He never should have gotten into it in the first place. But when you need money, sometimes you things you wouldn’t ordinarily think of doing. Nothing illegal, nothing like blackmail, something just a shade this side... At least that was the way Barney Calhoun had it figured. It looked like the easiest ten thousand bucks he’d ever make. And she was lovely, though in the end she led him to murder... An ex-cop turned private eye ought to know all the answers on how to commit the perfect crime. But somewhere along the line, he slipped up, and before he realized it they had him where the hair was short.

Richard Deming (1915–1983) was an American pulp writer who specialised in mystery and detective fiction. In addition to original novels, he found a lucrative niche writing books based on movies TV series (such as Dragnet) and also ghost-wrote no less than ten “Ellery Queen” novels. In addition to numerous stand-alone books and stories, he created series featuring Manville (Manny) Moon and Matt Rudd. This volume provides a great sampling of his work.

Manny Moon, the agile one-legged detective of “The Gallows in My Garden” and “Tweak the Devil’s Nose,” is back again. Naturally it’s murder and this time the murder is committed after a banquet arranged, ironically enough, to celebrate the incorporation of a company to manufacture a safety device for hunters. During the investigation, Manny learns a great deal about inventors and inventions, murders and murderers. The beauteous Fausta Moreni is also on hand, along with a generous helping of blackmail, kidnaping and hoodlumism.

If someone had told Gamble Clancy Ross that a stenographer — just out of secretarial school, at that — could start a gang war, he would have grinned and suggested an immediate sojourn in a mental institution for the prognosticator. Even if that same someone had described the chick in question — blond, shaped like a Don Juan’s dream girl and measuring 38-28-38 — he still would have suggested a tonic for tired blood and mental fatigue. And yet that’s exactly what transpired. Stella Parsons just happened to be privy to information which would put a Syndicate biggie on the hot seat. Clancy just happened to think it would be a waste of natural resources to expose Stella to the disease known as rigor mortis, and he therefore endangered his own future enjoyment of Stella’s services (nonsecretarial) by engaging two rival gangs in a war for the control of town ironically named Saint Stephen.

Tutter King had it made. Every time he spun a platter on “The King’s Session,” gold came 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 was a gay young man-around-town. He was also involved in some highly romantic hanky-panky with his pretty blond assistant, Lola Arkwright. And then the roof started to cave in. Senate Investigating Committees. The angry emergence of the wife who Lola never knew existed. The canceling of his network contract. Poor Tutter, it looked like he was going to lose everything. Even his life!

23 mystery stories by Richard Deming.