Lawbreakers Suspense Stories #11

When Steve Merwin is forced off a cliff by his partner Trig during a getaway, it seems the perfect crime—until a month later, as Trig and Jerry Greer attempt to pull off the payroll job Merwin had planned, something impossible happens at the used car lot. A ghost with a score to settle and unfinished business takes control of the getaway vehicle, trapping Trig in a nightmare of his own making.

Sherrin Kimberly boards a bus with six other travelers—a smooth-talking businessman, a woman harboring a dark secret, a stool pigeon, a talkative gossip, a blackmailer, and a silent man—only to have the vehicle break down in a storm and lead them to a mysterious house where a gracious host knows far too much about each passenger's sins. As the night unfolds in this isolated refuge, the host begins to dispense a peculiar form of justice, and Sherrin discovers that sometimes the most afflicted among us stand to gain the most from fate's cruel redistribution.

When his dying father reveals he was swindled by his brother Stewart North, Rick Nalton discovers a striking family resemblance that plants a dangerous seed—he looks almost identical to his uncle. Seizing the opportunity, Rick pursues a scheme of vengeance that takes him from the Blue Ridge Mountains to Porto Bello, where he shadows his uncle and attempts to engineer what he believes will be the perfect crime. But in a twist of fate at the Casino National, Rick's carefully laid plans collide with circumstance in a way he never anticipated.

Seth Chalmers, a coal dealer, commits a terrible crime and devises what he thinks is the perfect way to hide the evidence—by dumping the body into a coal shipment headed for an industrial plant. But when railroad detective Joe Brady stops the truck at the freight yard and discovers a corpse in the coal car, Chalmers's scheme unravels in the most ironic way possible. This taut crime tale shows how even the cleverest plan can backfire when fate has other ideas.

When a thief named Slinky Barlow spots an opportunity to rob retired bookie Weeper Sloane after the old man's housekeeper, Auntie Logan, falls ill, he breaks into the apartment—but his plan quickly turns violent and forces him to cover his tracks with a deadly scheme. As the police investigate what appears to be a gas explosion caused by an unattended coffee pot, Slinky crafts a carefully rehearsed alibi, banking on the evidence itself to tell the story he wants them to believe.

Jimmy Wharton never meant to get tangled up with Rudy Carthage's bank job, but when his employer pulls a gun and forces him to be the getaway driver, he has no choice—and the crash that follows leaves him with a fractured skull and no memory of what happened next. Now, caught between Lt. Ray Boland's suspicions, a mysterious ringing in his head that won't quit, and a chance encounter with Claire Darcy that sends him spiraling into a fevered night of violence and betrayal, Jimmy's grip on what's real begins to slip away entirely.