This 1939 thriller published by Popular Library has everything you want in a classic detective mystery. Filled with fast paced action as well as a complex story, it is one of the best I've read in a long time.
Jim Steele claims to write radio scripts but never acts less than a fedora-wearing gumshoe, after being contacted by his ex-love, Lisa. A bronze-haired beauty with the breasts of Venus, she is in an unspeakable jam. Before they met, she was married to wealthy Norman Barclay, who died in a boat explosion, never to be found. After Jim fell in love with her she disappeared to Europe, and has returned married to Mike Ridgman, a prominent psychiatrist.
She's receiving letters (stating "someday i'll kill you") asking for $100,000, or they will tell the police she killed her first husband.
The truth was, they were both drunk when Norman attacked and raped her before she knocked him out. Waking up to the boat on fire, she got out in time. Norman did not. Her trip to Europe was actually to a sanitarium.
At her home, Jim meets Mike (a solid Princeton-type), playboy Tom Weston and his actress wife Marian, Mike's sister, a family lawyer, and Parker the traditional Gentleman's gentleman. Even Norman's mother still lives with Lisa, old Mrs. Barclay.
In the morning, the first body is found dead on the terrace, then a chunk of granite breaks through a window with the note: Last Warning.
The police investigate, but the mystery goes deeper as Jim begins his own inquiries. An embezzler's cryptic notebook, the blonde hat check girl at the local roadhouse, and gangsters who leave Jim in a boathouse with his ankles bound, are just part of this exciting mystery that doesn't let up. A second murder and another boat explosion round out the action, and this is only 158 pages long.
Jim is perceptive and clever, but not averse to shooting someone in the knee if provoked. There is a lot of story packed into this but it rolls along with easy speed. I was lucky to find this original paperback, and happy it is the first in a series, continuing in Too Like The Lightning (1939), She'll Be Dead By Morning (1940), The Blonde Died First (1941), The Frightened Man (1942), The Last Secret (1943), Darling, This Is Death (1945), and The Case of Caroline Animus (1946).
These are available cheaply as eBooks, and The Blonde Died First is available to read for free at Internet Archive, but the pleasure of reading these vintage Popular Library paperbacks with their lurid covers is superior.
Dana Chambers is the pseudonym of American author Albert Fear Leffingwell, who also wrote two mysteries under the name Giles Jackson.
1939 / Paperback / 158 pages
Wow! That's some high rating Eden.