On October 2. 1936. the SS Orient Princess, a vessel of some 8,000 tons, put into Valparaiso carrying a cargo of timber and crude rubber from the Dutch East Indies. Immediately upon arrival, her captain, one Willem van Groot, was met by two members of the local police and Professor Thomas Wilmerson of Miskatonic University, the latter having flown to Chile in response to an urgent radio message sent by van Groot four days before the Orient Princess reached port.<P> Captain van Groot took with him from the ship, the log and a large notebook carefully wrapped in waterproof oilskin which he kept in his possession until the four men were seated around the table in Wilmerson’s hotel room and the door was securely locked. Only then did the captain place the two items on the table. Before speaking, he opened the ship’s log and riffled through the pages until he found the one he wanted.<P> Glancing up, he looked at each man in turn, then said quietly, “Gentlemen, I can understand your curiosity concerning the radio message I dispatched but I can assure you that this matter is of the utmost importance and secrecy. I asked that you, Professor Wilmerson, should be here when we docked since this package”– he indicated the oilskin-wrapped book with his right hand—“is addressed to you personally and although I’ve only glanced through the contents, I shudder to think of what may have happened to the writer.”<P> So begins this Cthulhu Mythos novella, a brand new tale from a British master of dark fantasy!
The murder of Carlos Galecci, a kingpin of organized crime, was not unexpected. Only three days earlier, fearing for his life, he'd hired Los Angeles private eye Johnny Merak to discover who was threatening him. Then he's found seated in his private vault with a knife in his back–a vault whose combination only he knows, a vault no one else has entered in the interim. Summoned to the scene, Merak is hired by Gloria, Galecci’s statuesque blonde wife, to discover her husband's killer, and to determine how an impossible crime has been committed. But in accepting the assignment, Merak soon finds himself marked for death as well! The third entry in this exciting hardboiled crime series.
She was the kind of woman a man always noticed, mostly because of her eyes: deep and dark, they'd held a warmth that could easily kindle a fire in one's soul. Now they were staring sightlessly up from the sidewalk. It was a killing without a motive, just the first of a string of murders that led Johnny Merak, private investigator, from the teeming underworlds of Chicago and Los Angeles to the edge of the New Mexican desert, trailing a killer who left no clues. But Merak knew the Mafia, its methods and its hiding places–because he'd once been part of that scene himself. And now he was determined to exterminate the evil bosses who controlled the…SAVAGE CITY! The second great hard-boiled entry in a long-running crime series!
Small-time crook Johnny Merak is determined to get Maxie Temple, a former crime boss who'd framed him for a three-year stretch in San Quentin, and is now returning home from Mexican exile. But the 1950s Los Angeles Underworld wants Temple and Merak dead, and decides that by killing Temple, they can remove both men with one shot. But Merak isn't having any of the deal–he wants to clear his name and escape his Syndicate ties. When beautiful Dawn Grahame shows up, he finally has a reason to fight for a better life. This is the dark side of the L.A. underworld: the unknown hoodlum who knows too much, a vicious killer named Madden, Madden's girlfriend, who has to be juiced with heroin to stop her from talking, and Clancy Snow and Dutch McKnight, two Underworld bosses who hover like black spiders of treachery and vice over the very core of Los Angeles, manipulating its social, legal, and political life to their benefit. Can Johnny find a way through this morass? A noir crime classic, filled with riveting action, the first of a stunning new series!
After Dexter inherits the old family mansion in Tormouth, on the death of his uncle, he visits the main library. Here he peruses the old records pertaining to Tormouth, and finds several references to the Dexter family. The documents trace their history back for almost four centuries. He locates numerous listings of births and marriages in the family, but not one instance of a death! Dexter begins to wonder if he's done the right thing in taking up residence in the house. What happened to his uncle, whose body is missing from the family crypt–and what's going to happen to him? Five tales of horrific curses and unspeakable monsters from beyond the grave!
The midnight moon rode high in the sky above the storm clouds sweeping in from the west, and the house seemed to transmute the moonlight into something terrible and evil. The broken chimneys stretched up like hands to the heavens, the eyeless sockets of the windows staring intently along the twisting drive. There were eldritch shadows in the house. On the floor of the library at the rear of the house, the strange cabalistic designs glowed with an eerie, devilish light. There was a flickering inside the room as of corpse candles, a cold radiance, a manifestation of the aura of evil that had never left the place, which was crystallised inside its very walls. This was a house of evil, filled with THE LONELY SHADOWS of the dead! <P> Also included in this collection are «The Seventh Image,» «Shirley's Ghost,» and the two Cthulhu Mythos stories, «Undersea Quest» and «Innsmouth Bane.» <P> First-rate horror by a master of the genre!