Bücher von Alexander Williams

In the midst of a demonstration staged by sit-down strikers, WPA Administrator Henry Ireton is murdered at his desk. Ex-newspaperman Jim Moore has been sent from Washington to look into trouble in Ireton's district, and finds himself both the temporary new deputy administrator and sidekick to Lieut. Pietro Tonelli, the hard-boiled but human ace of the Homicide Squad, as they investigate the murder. The killer strikes again, but Moore and Tonelli discover further trouble as evidence arises that a secretive criminal organization has spread its tentacles throughout Ireton's district, threatening to spread nationwide. Politics and murder go hand in hand in Murder in the WPA.Murder in the WPA was published in 1937. (More classic mysteries available from CoachwhipBooks.com.)

A scream, mounting higher and higher over the bustle and clatter back-stage at the Bolton Theatre- A woman staggers from the star's dressing-room, her white satin gown stained and patterned with the gory foot-prints of a little dog, her face contorted into a mask of horror-But the show must go on!The audience must be entertained-must laugh-while murder stalks among them. A killer may be on the stage among the players, he may be among the musicians in the orchestra, or he may be sitting there among the spectators.Anything might happen here. The Bolton Theatre is known to the theatrical profession as a "jinx house."Defying convention, public opinion, the press, the District Attorney himself, Detective-Sergeant Pietro Tonelli, who glories in the proud title of "cop," carries out a bold plan to detect a murderer who has come and gone like a phantom.A crisp story, with action in every line. A glamorous picture of life behind the scenes of a great city written by a newspaper man who knows.The Jinx Theatre Murder was published in 1933. (More classic mysteries available from CoachwhipBooks.com.)

The body of Dr. John R. Holstead, Gramercy Park inventor and owner of a wholesale drug house, is hurled out of an airplane above Market Street in Newark. Suspects are plentiful: his latest (and missing) formula is worth millions (as foreign agents well know), his nephew is suspected of peddling cocaine, his late best friend's grasping widow is in dire need of money, and some clues point to shifty smugglers. Detective Sergeant 'Pete' Tonelli of New York's homicide squad untangles the clues, leading to a lively climax and desperate battle. Death over Newark was published in 1933.

Clad only in a filmy nightdress, brutally murdered Marguerite Scholl lies horribly dead in the bedroom of her tiny Greenwich Village apartment, her throat cut so deeply that her head has been nearly severed from her body.Who among the free-loving and loose-living denizens of the Village hated the beautiful blonde stenographer with such awful passion as to do this dark and bloody thing? Police suspicion lands fast on Marguerite's live-in boyfriend, struggling artist Bob Crocker. But seasoned crime reporter Peter Adams, who seemingly always manages to be on hand for a murder, thinks Bob is innocent. ("The lice!" he raves about the perfunctory police investigation. "They're so damn sure Crocker bumped this girl they don't even bother to look around!")Spurred by the weird writing and cryptic symbols left at the scene of the crime, Peter, along with another of Bob's women friends, Houston King, looks into Marguerite's hidden past in the backwoods of Pennsylvania to find a motive for murder. There the pair finds stranger things than ever were seen even in bohemian Greenwich Village. . . .Inspired by events in a notorious and bizarre 1928 slaying, The Hex Murder is an original and engrossing detective novel, a "shuddery" [Saturday Review] vintage classic back in print for the first time in over eighty years.