Résultats lu par "Mark Peckham" dans Toutes les catégories

Police captain Bartholdi sometimes indulged himself in a harmless fantasy. His thoughts, he would imagine, were irresponsible imps that wriggled out of his head and scampered around with an abandon that was often embarrassing. A woman had been kidnapped. The woman was dead. Bartholdi was convinced that a murderer was at that moment having a grim laugh at his expense. He knew who the murderer was. He would have bet his pension and his sacred soul that he knew.

Disc jockey Tutter King has it made. Every time he spins a platter on King's Session, gold comes out: TV earnings, returns on his secret holdings in recording companies - the old payola that some bright young men think only their rightful due. Tutter is a gay young man-around-town who has the world dancing to his tune. He is also involved in some hanky-panky with his pretty blond assistant, Lola Arkwright.

When Barney Street, the fixer, was in Holland in World War II, his life had been saved by a German soldier. Now Barney is dead and his two million dollar estate is left entirely to the soldier who saved him, Milo Hacha. But that fortune comes with a death sentence, for Barney's widow, Estelle, won't rest until she gets back everything that is rightfully hers.

The Syndicate - led by gangster Larry Cutter - is trying to take over Iroquois. They want the town, mayor, and police chief in their pocket. So they kill chief Andy Saxon and one of his top men. Then they move into clean up. But they hadn't reckoned on the chief's son, Lieutenant Ted Saxon.

The coed missing from Tisquanto State is the daughter of Governor Sam Holland's rival for reelection - and best friend. But she is more than that. She is Laura Thornton, a human being - somehow the pawn and victim of angry student upheavals not even the governor understands...

All Hollywood producer Ben Sloane had wanted was to find Sol Dahlman, the mysterious film genius who had made The Wild Nymph - and now Sloane is dead. "Go up to Rockview," the governor tells Mike McCall, "and get me the killer!" But it isn't quite that easy. The Mann Photo Service, long rumored to be a center of the blue-movie industry, is torn by a strike, and nobody is talking to strangers.

Ellery Queen challenges you to solve these clues to death. A thin envelope - worth a man's life. A shattered display case - whose stolen contents a thief replaced with a strange manuscript. The murder symbol: 3HS wM …the queer cipher found to be an old mark of death. These are but a few of the baffling signs Drury Lane follows down a path of deception and murder to one of the most startling climaxes in mystery fiction.

In New York City in the early 1930s, a man is poisoned on a crowded streetcar during rush hour. Everyone sees Longstreet die - but no one sees the killer. Inspector Thumm's few clues all lead up a blind alley. He finally seeks the aid of Drury Lane - retired Shakespearean actor, master of disguise, and amateur sleuth. Seated amid the splendor of the vast medieval halls of his castle on the Hudson, Drury Lane hears the story from the inspector.

Some bizarre thingshave been happening to the eccentric Hatter family. First, the body of York Hatter is recovered from the ocean. But he didn't drown. He died of poison. Next, another poisoning occurs in the Hatters' old mansion in New York's Greenwich Village. This time the police have a witness. But what a witness! She is a blind, deaf mute. Naturally the authorities call in Drury Lane - retired Shakespearean actor, matinee idol, master of disguise, and amateur sleuth.

The nine-word clue was one of nine cryptic notes that had been sent to taunt Inspector Queen and his son Ellery nine days after the murder. Nino Importuna had been obsessed with the number. He had lived by it. Now the killer who brought a trio of gory deaths to Nino's ninth-floor penthouse at Number 99 East was camouflaging his identity in a jungle of nines - and daring Ellery to find him. The case was destined to be a dazzling contest of wits - to the ninth degree!

A phone ringing after midnight means trouble, especially in private eye Harry Stoner's business. This time the 1:30 call is trouble, all right. A motel clerk wants somebody to pick up the loser registered as Harry Stoner who just tried to kill himself. When the real Stoner gets to the Encantada Motel, he finds his old college roommate nearly dead and too many memories still alive.

You are invited to a murder. That was how the invitations should have read when aged millionaire Hendrik Brass sent out his messages to six oddly assorted men and women who knew neither him nor each other. All arrived at the isolated Brass mansion, lured by the tantalizing promise of fabulous wealth. But from the moment the shining brass doors of the grotesquely constructed house swung shut behind them, they began to realize they had been enticed into playing parts in a monstrous joke - the joke of a twisted, brilliant mind…

John Lovering Benedict had more than most men - more money, more mansions, more cars, but most of all more women, including three ex-wives with little in common but their extraordinary physiques. For Ellery Queen the question was which one of them had bashed in Benedict's skull with a hunk of iron statuary? The clues were many…but puzzling. All had been planted at the scene of the crime, but by whom, and for what purpose? And who was the last woman in John Benedict's life?

It's 1943, the war is raging, and sleuthing scribe Ellery Queen wants to do his bit. After a tortuous cross-country drive, he takes a job writing scripts for a Hollywood propaganda house - twelve hours a day of hack work that quickly turns his mind to jelly. After a few weeks, he is so worn down that he can type nothing but gibberish, and he decides to drive home. The trouble starts as soon as he reaches the desert.

Frightfully rich and awesomely respectable, the McKells had never been touched by scandal. At least, not until the handsome Dane McKell discovered his father's secret affair. Determined to protect his mother, he forced a meeting with the other woman.

But Dane didn't count on falling in love with her himself. Nor did he count on the front page murder that engulfed them all. Sheila, exotic young international leader of haute couture, is found murdered in her Park Avenue penthouse.

A card with the letter "J" on it appeared in Robert York's mail, and a day later he was dead. Then another card showed up, and Ellery Queen knew he was up against a brilliant killer who made a game of death by warning his victims. The only clue was the signature "Y" and Ellery had to find him and stop his remorseless vendetta before "Y" won his mad game.

During the 11 nights before Christmas, the strange gifts and the warnings came. Ellery Queen was there. The police were there. But no one saw the messenger. Ellery Queen knew that the sinister gifts held the clue to the mystery. But what did they mean, and who was the intended victim? Then on the 12th night of Christmas, the last clue led straight to the corpse....

Ellery had a simple case. A few days of discreet snooping, some choice advice, and the inimitable sleuth would blithely restore domestic harmony to the millionaire couple Dirk and Martha Lawrence. Then came the scarlet letters. And finally the cryptic clue, scrawled in a murdered man’s blood. A simple case? Unless Ellery did some super-fast sleuthing, he’d have nothing to show but a very scarlet face. The case will drag him all over New York as he hunts for the truth.

Someone is threatening to kill the King, and Ellery must take on the task of saving his hated life. Virtual prisoners, Ellery and his father are whisked away to an island "somewhere in the Atlantic." In a frightening atmosphere of industrial slavery and brute militarism, Ellery comes to grips with a baffling murderer who calmly announces the exact moment of the assassination. The trouble is, Ellery is with the confessed murderer at the time of the crime - so how could he have possibly done it?

Ellery Queen returned to Wrightsville to solve the mystery of a rich man - believed poor - who died of "old age," a poor man - believed rich - who committed suicide, and a scholarly drunk who disappeared. Shortly it occurred to Queen that the puzzle had a pattern. A twisted mind was committing murder according to an old nursery rhyme! Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief…and to at least one person in town, the chief was Ellery Queen.