Crime Detective Comics #11

When Lieutenant Roger Tichborne is caught cheating at cards in his regiment and cashiered from service, he boards a ship bound for new horizons—only to be swept overboard when the vessel is caught in a devastating storm off the Azores. Years later, a man calling himself Tichborne emerges in Australia, claiming to be the long-lost heir, and sets his sights on the family fortune with the help of a corrupt attorney. As the impostor makes his way back to England, Lady Tichborne's desperate hope and her attorney's ambitions threaten to overtake the truth in one of history's most audacious frauds.

In 1585 Russia, the dying Ivan the Terrible passes his throne to his weak son Feodor, but the ambitious Boris Gudenov manipulates the new czar into making him regent—then orchestrates the murder of Feodor's younger brother Dimitri to secure his grip on power. Sixteen years later, a cunning bootblack peasant named Yuri in Poland claims to be the supposedly dead Dimitri, and his tale convinces Prince Grodno and King Sigismund to raise an army to help him reclaim the Russian throne. As Yuri marches toward Moscow at the head of 50,000 men, the terrified Gudenov realizes his carefully buried secret is about to come back to haunt him.

Yonnie Lemon's got an alibi for everything—fake witnesses, perfect timing, the works—which is exactly how the slick crook keeps walking free from murder charges in 1920s Toledo. But when he decides to expand his empire by strong-arming the city's nightclub owners under his prized "Conference Oak," he'll need more than alibis to handle what comes his way. Drawn with grit and attitude, this crime tale shows what happens when a two-bit hood gets ambitious enough to make real enemies.

A mastermind criminal called "Brains" Bronson is furious that his perfectly executed crimes go undetected while lesser crooks grab headlines—so he hatches a scheme to finally get noticed. He recruits the bumbling "All Thumbs" Louie to write a murder plan full of mistakes, betting that by committing a sloppy crime, the cops will actually catch on. But Detective Schwimmel's deduction turns the whole caper on its head, and Bronson's quest for notoriety takes an ironic turn when the real story that hits the papers isn't quite the one he bargained for.

When Mike "Ice Box" Madden's criminal crew pulls off a string of bank robberies on the West Coast in 1938, they rely on a clever scheme to stay ahead of the law—repainting their getaway car after each job using the cover of a meat company warehouse. District Attorney Collier begins piecing together the operation after a captured gang member lets slip a crucial detail, leading the D.A. to suspect that Madden's business is hiding something far more valuable than beef. As Collier closes in on the truth, a final search of the warehouse's cold storage reveals the shocking evidence that brings the operation crashing down.

When a charming stranger named Rudolph Flanders arrives in Baltimore society with tales of California gold mines and a promise of wealth, the wealthy debutante Sally Haines finds herself captivated—until his arrest on swindling charges shatters her world. Days later, another well-mannered man calling himself Rudy Ayers appears at her door, claiming to represent her insurance company, but Sally begins to wonder if Baltimore harbors more than one Rudolph with questionable intentions.