Very little is known about Ledru Shoopman Baker (1919-1967), who wrote only four novels and one novella in his short career. His 1957 novella The Queen’s Bedroom was performed on an LP by Boris Karloff and his novel The Cheaters was adapted into the 1990 Canadian TV movie Frame Up Blues aka Le Danse du Scorpion. He died in Long Beach, California at age 48 in 1967, less than a year after divorcing his second wife.
The blockbuster, million copy bestseller of 1951, a beloved Gold Medal classic, is finally back-in-print to enthrall a new generation with its raw, powerful description of a passionate love affair that had no limits.
She belonged to one man… a violent gangster… but she wanted another, a womanizing writer. So she seduces the writer and tricks him into a quickie Las Vegas wedding that puts them both in mortal danger.
He looked at the woman, slim and beautiful, the woman he’d been hired to ruin. Then he saw her haunted eyes and fell in love. After that, it was the two of them together in a merry-go-round of hate and fear… and murder.
A crime lord strong-arms Jack Griffith, a struggling musician, into spying on his wife Mardi, who he suspects is cheating on him…but things go very wrong when Jack falls for her himself.
Mark Mitchell is a playboy atomic rocket scientist who marries the wrong woman…and is betrayed in the worst possible way. He is quickly arrested, convicted of treason, and sentenced to life in prison. But that’s only the beginning of his nightmare in this lightning-fast, insanely unpredictable, brutal Cold War noir thriller.
