paragraph, which gives us an almost Hitchcockian twist ending. The other, 'A Matter of Balance,' is a perfectly titled story of two soldiers, each a cipher to the other, pushed together in what for one is an impossible situation. The emotional buttons Rabe pushes, the real contrast between the characters, and the morally and thematically ambiguous ending make it a nearly pitch perfect telling. He also contributed two scripts to the 'Batman' television series. Rabe had a clear and lucid style, and other than his series books, never wrote to formula or wrote the same book over and over. He wrote straight Gold Medal-type books such as Stop This Man!, Journey Into Terror, and Mission for Vengeance, as well as books that showed a lighter touch (Murder Me for Nickels, The Return of Marvin Palaver), dark and almost brooding (A House in Naples, The Silent Wall), and brilliant character studies of underworld figures (The Box, Benny Muscles In, Anatomy of a Killer). He is a subtle writer, and the dialogue and choices made by his characters show them off in unusual ways, often with seemingly unpredictable behavior that turns out to be entirely consistent with who they are as well as the plot of the book. He zigs when most writers would zag which makes even his stock characters interesting.

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He Died With His Eyes Open by Derek Raymond. New York. 1987. Available Press. 0345342895. 240 pages. paperback. Cover design by Bill Toth. Cover photo by Bill Brandt.  

DESCRIPTION - Life in the Department of Unexplained Deaths. As it turns out, a dead man can tell stories... Murders are a dime a dozen in Margaret Thatcher's London, and when it comes to the brutal killing of a middle-aged alcoholic found dumped outside of town, Scotland Yard has more important cases to deal with. Instead it's a job for the Department of Unexplained Deaths and its head Detective Sergeant. With only a box of cassette-tape diaries as evidence the rogue detective has no chouce but to listen to the haunting voice of the victim for clues to his gruesome end. The first book in Derek Raymond's acclaimed Factory Series is an unflinching yet deeply compassionate portrait of a city plagued by poverty and perversion, and a policeman who may be the only one who cares about the 'people who don't matter and who never did.'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Robert William Arthur Cook (12 June 1931 – 30 July 1994), better known since the 1980s by his pen name Derek Raymond, was an English crime writer, credited with being a founder of British noir. The eldest son of a textile magnate, Cook spent his early years at the family's London house, off Baker Street, tormenting a series of nannies. In 1937, in anticipation of the Second World War, the family retreated to the countryside, to a house near their Kentish castle. In 1944, Cook went to Eton, which he later characterised as a "hotbed of buggery" and "an excellent preparation for vice of any kind". He dropped out at the age of 17. During his National Service, Cook attained the rank of corporal (latrines). After a brief period working for the family business, selling lingerie in a department store in Neath, Wales, he spent most of the 1950s leading the life of a Chelsea layabout which he describes in his first, semi-autobiographical, novel The Crust on its Uppers (1962), from 1957 on enjoying a long affair with Hazel Whittington the deserted wife of Victor Willing At some time he is said to have lived in the Beat Hotel in Paris, rubbing shoulders with his neighbours William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, and danced at fashionable left bank boîtes with the likes of Juliette Gréco. In New York City he resided on the Lower East Side and was married to an heiress from New England for all of sixty-five days. He claimed that he was sick of the dead-on-its-feet upper crust he was born into, that he didn't believe in and didn't want, whose values were meaningless. He was seeking to carve his way out — "Crime was the only chisel I could find." Cook smuggled oil paintings to Amsterdam, drove fast cars into Spain from Gibraltar, and consummated his downward mobility by spending time in a Spanish jail for sounding off about Francisco Franco in his local bar. Cook returned to London in 1960. He soon fronted a property company for Charlie Da Silva, an associate of the Krays. After undergoing interrogation by the Dutch police force in connection with an insurance scam related to the apparent theft of a painting by Rembrandt, Cook claimed to have given up a life of actual crime for good in favour of a life of writing about it. Published under the name of Robin Cook (not to be confused with the American novelist), his study of one man's deliberate descent into the milieu of London lowlifes, The Crust on its Uppers (1962) was an immediate succès de scandale upon publication. Lexicographers mined it for authentic usage of Cockney rhyming slang and thieves’ cant. But glowing reviews failed to produce great riches. Cook was unfazed by this disparity, commenting later: “I’ve watched people like Kingsley Amis, struggling to get on the up escalator, while I had the down escalator all to myself." He supported his second wife, Eugene, and first child, Sebastian, by combining further novel-writing with stints as a Soho pornographer in St Anne's Court or running gambling parties. In conducting these affairs, Cook soon found himself inspired to depart from England. He spent much of the 1960s in Italy. The Tuscan village in which he settled declared itself an independent anarchist state, and appointed Cook in a dual capacity of its foreign minister and minister of finance. By the end of 1970, Cook had a third wife, Rose, a stepson, Nicholas, an infant daughter, Zoe, a house in Holland Park, and a job as a taxi-driver. His books earned no royalties, his third marriage was in shambles, and he lost his London house. Cook relocated to France and bought a derelict 15th-century fortified tower in Aveyron, to the north of Montpellier. He abandoned writing through all of the 1970s, working as a vineyard labourer with occasional sidelines in roofing, driving, and livestock slaughter. His family rejoined him for a while, but by 1979 the marriage had disintegrated. Nearing 50, Cook eased himself back into literature with a potboiler that was published only in a French translation. He returned to London, married his fourth wife, Fiona, then divorced again. He worked as a minicab-driver on the night shift. He was collecting the material for the first of his "black novels".

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Double Barrel by Nicolas Freeling. New York. 1965. Harper & Row. 217 pages. hardcover.  

DESCRIPTION - Cast in the form of a police investigation, this is very far from being a simple whodunit. Beginning as a seemingly minor & squalid enquiry into an outbreak of poison pen letter-writing, it develops startlingly into something monstrous, a crime against humanity, and then raises the challenging question, what can one do about a crime or a criminal of such magnitude?

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Nicolas Freeling, born Nicolas Davidson (March 3, 1927 - July 20, 2003), was a British crime novelist, best known as the author of the Van der Valk series of detective novels. A television series based on the character was produced for the British ITV network by Thames Television during the 1970s, and revived in the 1990s. Freeling was born in London, but travelled widely, and ended his life at his long-standing home at Grandfontaine to the west of Strasbourg. He had followed a variety of occupations, including the armed services and the catering profession. He began writing during a three-week prison sentence, after being convicted of stealing some food. Freeling's THE KING OF THE RAINY COUNTRY received a 1967 Edgar Award, from the Mystery Writers of America, for Best Novel. He also won the Gold Dagger of the Crime Writers' Association, and France's Grand Prix de LittErature Policière. In 1968 his novel LOVE IN AMSTERDAM was adapted as the film Amsterdam Affair directed by Gerry O'Hara and starring Wolfgang Kieling as Van Der Valk.

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Where Roses Never Die by Gunnar Staalesen. London. 2019. Orenda Books. 9781910633090. Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett. 260 pages. paperback. Cover design by kid-ethic.com.  

DESCRIPTION - September 1977. Mette Misvær, a three-year-old girl disappears without trace from the sandpit outside her home. Her tiny, close middle-class community in the tranquil suburb of Nordas is devastated, but their enquiries and the police produce nothing. Curtains twitch, suspicions are raised, but Mette is never found. Almost 25 years later, as the expiry date for the statute of limitations draws near, Mette’s mother approaches PI Varg Veum, in a last, desperate attempt to find out what happened to her daughter. As Veum starts to dig, he uncovers an intricate web of secrets, lies and shocking events that have been methodically concealed. When another brutal incident takes place, a pattern begins to emerge. Shocking, unsettling and full of extraordinary twists and turns, Where Roses Never Die reaffirms Gunnar Staalesen as one of the world’s foremost thriller writers.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Gunnar Staalesen was born in Bergen In 1947 and was educated at the University of Bergen. For the past ten years he has worked as information secretary at Bergen's only theatre, The National Stage. Since 1975 he has published eight crime novels, of which AT NIGHT ALL WOLVES ARE GREY is the most recent. The earliest of Staalesen's books were police mysteries; his later books are about Varg Veum, a Norwegian private detective. The critic Nils Nordberg wrote of the second Varg Veum novel, TILL DEATH DO US PART (1979), that it was ‘one of the finest, most serious, most ambitious books in post-war Norwegian crime writing.'

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Wolves at the Door by Gunnar Staalesen. London. 2020. Orenda Books. 9781912374410. Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett. 260 pages. paperback.  

DESCRIPTION - One dark January night a car drives at high speed towards PI Varg Veum, and comes very close to killing him. Veum is certain this is no accident, following so soon after the deaths of two jailed men who were convicted for their participation in a case of child pornography and sexual assault … crimes that Veum himself once stood wrongly accused of committing. While the guilty men were apparently killed accidentally, Varg suspects that there is something more sinister at play … and that he’s on the death list of someone still at large. Fearing for his life, Veum begins to investigate the old case, interviewing the victims of abuse and delving deeper into the brutal crimes, with shocking results. The wolves are no longer in the dark … they are at his door.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Gunnar Staalesen was born in Bergen In 1947 and was educated at the University of Bergen. For the past ten years he has worked as information secretary at Bergen's only theatre, The National Stage. Since 1975 he has published eight crime novels, of which AT NIGHT ALL WOLVES ARE GREY is the most recent. The earliest of Staalesen's books were police mysteries; his later books are about Varg Veum, a Norwegian private detective. The critic Nils Nordberg wrote of the second Varg Veum novel, TILL DEATH DO US PART (1979), that it was ‘one of the finest, most serious, most ambitious books in post-war Norwegian crime writing.'

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