Best of
Mystery

1954

The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes


Adrian Conan Doyle - 1954
    The plots are all new, with painstaking attention to the mood, tone, and detail of the original stories. Here is a fascinating volume of mysteries for new Sherlock fans, as well as for those who have read all the classics and crave more!The Adventure of the Seven Clocks The Adventure of the Gold Hunter The Adventure of the Wax Gamblers The Adventure of the Highgate Miracle The Adventure of the Black Baronet The Adventure of the Sealed Room The Adventure of the Foulkes Rath The Adventure of the Abbas Ruby The Adventure of the Dark Angles The Adventure of the Two Women The Adventure of the Depthford Horror The Adventure of the Red Widow

Area of Suspicion


John D. MacDonald - 1954
    But now Ken is dead -- murdered by a thief, the police say -- and Gevan's presence is desperately needed to keep their company, Dean Products, from falling apart.Gevan soon sees there's more going on at Dean Products than a classic power struggle between old guard and new blood. But everywhere he turns, he finds only questions and confusion. He must struggle to keep his hands off the grieving widow, the beautiful seductress Niki, who is all too eager to pick up where they left off. He must grapple with the motives of Stanley Mottling, the new production chief. He must come to terms with the presence of a Colonel from the Pentagon, who supervises the company's new defense contracts.But Gevan Dean doesn't suspect the truth behind Ken's murder or what is really going on at Dean Products -- until the stakes get too high to ignore and the truth explodes violently in his face . . . .

Brief Candles


Manning Coles - 1954
    Denissur-Aisne while on holiday one fine day in 1953.What they don't know is that the two men, James and Charles Latimer, are ancestors of theirs. The two shuffled off this mortal coil some 80 years earlier when, emboldened by strong drink and with only a pet monkey and an aged waiter as allies, the two made a valiant, foolish and quite fatal attempt to halt a German advance during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.Now, these two ectoplasmic gentlemen and their spectral pet monkey Ulysses have been summoned from their final resting place in an unmarked grave because their visiting relatives are in serious trouble.But before they can solve the younger Latimers' problems, the three benevolent spirits light brief candles of insanity for a tipsy policeman, a recalcitrant banker, a convocation of English ghost-busters, and a card-playing rogue who's wanted for murder.

Bad Day at Black Rock


Howard Breslin - 1954
    This novel was written from the script.