From Library Journal\nThis well-edited collection of short mystery stories serves as a useful introduction to the work of John George Ritchie, who died in 1983. Taken from various sources, the stories in this first hardcover collection include some of Ritchie's best, exhibiting the minimalist style, "tough guy" point of view, black humor, and ironic surprise endings that characterize his work. As Nevins notes in his introduction, the stories are finally "little boxes of bewilderment." The writing style, characters, and endings may become formulaic and predictable, but the collection as a whole will be popular with mystery readers and those looking for good vacation reading. Fans will find the detailed bibliography helpful. 
- Elizabeth Guiney Sandvick, North Hennepin Community Coll., Minneapolis 
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Little Boxes of Bewilderment: Suspense Comedies

Literature & Fiction

Nevins, Francis M.

Ritchie, Jack

United States

St Martins Pr

When Justice Richmond, a highly respected judge dies, his widow is shocked to discover a shoe box in his closet -- containing almost $50,000 in small denomination bills.  His widow and colleagues agree that lawyer-detective and former protege of the judge, Loren Mensing is the right person to carry out the investigation.  The investigation reveals the possibility of the judge accepting a bribe from a multinational oil company which may be a front for the CIA in South America.  Perhaps a philanthropic foundation is involved in misdirecting funds; is there a scheme to undermine the oil company's privileged position in Latin America?

Corrupt and ensnare

PUTNAM

Milo Turner is a con man, and proud of his craft; he's just about the best. But the scam that changes his life is not one of his own, it has been concocted by the woman he loves. When it backfires and she is murdered Milo embarks on the most daring and intricate scheme of his career, to find her killers and avenge her death. 
 Milo knows, although the police do not, that she has been murdered. Wild with grief, he determines to track down her killer. 
 Milo has resources, including access to the most skilled forger in the United States, the ability to take on an entirely new persona, and a valuable contact in Jock Schultz, a Barry Fitzgerald voice at the other end of the telephone and the man without whom half the major scams of the past quarter century could not have been pulled off. 
 Using these, a newly acquired knowledge of an obscure law, and all his ingenuity, Milo concocts his enormously clever scam to expose "Ann's" killers on the pretext of claiming her inheritance. The result is breathtaking suspense and a new high in intricate and absorbing deceptions.

The 120 Hour Clock

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery

iUniverse, Inc.

The latest bone-chilling mystery from the two-time Edgar Award winner, Francis M. Nevins, Jr.

Into the Same River Twice: A Mystery

A collection of ingenious mysteries featuring thirteen former U.S. presidents turns the chief executives from George Washington to Gerald Ford into sleuths to investigate cases of murder, conspiracy, and menace, in tales by Ed Gorman, Stuart M. Kaminsky, Sharyn McCrumb, Edward D. Hoch, and Dorothy B. Hughes, among others. Reprint.

Mr. President, Private Eye

Contemporary

UNKNO

Law professor Loren Mansing is on his way to visit the wealthy great-aunt of the woman he barely knows but is engaged to marry. His fiancee, Heather Dennison, will lose her status as beneficiary under her great-uncle's testamentary trust unless she marries by thirty, which is very soon. But when his car is attacked and disabled, and he learns that Heather has been assaulted by a man in a ski mask, Loren suspects that someone is trying to eliminate the beneficiaries of the trust.

Beneficiaries' Requiem (Five Star First Edition Mystery Series)

Five Star

Night of Silken Snow and Other Stories (Five Star First Edition Mystery Series)

Leap Day and Other Stories

Loren gets an early morning call from the past that leads him to a brutal murder in Greenwich Village, and private eye Val risks everything to save the man she loves

Into the Same River Twice

Carroll & Graf Pub.

Cornell Woolrich published his first novel in 1926, and for four decades his fiction riveted the reading public with mystery, suspense, and horror. America's most popular pulps—Dime Detective, Black Mask, and Detective Fiction Weekly—published hundreds of his stories. Classic films like Hitchcock's Rear Window, Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black and Mississippi Mermaid, Tournier's Black Alibi, and Siodmak's Phantom Lady, as well as dozens of other movies, were based on his work. Novels like Deadline at Dawn, Rendezvous in Black, and Night Has a Thousand Eyes have won him the epithet "father of noir." Every one of the countless many who have read and loved the work of Cornell Woolrich will welcome and applaud this publication of a new collection of tales—the first in nearly two decades—by the greatest writer of suspense fiction in the twentieth century. Woolrich lived a life of such deep despair and utter terror that he could do little except put those fears onto the printed page. In the masterfully wrought suspense of this volume's twenty stories, readers can enjoy works written at the height of Woolrich's powers, as well as many never before published in book form before now.

Night and Fear: A Centenary Collection of Stories by Cornell Woolrich (Otto Penzler Book)

Woolrich,Cornell

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