Wanted Comics #40

A small-time jewel thief called the Lynx catches the eye of Natty Sam Dahlen after a botched robbery, and soon finds himself swept into the Bright Belt Mob—an organized crime ring that preys on Broadway's wealthy nightclub patrons with surgical precision. As the robberies mount and police captain Arch Fennis launches an investigation into the connected crimes, the Lynx's rise through the ranks puts him on a collision course with the law that he may not survive. Based on actual police files, this is a taut crime story of ambition, organization, and the thin line between small-time crook and organized criminal.

When Eddie Attrio gets out of prison, he hatches a scheme to control the boxing world through fixed fights and intimidation—building up fighters like Red Hawkins as meal tickets while swindling bettors and silencing anyone who threatens to talk. But sports reporter Dan O'Brien smells something rotten in the ring and decides to dig deeper, putting himself in the path of a dangerous racket run by a man who solves problems with his fists. O'Brien's investigation sets him against Attrio's murder ring in a battle to expose the truth before more bodies pile up.

In the summer of 1947, Henry Clay Tollett pulled off a bank robbery in Oregon and vanished—but his success went to his head, and he attempted another heist that ended with his capture and a twenty-five-year federal sentence. On November 22, 1949, while imprisoned at McNeil Island, Tollett spotted his escape route: a shipment of furniture headed out by truck, followed by a cargo plane to Seattle. Still at large as of publication, this dangerous fugitive remains one of the FBI's most wanted—and authorities won't stop hunting until he's back behind bars.

Henry Anias sees a way out of his financial ruin when his wife reveals she's taken out a life insurance policy with him as beneficiary—but only if something were to happen to her. Planning what he believes is the perfect crime, he arranges an alibi by attending a play in a nearby city, then rushes home to commit murder and make it look like a robbery. But as any true crime fan knows, even the cleverest schemes have a way of unraveling when fate intervenes.

A man named Harry Wilkes finds himself at the center of a baffling case when an insurance company executive brings troubling news to an inspector—and Wilkes's past of forgery and attempted murder only deepens the suspicion. As the facts of the mysterious situation unfold, readers are invited to weigh the evidence and decide for themselves whether this repeat offender is truly responsible this time. A classic crime puzzle that challenges you to separate guilt from circumstance.

Lieutenant Matt Dundy and Dr. Philip Gage tackle a peculiar crime spree when a burglar known as the Phantom seems to vanish without a trace from every robbery scene. When Dundy devises a trap using a portable radio tuned to police signals—suspecting the thief is intercepting dispatch calls to stay one step ahead—the officers finally catch a break: fingerprints on the abandoned radio. But what Doc Gage discovers at the crime lab upends everything, leading them to a suspect whose very identity defies conventional detective work.

When Mrs. James Arthur returns from shopping at a Florida motel, she finds her husband vanished without a trace—his room has been repainted, there's no record of him at the desk, and nobody remembers seeing him at all. As a detective investigates the impossible disappearance, clues point to something far darker than a simple vanishing act: a scarred stranger with ties to a recent bank robbery her husband was involved in. The truth behind her husband's fate lurks somewhere in the swampland mystery surrounding the Everglades Motel.