<div><B>From Mystery Writers of America Grand Master George Harmon Coxe: </B><B>His job was to protect a friend from suicide, but he didn&rsquo;t count on murder.</B><BR />  After a car crash takes his daughter&rsquo;s life, John Gannon doesn&rsquo;t want to live anymore. He tries twice to kill himself&mdash;first by jumping, next with pills&mdash;but doesn&rsquo;t succeed. His doctors recommend a beach vacation with close supervision. For a week Dave Barnum watches his despondent friend drink, fish, and gamble, and gradually grows sick of his ill temper. Finally, convinced that John Gannon has gotten past his suicidal tendencies, Barnum lets his guard down. The mistake proves fatal. That night, at Club 80, someone drugs Barnum&rsquo;s brandy. By the time he makes it home, Gannon is dead. As he inspects his friend&rsquo;s body, the killer wallops him on the skull and escapes unseen. Barnum&rsquo;s job was to protect John Gannon. He failed, and now it&rsquo;s time for some payback.</div>

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Never Bet Your Life

<div><b>An amateur appraiser gets trapped in a chaotic diamond deal</b>After years trying to make their fortunes in the Guyanese diamond trade, Barry Dawson and Colin Lambert have crossed paths once too often. The last time Lambert hired Barry as an appraiser, Lambert cheated his old friend out of his share. Soured on the diamond business, Barry wants to return to the States and marry his hometown girl. Desperate for travel money, he takes one last job from Lambert. He will find that there is no safe exit from the diamond trade. For hours Barry sifts through a pile of stones, appraising them for sale to a tough named Hudson. They are the most beautiful diamonds he has ever seen&mdash;as a group, worth more than $100,000. The sealed package is pillow-shaped, weighs less than a pound, and will cost the blood of many men.</div>

Man on a Rope

<div><b>Smuggling leads to murder, with Kent Murdock caught in the middle</b>When the <i>Kemnora</i>, a stately liner on her maiden voyage, docks in Boston, Kent Murdock is there to cover the story. He&rsquo;s joined by Harry Felton, a reporter and one-time foreign correspondent in France. As they leave the port, Murdock notices customs officials working over some passengers, but leaves without a second thought. After all, reporters are never bothered at customs. Only later does Murdock learn that he left with a small package in his camera bag, hidden there by someone on the ship&mdash;and retrieved later by Felton. He goes to ask Felton why he was used as an unwitting smuggler, but finds the reporter dead on the floor of his apartment. Whatever was in that package was worth killing for, and Murdock will find it, even if it means becoming a target himself.</div>

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Lady Killer

<div><b>A marina owner gets caught up in a murder investigation</b>The girl in the water is unfamiliar to Don MacLaren. This is odd since, as the owner of the island&rsquo;s only boat dock, he knows everyone who steps foot on the small spit of land. He hoists the young swimmer out, and is helping her get warm when Oliver Kingsley, the island&rsquo;s wealthiest citizen, comes to collect her, claiming he&rsquo;s her husband. The girl refuses to leave with Kingsley, resulting in a brawl between the two men. In the morning Kingsley is found dead, and after the cops learn about the fight, they peg MacLaren as their chief suspect. As MacLaren struggles to understand the mystery behind the rich man&rsquo;s death, he finds that even the smallest island can hold deep secrets.</div>

Slack Tide

<div> <b>An old friend of Kent Murdock&rsquo;s is murdered, leaving him to take the fall</b>It&rsquo;s been two years since Kent Murdock saw Sheila, and it only takes a few minutes to remember her flaws. While the Boston newspaper photographer was away fighting in the European war, Sheila&rsquo;s cold ambition took her out of the newsroom and into the studio, to write a radio show that&rsquo;s about to land her in the big time. The wallflower he once knew is now the center of attention&mdash;not all of it pleasant. One night Murdock follows her home for a drink. It proves to be a deadly mistake. A drugged bottle of Scotch knocks Murdock out, and when he comes to, he finds Sheila dead, strangled on the floor. The Scotch&mdash;the only evidence of his innocence&mdash;is gone, and Murdock is the natural suspect for the beautiful young writer&rsquo;s death. Which means he&rsquo;s going to have to find the killer himself.</div>

The Fifth Key

<div><b>Hungry for work, an ex&ndash;air force pilot takes a deadly assignment in Manila</b>Despite three years of exemplary service flying for his country in the South Pacific, Spence Rankin can&rsquo;t find work. He&rsquo;s losing a bar fight when his old friend Ulio Kane appears. A former companion of Rankin&rsquo;s, Kane was born in Manila and spent the war organizing guerilla warfare against the Japanese. They killed his family during the occupation, so Kane faked his death and set about preparing for peacetime life. But now Kane has received a plea for help, signed by his father&mdash;who&rsquo;s supposed to be dead. Is the note genuine, or is it a trap lain by his enemies in the mining business? He must return to Manila to be sure, and wants to hire Spence as a bodyguard. The pilot agrees to take the job, for death in the tropics is preferable to boredom in California.</div>

Dangerous Legacy

<div><b>While taking pictures at a society wedding, Kent Murdock stumbles upon a murder</b>Every society family has skeletons in its closets, but only the Cannings have a fresh corpse. Kent Murdock finds the dead man while taking pictures at the wedding of Patricia Canning and Roger Armington, scions of Boston&rsquo;s most prominent&mdash;and camera-shy&mdash;families. Patricia and Murdock have been friends for years, and she invited him to photograph the wedding against her parents&rsquo; wishes. For the killer, Murdock&rsquo;s appearance is very bad luck indeed. The dead man turns out to be Patricia&rsquo;s ex-husband, whom she spent three days married to before the family pressured him into an annulment. He traveled to Boston in search of blackmail and found death instead. Whichever Canning killed him had hoped to sweep the murder under the rug. But Kent Murdock&rsquo;s camera has a way of finding the truth, no matter how ugly it may be.</div>

The Crimson Clue

<div><b>A lawyer travels to Barbados to protect an old friend from a swindle</b>David Payne is only twelve hours from vacation when he gets the fateful summons. Professor John Alison, David&rsquo;s mentor and most prominent client, needs him to go to Barbados&mdash;and if he doesn&rsquo;t tread carefully, he may not return. David is charged with checking on a beachfront property owned by the professor&mdash;which an unscrupulous rat named Mike Ludlow is trying to swindle away. The professor is too tired to fight, but his daughter has other ideas. She has snuck away to Barbados, and she&rsquo;s brought the professor&rsquo;s gun. David Payne&rsquo;s job is to stop the bloodshed before it starts&mdash;but he might not get there in time.</div>

Moment of Violence

<div><b>Hoodlums steal a worthless painting, and Kent Murdock wants to know why</b>A collection of valuable Italian paintings finds its way to Boston, placed in the care of Professor Andrade. Before passing them to a museum, the professor hires newspaper photographer Kent Murdock to document them. On his way to the assignment, Murdock is stopped by a gunman named Erloff, who steals the reporter&rsquo;s identification&mdash;and pays his own visit to the professor. But Erloff is not after the expensive stuff. He cracks Andrade on the skull and leaves with nothing but a worthless painting of a green-hued Venus. Murdock is perplexed. Why all the trouble for an ugly piece of modern art? But the jade Venus holds a terrible secret&mdash;and blood will flow before it comes to light.</div>

The Jade Venus

<div><b>Doing a favor for an old friend gets Kent Murdock involved in a murder</b>Newspaper photographer Kent Murdock goes to Union City for the sake of Helen Farnsley, an old friend whose marriage is in trouble. Long ago he warned her against marrying Lee, and now that their life together has turned sour he wants to help her escape it. But the trouble in Union City starts as soon as he gets to his hotel room. Behind the mirror, Murdock finds a diamond bracelet belonging to the room&rsquo;s previous resident, a talent agent named Harry who returns a few minutes later to collect it. That night, Murdock sits down with Helen&rsquo;s husband, who asks for a few hours alone in the room to think. When Murdock returns, Lee has been murdered, and the police are looking for the room&rsquo;s owner. Kent doesn&rsquo;t stop to talk to the cops. It would be much easier to find the killer himself.</div>

Eye Witness

<div><b>Trying to help a wronged inventor, a friend of Casey&rsquo;s ends up murdered<BR></b>The last thing Flash Casey needs is an apprentice. Turned down by the army because of a bum knee, he agrees to teach a twice-weekly photography class for the American Women&rsquo;s Voluntary Services. One of his students, whose father just happens to have a lot of money invested in Casey&rsquo;s paper, asks to tag along on an assignment. Flash can&rsquo;t say no.<BR><BR>An engineer named John Perry has come to beg for help from one of Casey&rsquo;s friends at the paper, crusading news columnist Rosalind Taylor. A few years back, Perry invented an industrial lubricant that should have made him a fortune, but his partner stole his idea and kept the profits for himself. Taylor has agreed to mediate for them, and asks Casey along to document the meeting. When Flash arrives, the apartment is ransacked and Taylor is dead. Casey will find her killers, as long as his little apprentice doesn&rsquo;t get in the way.</div>

Murder for Two

<div> <b>A jilted lover finds himself implicated in a murder</b>When John Holland proposed to his girlfriend, Tracy, she imposed a 31-day waiting period before they could see each other again. It&rsquo;s day 30, and Holland travels to her Long Island home for their reunion, only to receive the shock of his life when he meets Tracy&rsquo;s fianc&eacute;, Roger Drake. Tracy&rsquo;s mother invites Holland to stay there and win back Tracy&rsquo;s love, and within a few hours, Drake is dead. As it turns out, Drake was a private detective hired by Tracy as a test for her beloved&mdash;and it looks like Holland failed. Meanwhile, Drake&rsquo;s boss, hardnosed detective Sam Crombie, descends on the home, looking to avenge his comrade.</div>

The Frightened Fiancee

<div><b>Flash Casey snaps a photo that holds the key to a corrupt lawyer&rsquo;s murder</b>Casey shouldn&rsquo;t have had to go back for more pictures of Stanford Endicott. He was at the court with the other newspaper photographers when the wealthy lawyer was arraigned, and got pictures of him smiling as he put on a hat to hide his bald head. But before Casey can get the negatives developed, a pair of urchins steal his camera case and expose the plates to the sun. At his editor&rsquo;s orders, Casey visits Endicott&rsquo;s office for another round of photos. The picture he takes there is altogether more interesting: Stanford Endicott, dead on his office floor. Casey hears a sound in the next room and knows the murderer is close. He gives chase out the front door, and takes a picture just as the killer drives away. Suddenly, Flash Casey has a bigger story than he bargained for.</div>

Silent Are the Dead

<div><b>A couple of small favors land Flash Casey in a dangerous mess</b>Flash Casey should know better than to take a roll of film from a desperate man. Stopping for a drink on his way home from work, a fellow news photographer gives him a canister to safeguard. The next morning, Casey wakes up with gunmen in his bedroom, looking for the film that could implicate one of their associates in a killing. To save his friend&rsquo;s life, Casey hands over the negatives, expecting that to be the end of it. He&rsquo;s wrong. A stockbroker named Donald Farrington spent the night at the same bar, getting into a different kind of trouble&mdash;the sort that ends with him being photographed in a hotel room with a woman who isn&rsquo;t his wife. Casey agrees to help him navigate the blackmail, a friendly offer he&rsquo;ll regret very soon.</div>

Deadly Image

<div><b>To steal a Caribbean inheritance, an American impersonates a prodigal son</b>Though his name is Duncan Ward, he lands in Barbados with a passport reading &ldquo;Jim MacQuade.&rdquo; The MacQuade family meets him at the airport with open arms, welcoming home the son who left the Caribbean over a decade earlier. Duncan knows Jim from college, and over the years has accumulated enough details of the MacQuade plantation to carry off the fraud. Old John MacQuade is near death, and Duncan hopes to win Jim&rsquo;s piece of the disintegrating family fortune. Expecting a broken-down, heavily mortgaged farm, he finds a thriving business, one that is valuable enough for his supposed family to be on their guard. Someone has already tried to poison the old man in an attempt to kill him before he changes the will in Jim&rsquo;s favor. If Duncan is found out, the family may not be amused by his lie.</div>

The Man Who Died Twice

<div><b>One of Kent&rsquo;s pictures holds the secret to a wealthy man&rsquo;s death</b>No one has seen titan of industry John Caldwell for nine years when he hires Kent Murdock to take his picture. Caldwell is preparing a landmark announcement, and wants Boston&rsquo;s finest newspaper photographer there to document it. Murdock chafes at the stuffy environment of the Caldwell home&mdash;particularly when Caldwell&rsquo;s heir instructs him to take only one picture. Using an infrared flash, Murdock sneaks a second shot. Less than an hour later, John Caldwell is dead. Murdock makes a print of his second photo, hoping to find something that explains the strange ways of the Caldwell clan. Before he can examine it, the family&rsquo;s thugs assault him in the dark room, destroying the picture. The photo is gone, but there&rsquo;s no stopping Kent Murdock from learning what&rsquo;s rotten in the Caldwell estate.</div>

The Hollow Needle

<div><b>Trying to help a model, a fashion photographer exposes a sinister plot</b>The photo in <i>Fashion Parade</i> galls Jerry Nason. It&rsquo;s not the picture itself&mdash;an ordinary shot showing off a slim, Spanish-inspired dress and a few pieces of jewelry. It&rsquo;s the model, Linda Courtney, who stood him up for a date a few months earlier. The morning after the magazine&rsquo;s release, the woman who spurned his affection turns up to offer him some work. She&rsquo;s come with the same set of costume jewelry she wore in the <i>Fashion Parade</i> picture, and her bosses, a strange pair of men who claim to work in advertising, want shots of the fake gems. Nason obliges, the two men leave, and Linda begins to tell the truth.</div>

Fashioned for Murder

<div><b>A routine assignment gets a PI killed, and Kent Murdock dives into the case</b>A thirty-eight year veteran of the Boston police force, Tom Brady has recently retired, and is beginning a new life as a private investigator. Struggling to make ends meet, he turns to newspaper photographer Kent Murdock, who recommends him to a society woman who is willing to pay big for his services. Brady&rsquo;s just wrapping up the case when he asks Murdock for a favor: photographing fourteen pages of important documents for safekeeping. Murdock agrees not to look too closely while he takes the pictures&mdash;a decision he regrets when the negatives are stolen and Tom Brady is found dead. Normally Murdock stays out of the way of the Boston police, but he gave Brady the assignment. To atone, he must unravel the mystery that cost his friend his life.</div>

Murder on Their Minds

<div><B>A wealthy psychopath threatens the life of an innocent young man</B>The note comes during Barry Sanford&rsquo;s dinner. It&rsquo;s to the point, explaining succinctly that very soon, Barry is going to die. Though the note is unsigned, Barry knows that it comes from the desk of King Hubbard. Two years ago, Hubbard&rsquo;s younger brother staggered drunk out of a bar and into the path of Barry&rsquo;s car. Though the courts exonerated the young architect for the killing, King Hubbard has spent the last two years trying to kill Barry Sanford. His efforts&mdash;first a subway accident, then a runaway truck&mdash;forced the young architect to flee for Florida. Two months later, three shots rang out from a car parked beside Sanford&rsquo;s, missing him only because fear keeps him vigilant. He wound up in Belize, but now Hubbard has found him once more.  It is time to keep running, or to make a stand. </div>

With Intent to Kill

<div><b>A reporter is drawn into a German refugee&rsquo;s story of conspiracy</b>The photo contest is an ancient circulation gimmick. Each day, the <i>Morning Bulletin</i> publishes a candid photo of one of Boston&rsquo;s citizenry, offering a cash reward if they see themselves in the paper within twenty-four hours of publication. It&rsquo;s not a bad way to sell papers, but it could mean a death sentence for Ethel Kovalik. When she comes to collect her prize money she begs Larry Palmer, the reporter who handles the contest, not to print her name or address. She has come to the city looking for her husband, a GI whom she fell in love with in Germany in 1946, before he mysteriously disappeared. Now a Communist agent is chasing her, and publicity will only help him find her. Unsure of her far-fetched tale, Palmer checks up on Ethel. What he learns could mean death&mdash;or the scoop of a lifetime.</div>

George Harmon Coxe
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Books By George Harmon Coxe (20 Books)