ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S HOW-TO-DO-IT BOOK

Including:

• How to solve your marital problems

—(poison)

• How to dress properly when admitting to first degree murder

—(black tie)

• How to take off a few pounds fast

—(a knife)

• How to ruin a perfect friendship

—(a homemade bomb)

And many, many other helpful hints from such specialists as:

EVAN HUNTER, JOHN CORTEZ, RAY BRADBURY, RICHARD STARK, RICHARD MATHESON, HELEN NIELSON, DONALD WESTLAKE, RICHARD DEMING, JACK RITCHIE, JONATHAN CRAIG, C. B. GILFORD, JAY STREET, ROBERT ARTHUR, FLETCHER FLORA, CHARLES EINSTEIN

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!

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.

He found her in a quiet bar — a sulky-mouthed, awkward, green-eyed kid trying desperately to pick up a man. He taught her how to dress, to walk, to laugh, turned her into the kind of woman who makes every man reach into his pocket for hundred-dollar bills.

Looking at her now, Sam was proud of himself. He had done a good job on her.

Yeah, it was too bad she had to go... the same way as the others.

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.

An unstoppable anthology of crime stories culled from Black Mask magazine the legendary publication that turned a pulp phenomenon into literary mainstream.

Black Mask was the apotheosis of noir. It was the magazine where the first hardboiled detective story, which was written by Carroll John Daly appeared. It was the slum in which such American literary titans like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler got their start, and it was the home of stories with titles like “Murder Is Bad Luck,” “Ten Carets of Lead,” and “Drop Dead Twice.” Collected here is best of the best, the hardest of the hardboiled, and the darkest of the dark of America’s finest crime fiction. This masterpiece collection represents a high watermark of America’s underbelly. Crime writing gets no better than this.

Featuring

• Deadly Diamonds

• Dancing Rats

• A Prize Fighter Fighting for His Life

• A Parrot that Wouldn’t Talk

Including

• Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon as it was originally published

• Lester Dent’s Luck in print for the first time

Somebody had killed his father, then framed him. He knew who that somebody was, but how could he prove it?

23 mystery stories by Richard Deming.

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.

Mr. Deming has developed so neatly an idea so fresh and striking that we feel no introduction is necessary. Go ahead to this completely new kind of time-travel story, with a concept that will stick in your mind through all your future reading of science fiction.