Book of Murder
Book of Murder

Author: Frederick Irving Anderson

Publisher: Courier Dover Publications

Published: 2015-04-27

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 0486804747

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"Excellent writing, puzzling crimes, and plausible and interesting detectives." ― Saturday Review of Literature Meet Oliver Armiston, a writer whose ingenious mysteries inspired so many copycat crimes that the authorities began paying him not to write. Together with Deputy "Man Hunter" Parr of the New York Police Department, Armiston takes on cases of fraud, murder, and other nefarious activities in these ten dryly witty, cleverly constructed whodunits. Author Frederick Irving Anderson (1877–1947) was a star reporter for the New York World from 1898 to 1908 and a popular writer of crime fiction for The Saturday Evening Post and other popular magazines. Because so many of his superb detective stories were written for periodicals, they fell into undeserved neglect. Steeped in the evocative atmosphere of a bygone New York, this collection offers fiction that's seasoned with shrewd evaluations of crime and criminals and enhanced with a delightfully low-key sense of humor. "Anybody who enjoys crime novels should enjoy this book." — Jolly Elementary School

Killing the Poormaster
Killing the Poormaster

Author: Holly Metz

Publisher: Chicago Review Press

Published: 2012-10-01

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 1613744218

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On February 25, 1938, in the early days of the welfare system, the reviled poormaster Harry Barck—wielding power over who would receive public aid—died from a paper spike thrust into his heart. Barck was murdered, the prosecution would assert, by an unemployed mason named Joe Scutellaro. In denying Scutellaro money, Barck had suggested the man's wife prostitute herself on the streets rather than ask the city of Hoboken, New Jersey, for aid. The men scuffled. Scutellaro insisted that Barck fell on his spike; the police claimed he grabbed the spike and stabbed Barck. News of the poormaster's death brought national attention to the plight of ten million unemployed living in desperate circumstances. A team led by celebrated attorney Samuel Leibowitz of &“Scottsboro Boys&” fame worked to save Scutellaro from the electric chair, arguing that the jobless man's struggle with the poormaster was a symbol of larger social ills. The trial became an indictment &“of a system which expects a man to live, in this great democracy, under such shameful circumstances.&” We live in a time where the issues examined in Killing the Poormaster—massive unemployment, endemic poverty, and the inadequacy of public assistance—remain vital. With its insight into our social contract, Killing the Poormaster reads like today's news.

The Riverview Murders
The Riverview Murders

Author: Michael Raleigh

Publisher: Diversion Books

Published: 2015-02-15

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 1626816239

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“The mystery fiction that Sara Paretsky fashions from Chicago’s South Side is fully matched in Raleigh’s gritty North Side tales” (Publishers Weekly). Margaret O’Mara’s brother disappeared decades ago. But now that his last known associate has just been found dead, O’Mara hires PI Paul Whelan to investigate. Whelan makes the rounds through seedy bars and dilapidated apartment buildings, discovering connections to a long-gone Chicago amusement park that was once the site of another murder. Soon, Whelan is navigating his way through dark pasts, deep secrets, and a mystery that may cost him his life. “What makes this riveting private-eye yarn work is a mixture of superior Chicago atmosphere, with the ghost of the legendary Riverview amusement park lurking in the shadows; great dialogue; and compassionately drawn characters.” —Booklist

The Last Dance
The Last Dance

Author: Ed McBain

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 1999-11-17

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0743200470

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The fiftieth novel in the 87th Precinct series, Ed McBain returns to Isola, where detectives Meyer Meyer and Steve Carella investigate a murder which leads them to the seedy strip clubs and bright lights of the theater district. In this city, you can get anything done for a price. If you want someone's eyeglasses smashed, it’ll cost you a subway token. You want his fingernails pulled out? His legs broken? You want him more seriously injured? You want him hurt so he’s an invalid his whole life? You want him skinned, you want him burned, you want him—don’t even mention it in a whisper—killed? It can be done. Let me talk to someone. It can be done. The hanging death of a nondescript old man in a shabby little apartment in a meager section of the 87th Precinct was nothing much in this city, especially to detectives Carella and Meyer. But everyone has a story, and this old man’s story stood to make some people a lot of money. His story takes Carella, Meyer, Brown, and Weeks on a search through Isola’s seedy strip clubs and to the bright lights of the theater district. There they discover an upcoming musical with ties to a mysterious drug and a killer who stays until the last dance. The Last Dance is Ed McBain's fiftieth novel of the 87th Precinct and certainly one of his best. The series began in 1956 with Cop Hater and proves him to be the man who has been called “so good he should be arrested.”

The Man Who Came Uptown
The Man Who Came Uptown

Author: George Pelecanos

Publisher: Mulholland Books

Published: 2018-09-04

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 0316479810

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From the bestselling and Emmy-nominated writer behind HBO's We Own This City: a "gripping, surprisingly soulful" mystery about an ex-offender who must choose between the man who got him out and the woman who showed him another path (Entertainment Weekly). Michael Hudson spends the long days in prison devouring books given to him by the prison's librarian, a young woman named Anna who develops a soft spot for her best student. Anna keeps passing Michael books until one day he disappears, suddenly released after a private detective manipulated a witness in Michael's trial. Outside, Michael encounters a Washington, D.C. that has changed a lot during his time locked up. Once shady storefronts are now trendy beer gardens and flower shops. But what hasn't changed is the hard choice between the temptation of crime and doing what's right. Trying to balance his new job, his love of reading, and the debt he owes to the man who got him released, Michael struggles to figure out his place in this new world before he loses control. Smart and fast-paced, The Man Who Came Uptown brings Washington, D.C. to life in a high-stakes story of tough choices.

Patriotic Murder
Patriotic Murder

Author: Peter Stehman

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2018-10-01

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 1612349846

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Robert Prager, a lonely German immigrant searching for the American dream, was probably the most shameful U.S. casualty of World War I. From coast to coast, Americans had been whipped into a patriotic frenzy by a steady diet of government propaganda and hate-mongering. In Collinsville, Illinois, an enraged, drunken mob hung Prager from a tree just after midnight on April 5, 1918. Coal miners in the St. Louis suburb would show the nation they were doing their patriotic part—that they, too, were fighting the fight. And who would stop them anyway? Not the alderman or businessmen who watched silently. Not the four policemen who let Prager from their custody, without drawing a weapon. And who would hold the mob leaders accountable? Certainly not the jury that took just ten minutes to acquit them, all while a band played “The Star-Spangled Banner” in the courthouse lobby. Peter Stehman sheds light on the era’s hijacking of civil liberties and a forgotten crime some might say has fallen prey to “patriotic amnesia.” Unfortunately, the lessons from Patriotic Murder on intolerance and hate still resonate today as anti-immigration rhetoric and über-nationalism have resurfaced in American political discussion a century later.

Out and Proud in Chicago
Out and Proud in Chicago

Author: Tracy

Publisher: Agate Publishing

Published: 2009-03-01

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 1572846437

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Out and Proud in Chicago takes readers through the long and rich history of the city's LGBT community. Lavishly illustrated with color and black-and white-photographs, the book draws on a wealth of scholarly, historical, and journalistic sources. Individual sections cover the early days of the 1800s to World War II, the challenging community-building years from World War II to the 1960s, the era of gay liberation and AIDS from the 1970s to the 1990s, and on to the city's vital, post-liberation present.

Murder by the Book
Murder by the Book

Author: Rex Stout

Publisher: Bantam

Published: 1995-09-01

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0553763113

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“It is always a treat to read a Nero Wolfe mystery. The man has entered our folklore.”—The New York Times Book Review Introduction by David Handler It wasn’t Leonard Dykes’s writing style that offended. But something in his unpublished tome seemed to lead everyone who read it to a very unhappy ending. Now four people are dead, including the unfortunate author himself, and the police think Nero Wolfe is the only man who can close the book on this novel killer. So the genius sleuth directs his sidekick to set a trap . . . and discovers that the truth is far stranger—and far bloodier—than fiction. A grand master of the form, Rex Stout is one of America’s greatest mystery writers, and his literary creation Nero Wolfe is one of the greatest fictional detectives of all time. Together, Stout and Wolfe have entertained—and puzzled—millions of mystery fans around the world. Now, with his perambulatory man-about-town, Archie Goodwin, the arrogant, gourmandizing, sedentary sleuth is back in the original seventy-three cases of crime and detection written by the inimitable master himself, Rex Stout.

The Death of Blue Mountain Cat
The Death of Blue Mountain Cat

Author: Michael Allen Dymmoch

Publisher: Diversion Books

Published: 2015-01-04

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 1626815054

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In this “exciting” sequel to The Man Who Understood Cats, psychiatrist Jack Caleb and cop John Thinnes must solve the murder of a Native American artist (Library Journal). Native American artist Blue Mountain Cat seems determined to provoke controversy with his new installation, which strikes art patron Jack Caleb as “Andy Warhol meets Jonathan Swift in Indian country.” As the artist’s former therapist, Caleb can’t help wondering what is driving this new aggressively satirical direction with pieces like Red Man’s Revenge and Native American Gothic. There’s something to offend everybody, many of whom are at the opening—including a litigious developer, an outraged Navajo woman, a black-market antiquities dealer, and the artist’s stunning blond wife, who discovers her husband stabbed to death in a gallery room with a bone knife from his own exhibit. When Chicago homicide detective John Thinnes arrives at the museum, he drafts his friend Caleb to help him navigate the crime scene and the terra incognita of the art world. As the suspects expand to include a desperate museum director, a savage critic, a married mistress, and a shady partner, the shrink and the cop once again find themselves something of an odd couple but a very effective detective duo . . .