Thrilling Crime Cases #48

Ricky "the Ape" Van escapes from a Southern penitentiary in 1930 and quickly climbs the ranks of organized crime as the syndicate's brutal enforcer, eventually leading a gang into increasingly ambitious crimes—kidnapping, mail robbery, and worse. When the FBI closes in and Van is captured, he plots his way out of federal prison, but his newfound freedom may be short-lived when a sharp-eyed roommate recognizes him from a wanted poster. As law enforcement tightens the noose, Van faces a reckoning with the greater power of justice.

A wealthy stockbroker, Harvy Grant, is shot dead during a night stroll through Liverpool, and it's up to you to crack the case in this classic crime puzzle from 1952. With suspects and clues scattered through the scene, readers become detective in this short, sharp mystery that demands your wits to solve the puzzle before the final page.

Frankie Marlowe, a ruthless operator with fingers in every illegal pie from gambling to rum-running, spots promise in a young middleweight boxer named Bell Thomason and sets out to build him into championship material—but Marlowe's "angles" don't stop in the ring, and Bell soon finds himself caught between loyalty to his former trainer Tim Mack and the mounting pressure of working for a man who always has a scheme cooking. When Marlowe pivots to liquor-running and starts cutting into his supplier Dermott's territory, the web of betrayal and double-crosses tightens, with Bell and everyone around him caught in the crossfire.

During Prohibition, Betty Blinker and her husband Marty run a flourishing speakeasy, moving bootleg whiskey at hefty profits—until Big Ed Cramer's crew arrives demanding they cut in the boss on his rightful share. When Marty refuses to be pushed around, a gunfight leaves him mortally wounded, and Betty discovers he won't recover. Faced with Big Ed's declaration of war, she decides to fight back with the same brutal weapons he uses, determined to take her revenge.