Lawbreakers Suspense Stories #15

When Ox Penner's enforcer Bones arrives to collect him and the winnings from a betting coup, Ox sees only one way out—a carefully staged accident on the long drive back to the city. But as Ox sets his plan in motion, a chance discovery on a darkened roadside turns his scheme into something far more catastrophic than he bargained for. A sharp twist on the old "foolproof plan" that reminds us why some stories are better left unread.

Tom and Nancy Sparrow hatch an elaborate insurance fraud scheme: she'll be buried alive in a specially prepared coffin with a hidden air supply, and after a few days—once the insurance payout is underway—he'll exhume her and they'll split the $100,000. But when an insurance investigator demands the body be examined, Tom's desperation leads him to make a fatal miscalculation in the family graveyard. This 1953 crime tale from Lawbreakers Suspense Stories turns a clever con into a nightmare neither of the Sparrows anticipated.

Paul Ajax, freshly escaped from prison, tracks down his twin brother Quentin to settle an old score—but when their violent confrontation goes further than planned, Paul seizes a dangerous opportunity to assume his brother's identity. Now trapped in a hotel room with multiple threats closing in—a vengeful criminal, the law, and time running out before 6:30—Paul must figure out who's about to walk through that door, and whether he can survive the consequences of his deadly deception.

Neville Pratt devises a scheme to eliminate his wife Edna by sabotaging the penthouse elevator—cutting its control cable so she'll plummet to her death and he can inherit her fortune. He sets the trap carefully, luring Edna back to the building with an urgent call, but discovers too late that the elevator's safety mechanism has a deadly consequence he never anticipated. Greed and cunning collide in this pulp-era twist on the perfect crime.

Chemist Dennis Pratt murders his father to claim the family fortune, then systematically poisons his sister Deborah to eliminate her claim as the sole remaining heir. When she refuses to drink a final dose of his deadly acid concoction, desperation and hatred drive him to force it upon her—with catastrophic results neither sibling anticipated.

Harry Long thought he'd outrun his troubles when company investigator Carl Powell arrived at the jungle rubber plantation with evidence of his embezzlement—but a desperate gambit to escape justice aboard a departing plane sets off a chain of consequences far darker than any prison sentence. As Harry sabotages his captors' parachutes and leaps into the sky over unforgiving mountains, he discovers that some fates can't be outrun, only delayed.

In the gritty world of 1953’s Lawbreakers Suspense Stories, a desperate thief flees with a stolen fortune—only to face a chilling realization: his fingerprints are at the scene. With a gun to a doctor’s head, he demands an experimental treatment to erase them, unaware the procedure will unravel far more than just his identity.