This novel, originally published in 1952, was substantially rewritten and re-released nine years later under the title TEXAS TRAMP by a different publisher. Both versions are available from Cutting Edge Books.
Ex-G.I. Frank Barden is an unlicensed investigator hired by a millionaire to be his personal, in-house detective, unearthing the secrets of his family and his investors. It's a pursuit that reveals the powerful passions of the woman in the tycoon's life: Little Dene, who has sex, murder and money on her mind...and in that order. Big and beautiful Prett, who can brawl almost as viciously as she can love, and there's Marlo, whose cunning and lust were more than a match for any man.
It's 1957. Lester "Red" Dolsan is a former first baseman, now a talent scout for the Brooklyn Dodgers, who is haunted by the suicide of his alcoholic wife...and the discovery that he may have fathered a child in a one-night stand with a lonely, concentration camp survivor with a fake name. His search for the child, and his former lover, leads him into a nightmare of crime, violence and betrayal, with a fortune hanging in the balance.
A vintage sleaze-noir classic, back in print for the first time in over 60 years, with a new introduction by Bill Pronzini, a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master honoree and recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America.
The blistering story of intolerance and hate that is as relevant today as it was when it was first published in 1940...a novel that the Fort Worth Star Telegram called "probably the most shameless and shaming book that has ever been written in America." Now it's finally back in print.
Martin Pryor is a perfectionist who stages a meticulously-plotted accident to kill his wife...and just when it seems like he's committed a flawless crime, he gets a note from a blackmailer demanding money not to expose the details of the murder.
Her badge and her gun can't protect her from herself. Police officer Peggy Malone's gun is not her only weapon...so is her astonishing beauty, which she shrewdly uses to invade hell-holes and dives, hoping to lure the deviants, rapists, flesh-peddlers and predators from the shadows into the light...and take them down. But Peggy isn't only at war with the twisted and the lawless, but with her own desperate needs...and raging desires, which she stokes with every lurid temptation she boldly offers on the dark streets.