Mrs Henry Thorsen, a wealthy widow, has reason to believe her retarded daughter is being blackmailed. She hires the Acme Detective Agency to find out why and who the blackmailer is.

The assignment is given to Dirk Wallace and his aide, Bill Anderson. It all seemed quite straightforward when the two operators began to probe. From then on, they became involved with violence, drugs and, finally, the Mafia.

The magic of James Hadley Chase’s storytelling will keep you reading to the last page.

Who murdered Lucille Balu, a rising young film star, found strangled to death in a hotel elevator?

Set against the background of the fabulous Cote d’Azur and the Cannes Film Festival, James Hadley Chase’s new thriller tells the story of a young degenerate with an inner compulsion to kill.

Written with the speed, force and economy of style we have come to expect from the man who has been described as “the most remarkable among British and American thriller writers” this tense new novel throws a noose round the reader which will not be snakes off until long after the last page has been turned.

Victor Dermott, a successful playwright, rent an isolated ranch house in the Nevada Desert where he plans to write another play. With his wife, baby, a Vietnamese servant and a dog, he settles down in the ranch house to work. For the first two months all is ideal, then one bright summer morning, Dermott wakes to find his servant, his dog, and his shot guns have vanished. He also discovers that the telephone is dead and that someone has removed the sparking plugs from his car.

This is the terrifying opening sequence of the masterly new James Hadley Chase novel, a worthy success to a long line of best-sellers.

Enter a world of seedy nightclubs, dangerous, dimly-lit street and cool, wisecracking dicks pitting themselves against armies of ruthless gangsters. This is pulp fiction, a genre spawned amid the disillusionment of post-World War I America — and now reaching new heights of popularity.

Writers like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett turned that unique blend of rapid-fire action, violence and cynical humour into an art form that is being recreated by a fresh wave of young writers whose stories have all the drama and atmosphere of their predecessors’.

This page-turning collection, brought together by a true aficionado of the hardboiled story, includes, of course, Chandler and Hammett, but also Mickey Spillane, Ross MacDonald, Ed McBain and James Hadley Chase from the vintage years and from the current generation James Ellroy, Elmore Leonard and Quentin Tarantino, to name just a few of the twenty great writers featured here. Even Stephen King, doyen of the world of horror, has turned his hand to pulp fiction and is represented in this book.

The world of the hard-drinking, fast-action, apparently indestructible private eye, personified by Chandler’s creation, Philip Marlowe, was never more vibrant. It’s all here, and more, in a book that no fan of the genre can afford to miss.

The Editor of a monthly crime and detection magazine assigns to two of his staff writers, Sladen and Low, the investigation of the strange disappearance of an unknown showgirl. The disappearance was reported fourteen months earlier, but the trail is cold. The police, with nothing to work on, have lost interest. The assignment doesn’t look hopeful.

However, the investigators start asking questions and almost immediately things begin to happen. Witnesses arc murdered, an attempt is made to do away with the investigators. The police once more open the case. The disappearance of the showgirl is found to be only a minor part of a ruthless murder plot.

Safer Dead has the authentic James Hadley Chase touch, which has deservedly earned him the title of “Master of the Art of Deception”. It moves with the pace and power of forked lightning.

Hijacking aircrafts seems to have become the latest fashion. Everyone is at it. Colonel Bernie Olson, ex-bomber pilot, decides to cash in on this latest trend and enlists the support of his ex-flight mechanic, Jack Crane, to lend a hand. Planning a simple hijack shouldn’t be that difficult, but they soon discover that they didn’t account for every eventuality. This is no ordinary hijack and the plot twists and turns in true Hadley Chase style until it reaches a thrilling, nail-biting conclusion.

Set against the background of a rich, gangster-ridden city on the Pacific Coast, James Hadley Chase in this new thriller tells the story of a lone investigator’s hunt for his partner’s killer. From the opening sentence to the last the tension mounts, as the avenging private eye pursues his quarry through every barrier and trap set up by the hoodlums.

Written with that expert technique that gives to all James Hadley Chase’s novels their tremendous punch and drive, The Guilty Are Afraid is a worthy addition to his long list of non-stop, all-action thrillers that have to be read at a sitting.

In the year that the Second World War broke out, James Hadley Chase (1906-85) published his crime novel, No Orchids For Miss Blandish (1939), which subsequently became one of the best-selling mysteries of all time.

“The Mirror in Room 22” is quite unlike anything else from James Hadley Chase’s pen — a ghost story that he wrote while serving as a pilot in the RAF.

Ira Marsh, a provocative blond teenager, arrives at Paradise City, Florida’s crime-free, millionaires’ playground. Her arrival sparks off a cunningly devised plan to rob the Florida Safe Deposit bank, an impregnable fortress, acclaimed as the safest bank in the world. Ticky Edris, an anti-social, misshapen dwarf, directs the operation while Phil Algir, the handsome con-man aids and abets. The plan moves smoothly into action by the ruthless murders of a drug-taking call-girl, her pimp and the short-sighted teenage daughter of the Vice-President of the bank.

Here is an absorbing thriller, written with a hard, swift economy of style. The Way the Cookie Crumbles hooks the reader, and keeps him hooked to the end.

Among some of the finest art treasures, lent by the Hermitage Museum, Leningrad, for display at the Fine Arts Museum, Washington, is the Catherine the Great icon, the oldest known icon and worth millions of dollars.

An expert gang of art thieves succeed in stealing the icon, but the buyer insists the icon should be delivered to him in Zurich, Switzerland. With every exit closed by the order of the President of the United States, chances of smuggling the icon to Switzerland appear slim. The story of how the icon is stolen and how it reaches Switzerland is yet another of James Hadley Chase’s to-be-read-at-a-sitting thrillers.

Here is a story that zips along at a breakneck speed and again points to the reason why James Hadley Chase has gained such a world-wide reputation for explosive and non-stop action. To Floyd Jackson, private investigator and blackmailer, comes Cornelius Gorman with an odd proposition. Gorman looks after the interests of a number of big stars. Veda Rux, known in the profession as a stripper. The previous night, Gorman explains, she performed at a dinner given by millionaire Lindsay Brett, who has recently acquired a priceless dagger, reputed to be made by Cellini. The dagger is shown to the guests and then locked in the safe. Veda Rux is a somnambulist and takes the dagger from the safe in her sleep, only discovering what she has done when she has left the millionaire's house. Gorman wants Jackson to return the dagger to the safe before the theft is discovered. Jackson, however, is sure the story is a tissue of lies.

He was too smart for Gorman, when he fell in love with Veda his doom was sealed. From the moment he agrees to return the dagger, he is caught up in a relentless intrigue that makes him a cats paw for murder.

In the Crowded, smoky Neptune Tavern Al Barney tells of four ill-assorted people — Don Elliot, ex movie star; Joey Luck and his daughter, Cindy, small time ‘dips’ and Vin Pinna, a vicious gunman — in search of 8 Russian stamps worth a million Dollars.

Мастер детективной интриги, король неожиданных сюжетных поворотов, потрясающий знаток человеческих душ, эксперт самых хитроумных полицейских уловок и даже… тонкий ценитель экзотической кухни. Пожалуй, набора этих достоинств с лихвой хватило бы на добрый десяток авторов детективных историй. Но самое поразительное заключается в том, что все эти качества характеризуют одного замечательного писателя. Первые же страницы знаменитого романа «…И вы будете редактором отдела» послужат пропуском в мир, полный невероятных приключений и страшных тайн, – мир книг Джеймса Хедли Чейза, в котором никому еще не было скучно.