The Perfect Crime #13

A hardened criminal devises what he thinks is an airtight alibi: commit murder, then arrange his own arrest so he's safely behind bars while an accomplice frames him for another crime using his fingerprints. But in "Murder—The Easy Way," Ben Baur's fool-proof scheme unravels in the courtroom when the prosecution spots the one detail he overlooked. This 1951 crime tale from *The Perfect Crime* proves that no matter how clever the angle, the law always finds the fatal flaw.

A pilot drawn into a diamond smuggling scheme thinks he's found the perfect murder weapon—the spinning propeller of an airplane. When his accomplice demands the stolen goods, he ties the man to the prop for what he believes will be an untraceable kill, but his own escape plan is undone by the very method he relied on. Floyd Torbert's tight pencils and inks drive this 1951 crime tale toward a bitter irony, where a scheme to get away with murder only ensures that he won't get away at all.

Harry Kellet is a career criminal with a talent for getting caught—and when he strong-arms his way into winning a prison card game against Rocko Masters, he learns that even the toughest hoods can exact a slow, patient revenge. After Harry flees to Philadelphia thinking he's in the clear, Rocko sets a clever trap that turns the fugitive's own arrogance against him, with consequences Harry never saw coming.

A night watchman at the Tred-Lite Shoe warehouse gets pulled into a theft scheme by a smooth operator who sees easy money in stealing inventory, but their carefully planned heists unravel when the company president spots unauthorized shoes on the street. As police close in, Jeff Ganford discovers that partnering with criminals comes with a price far steeper than the quick cash he was promised.