Murder by the Pack by Carl G. Hodges (Original Novels Foundation, 1960?)

Found in a dusty corner of the Green Shed:

They got to Cochran just outside the safety of his home.  And when Bob Ruff got there his pal was sprawled out on the sidewalk—dead with nine bullets in his body. 

The tough shamus owed his life to the murdered man and he vowed this was one gang-killing that was going to be avenged. 

Ruff figured he was going up against vicious opposition, but he didn't know just how vicious until he met a girl on the run. 

Cherry Morgan knew more about the rackets than was good for her health.  And when Ruff learned the score he knew that every moment they both lived from then on was on borrowed time!

Though a lot of these digest sized novellas were published in Australia in the 1950s and 1960s, not many of them have survived.  They appear to have been throwaway material—quick and easy reads for commuters on their journeys to and from work.  I read this on the bus this morning and it was just the thing for the journey: an absorbing page turner that was small enough to stuff into a bag or a pocket when I reached my stop!

Dark Duet by Peter Cheyney (Fontana, 1963)

 

KANE looked at her appreciatively.  "I don't know whether anybody's ever told you, but you've got the swellest pair of legs I've ever seen" he said.  Valetta looked at him sideways along her dark eyelashes.  He thought she was very beautiful; her mouth delicate, sensitive, almost tremulous.  He could look at her for hours on end.  It was that sort of mouth...

And.... here we have some more fiction about World War II--in this case from the pen of pulp writer Peter Cheyney.  Firstly published in 1942, this book contains three linked novellas about two spies/assassins working for the British Government.  Though they are definitely working on the side of good, they are not particularly moral characters, nor do they operate by a gentlemanly code.  The whole thing is altogether more gritty than the previous generation of spy thrillers, and seems to have been influenced by hard-boiled detective fiction (another genre in which Peter Cheyney specialised!)

The Lady in the Morgue by Jonathan Latimer (Pan, 1959)

Another piece of loot from my Lifeline Bookfair crime spree:

Lively DEATH

PRIVATE EYE, WILLIAM CRANE, juggles with the identity of one dead blonde and sundry live ones, cuts grim mortuary capers over a volcano of violence and reminds us that there's no place--in crime fiction--like Chicago!

"Hardboiled" would be the only word to describe this book.  The plot involves a stolen corpse, competing gangsters and a murdered morgue attendant (you can see the murderer bringing down a cosh on the poor guy's head to the right of the cover.)   Oh yes, and there are sundry Dangerous Dames floating about the story (including a group of taxi dancers in a sleazy dance hall.)

In brief: generic but fun!

Headed for a Hearse by Jonathan Latimer (Pan, 1960)

More loot from my Lifeline Bookfair crime spree:

 

SIX DAYS

to go before Westland would go to the electric chair for the murder of his wife...

SIX DAYS

for him to sweat in the death cell--with a gangster and a fiend for company...

SIX DAYS

for private investigator William Crane to flirt with death and find the real killer...

Now this is an example of hard-boiled crime fiction.  Originally published in 1935 it is steeped in Depression cynicism, and filled with characters who are corrupt, cowardly and treacherous.   Innocence is vindicated--eventually--but it takes a lot of bribes and a sharp lawyer.  Oh, and some help from gangsters:

    Butch looked forbiddingly at Crane.  "Connors musta told you about us."
    "You bet he did."  Wind whipped the side curtains against the body of the car and whistled across the back seat.  "He said you boys could muscle your way into heaven and come out with a truckload of harps."
    This was a lie but it satisfied Butch.
    "Connors would have been all right," he said, "if he could of left the coppers alone.  It's OK to knock off a hood or so, but you oughta be careful about shootin' coppers.  It makes the judge mad, and sometimes he won't let ya fix the case."

(Page 110)