The rogue cop was a good cop — smart, brave, experienced. But there was dirt on his hands. The dirt came from his association with the underworld — with Ackerman, numbers king, and other racketeers. These paid the rogue cop well for the cover-up jobs he did for them. Trouble came when they asked the rogue cop to stop his younger brother, Eddie, also on the force, from testifying against them in court. And when Eddie insisted on talking, a hired gangster shot him. The underworld the rogue cop had served had killed his own brother.

Mike Beecher was afraid of too many things to be dangerous any more. He had stayed for two years in the Spanish village because problems could be passed off with a shrug, another drink. To the ruthless conspirators, however, Mike’s skills made him a useful pawn, a practical one because he was expendable. By the time Mike found out how he had been betrayed, he had lost his chance to retreat to safety. This absorbing suspense story is written on two levels.There is the life-and-death drama of a man fighting minute by minute for survival in the trackless wastes of the African desert, trying to outwit the law and the lawless, knowing that if he is caught a girl will be destroyed with him. Seven Lies South is also a novel of character: a penetrating study of a drifter who at last has to stop running and come face to face with himself.

Here is brilliantly executed narrative of two human beings caught in the terrifying grip of their own hatreds and fears. On an immediate level this is a powerful novel of violence and suspense, but in a more significant area it casts a surgically compassionate light on the most anguishing problems of the human spirit. The story develops with classic simplicity; two men, strangers but inevitable enemies, meet in the planning of a crime. They violate the laws of society deliberately and gravely; a bank is broken into, a man is killed and the two protagonists are driven to ground in a lonely farmhouse. One of them is bitter and inarticulate, tormented by his inadequacies and failures. His accomplice, a Negro, is clever but in panic at the thought of death. Do they dare trust one another? Instinct warns them no, and betrayal becomes inevitable. But who will be betrayed is the lesser question; what is betrayed is of paramount importance. There is freedom of the spirit as well as freedom of the body, and a glimmering of this occurs to betrayed and betrayed alike. In the framework of this problem, they are forced to examine their hatred and fear and to reassess themselves as individuals possessing our common humanity.

Murder was in the air. A cop had killed himself, and every crook in town knew that would be sure to bring on THE BIG HEAT. Why did they fear a dead man? Dave Bannion, homicide sergeant, fought for the answer to that question. He got it... Then the big heat came. The dead man was a police clerk who shot himself for no obvious reason. That was Bannion’s first judgment, until a girl named Lucy presented a quite different picture of the dead man from the one he had shown to the world — and to his fastidious, glacial wife. Bannion’s chief, Lieutenant Wilks, wanted the case closed and speculation ended — quickly and tightly. So did Max Stone and Lagana who held the city in a sinister, underworld grip. Why did they fear a dead man? In this story of grim excitement, pathos and dramatic surprise, one of our foremost mystery writers presents the outstanding murder novel of the season.

A riveting novel of power, passion and intrigue, from the author of Soldiers of ’44. Harry Selby knows disturbingly little about the father he never met — until he comes to Summitt City, a chillingly efficient “planned” city where his long-lost half-brother begins to unlock the mystery of their common past... and then suddenly disappears. The brutal sexual assault upon Selby’s young daughter convinces him that beneath the dark currents of the two tragedies is a dimly discerned secret malice, a leviathan whose nature confounds even as he presses his search to the highest levels of law and government. The trail twists to a frightening military experiment in mind and memory control; to a sensational — and darkly suspicious — murder trial; and finally to Summitt City, where it all began — a city now lethal guardian of a most terrible truth. Summitt is a novel of remarkable range and depth, a brilliant exploration of at once the lowest and noblest in human behavior, including a touching father-daughter relationship that defies and survives the mindless evils arrayed against it. Summitt is the premier work of a fine writer at the top of his creative powers.

Steve Retnick is being released from Sing Sing after serving a five year sentence for second degree murder. Steve is an ex-cop who was framed for the killing of a would be union leader and who now has only one objective in life... to exact vengeance against those who framed him. Before his imprisonment, he was a loving husband, a loyal friend and a model police officer. Now he’s a loose cannon hellbent on seeking revenge without regard for who gets hurt, or even killed, as he pursues his violent, single-minded agenda. East side docks of NYC.

A whole generation has passed since The Young Lions and The Naked and the Dead, since the appearance of a novel worthy of a place in the literary roll call of the Second World War. Now, in Soldiers of ’44, Sergeant Buell (“Bull”) Docker, perhaps the most memorable hero in all World War II fiction, prepares his fifteen-man gun section in Belgium’s snowy Ardennes Forest for the desperate German counteroffensive that became known as the Battle of the Bulge. The twelve days of fighting which follow tell an unforgettable story of personal valor and fear — a story which Docker must later attempt to explain and defend before a post-war tribunal of old-line Army officers who seek to rewrite the record of battle and soldier’s code that Docker and his men fought so hard to maintain. A magnificent novel, by the author the New York Times called “one of today’s ablest storytellers.”

“Murder on the Turnpike” takes place over a single night when a serial killer (before there was a term for that) is stalking, abducting, and killing motorists along a 100-mile length of interstate highway stretching south from New York. The state troopers patrolling the turnpike first notice an abandoned car followed by a dead body — with more mayhem to follow. Even still, it takes them awhile to piece together what’s happening. Adding to the tension is the fact that 45 miles of this highway will be traveled by the motorcade of the President of the United States later that night. Dan O’Leary is the earnest young state trooper who discovers the first abandoned car 200 yards away from a highway diner where his girlfriend works. He later spearheads the cat and mouse game between the police and the killer that is the centerpiece of this enjoyable story.