One of Keeler's best, this is the second half of the notorious Marceau case, where a strangler baby dangling from an autogyro may have done the deed. Written in 1935 at the peak of Keeler's powers. Xenius Jones, Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard, gave the exact date he would reveal the details of the infamous André Marceau murder. Then Alec Snide, an American reporter, broke the case before he did! But Jones insists that Snide is 100% wrong—and he’s got the 4-dimensional proof of it! In the second “dossier novel” of this remarkable murder case, Harry Stephen Keeler once again proves that no one could handle a complicated plot as he could. Note for the culturally sensitive: Most of Harry Stephen Keeler's works are not politically correct by contemporary standards. Please keep in mind the time in which it was written as you read it.

"The Babe from Hell!" gasped Andre Marceau just as the wire rightened around his neck. A second later he lay sprawled on the ground -- dead. Close by his body were the tracks of tiny footsteps, beginning nowhere and leading nowhere...the only clues to one of the most shocking crimes of the Twentieth Century! That was the beginning of a mystery that Scotland Yark sleuths worked on frantically for two years and then abandoned in despair, without a solution. Yet it was to be solved, not by a detective, but by a resourceful and imaginative American newspaper man, who tracked down an overlooked clue and reopened the case. The thread of Destiny which brought a horrible death to Andre Marceau stretched through Europe to Japan and Australia and even America!

Young Y. Cheung is in a pickle! In order to receive a $100,000 inheritance from his grand­father’s estate, he must get his name mentioned in 1000 U.S. newspapers, “in an honorable fashion” before midnight of the day before the estate is settled. On top of that, his family doesn’t consider his one-of-a-kind profession, business detective, “honorable”. How Y. Cheung uses his inscrutable wiles to gain happiness and the inheritance is a tale only Harry Stephen Keeler could spin. "It was definitely loopy and is the second of his novels I have read to deal sympathetically and sensibly with Asians in 1930s while everyone else was demonizing or eroticizing them in genre fiction of that era. This is one of Keeler's forays into the 'locked room' and impossible problem genre, but being Keller it involves an outrageous and nearly unfathomable solution." -- G. F. Norris, Golden Age Detection.

Follow-up to the Edgar Award-nominated Gun in Cheek further celebrates neglected classics of substandard mystery writing, uncovering even more twisted treasures for connoisseurs of hideous prose.

The importance of Chicago in American culture has made the city's place in the American imagination a crucial topic for literary scholars and cultural historians. While databases of bibliographical information on Chicago-centered fiction are available, they are of little use to scholars researching works written before the 1980s. In The Chicago of Fiction: A Resource Guide, James A. Kaser provides detailed synopses for more than 1,200 works of fiction significantly set in Chicago and published between 1852 and 1980. The synopses include plot summaries, names of major characters, and an indication of physical settings. An appendix provides bibliographical information for works dating from 1981 well into the 21st century, while a biographical section provides basic information about the authors, some of whom are obscure and would be difficult to find in other sources. Written to assist researchers in locating works of fiction for analysis, the plot summaries highlight ways in which the works touch on major aspects of social history and cultural studies (i.e., class, ethnicity, gender, immigrant experience, and race). The book is also a useful reader advisory tool for librarians and readers who want to identify materials for leisure reading, particularly since genre, juvenile, and young adult fiction, as well as literary fiction, are included.

Over the decades Francis M. Nevins has written dozens of articles and essays on the major influences of crime literature and here he collects them in 450+ pages. Coupled with some current essays on people he's known this makes for a book that any mystery fan will cherish and use as a reference book.

Inspector Head, having ascertained that Edward Carter has been shot down at his own door at four o'clock on a January morning, finds in the snow the murderer's footprints, leading to a gate, and stopping there! The tracks do not go on, nor do they reappear anywhere: the murderer, having walked as far as the gate, apparently vanished into thin air! This is the initial problem in a mystery into which is woven the love story of Hugh Denham and Marguerite West - but it is by no means the final or greatest problem of the book. Here is not only mystery, but a very human story. Charles Henry Cannell (1882-1947) was a prolific English author who wrote many mystery, adventure, western and fantasy novels under the pseudonyms E. Charles Vivian, Jack Mann and Barry Lynd.