Lawbreakers Suspense Stories #10

A love triangle fueled by whiskey turns deadly when Harry Collins, desperate to win over Patty, fatally clashes with his rival Dave—then descends into mounting paranoia as he tries to cover up what he's done. As Harry's grip on sanity unravels and his macabre efforts to hide the evidence backfire in increasingly grotesque ways, guilt and hallucination blur into something far worse than any murder charge could bring. This 1953 crime tale from Lawbreakers Suspense Stories proves that sometimes the real punishment isn't what the law dishes out—it's what a guilty conscience inflicts.

Phillip Ross grows suspicious when his best friend Larry begins visiting his wife Sandra nightly, and his jealous suspicions lead him to sabotage Larry's car before a planned evening out—only to discover the terrible truth about what his wife and friend were actually planning. This tense 1953 crime tale from Lawbreakers Suspense Stories turns on a darkly ironic twist that leaves readers to decide the final outcome themselves.

Frank Steelman arrives at police headquarters a year after a bombing at his Pine Lake lodge killed the would-be murderers who tried to take his life, ready to finally close the case by revealing what really happened. Through a series of flashbacks, he recounts how he discovered his wife Karen's affair with one of his executives, Bob Crandall—and the dark scheme that followed. As Frank pieces together the events leading up to that fateful weekend, a carefully laid trap begins to unravel in ways no one anticipated.

When yachtsman Jemelain Fentnor's struggling business needs a financial boost, a moonlit cruise with his wife Jane takes a dark turn—and he plots to make her disappearance look like an accident. But as he celebrates what he believes is the perfect crime, an eerie voice begins calling his name from the water, and Jemelain discovers that some debts demand to be paid. This 1953 crime tale explores how guilt and desperation can turn the sea itself into an instrument of reckoning.

When Jerry Conover is found dead behind the fountain at his own engagement party, Detective O'Neal has to untangle a Halloween night turned deadly—especially after learning that Vic Stone, Marla's ex, had been uninvited yet present and had made threats about their engagement. As suspicion falls on Stone and he's spotted lurking in the neighborhood, the detective must decide whether the jack-o'-lanterns lighting the garden will reveal a killer or put the household in greater danger.

A revolver of French manufacture becomes a harbinger of death when seven separate murders across Louisiana are traced to the same deadly weapon—yet each killer is someone different, and each one hangs for their crime. Police ballistics expert Lou Morris unravels the mystery of how this cursed gun, pulled from a dried stream, keeps changing hands and demanding blood. Was the weapon itself compelled to kill, or something darker at work?