Search Results for: double,-double

Link Denham needs a job. Any job.

When he’s offered the position of navigator on board the leaky, rickety Glamorgan, he takes it without asking too many questions. The destination? A planet that has barely been contacted in two hundred years, in a dystopic system, isolated from the rest of the galaxy.

What he thought would be a simple job quickly turns into something far more complicated, as he finds himself embroiled in a complex web of treachery, double-crossing and alien politics. And what of this infamous machine the natives have, which can replicate anything put inside . . . ?

Murray Leinster was a prolific figure in pulp fiction, writing short stories and novels across many genres. The Duplicators is a science fiction romp in his characteristic style, and a wonderful example of 1960s pulp science fiction.

‘For fans of classic hard-boiled whodunits, this is a time machine back to an exuberant era of snappy patter, stakeouts, and double-crosses’ LA Times

‘Kingpin among the mystery writers’ New York Times

Muriell Gilman left her father at the breakfast table while she cooked seconds of sausage and eggs. When she returned, he had disappeared.
She searched the house from cellar to attic. Then she went out to the workshop . . . there, scattered on the floor, were hundred-dollar bills, an overturned chair, and a spreading, crimson stain. That’s when she telephoned Perry Mason.

Perry Mason has so many questions: why did she call him? Why didn’t she want her step-sister to talk to him? And why was Gillman’s wife being blackmailed – by a female private investigator . . . ?

The night watchman at Hallams, the long-established Bond Street jewellers, is found dead with his head battered in, and a number of display cases have been rifled. Chief Inspector Burr picks up the trail, with the young Inspector Poole as his assistant.

But before long, the crime at Hallams is overshadowed by a mystery which stirs Scotland Yard into a frenzy of activity. Even the great Superintendent Fraser is aroused from his customary Olympian calm; but it is the detailed work of young Poole which eventually solves the double problem, links mystery to mystery and brings the clear light of day . . .

Spring fever has hit Luis Mendoza, both on the job and at home. But it hasn’t erased the LAPD’s endless caseload of bizarre crimes and difficult cases.

‘Dapper Dan’, the rapist and murderer whose dashing looks and easy charm give him the perfect ploy to trap his pretty victims; a stickup artist who has found a foolproof weapon: a ferocious Doberman; a gruesome double homicide-suicide with a weird twist; a senator’s ‘natural’ death that suddenly doesn’t appear so natural – all add up to a month of murder most strange, and Mendoza knows it’s time to finally clean house.

‘A Luis Mendoza mystery means superlative suspense’ Los Angeles Times

Two men involved in a heist are wanted for double homicide; the body of a young punk is found in an alley; the corpse of a girl lies in the dry riverbed. Everything is, in fact, more or less routine for Lieutenant Luis Mendoza and his colleagues in the Los Angeles Police Department. Then they get the news: the murdered girl was a police officer of fine standing – one of their very own.

‘Convincing, compelling reading’ Sun

‘A Luis Mendoza story means superlative suspense’ Los Angeles Times

Lieutenant Mendoza seems to be beset on all sides: at home, his wife Alison is convinced she is having twins; at the office his worry is a man called Francis Ingram, prime suspect for a murder Mendoza does not think he has committed.

Yet the fact remains that someone has murdered Mendoza’s wife, Arabella, and the evidence points straight at him. But as the case progresses it becomes clear that everyone has a grudge against her and a consuming interest in her will . . .

Lieutenant Luis Mendoza is tasked with solving a double murder, shrouded in strange rites. Acting on one of his famous hunches, he is drawn into the world behind the glitter of Hollywood and into the Temple of Mystic Truth.

There he finds cultists Martin and Cara Kingman, who turn out to be less than spiritual . . .

‘A Luis Mendoza story means superlative suspense’ Los Angeles Times

An escaped convict, a mysterious deserted house, and murder in the Lake District..
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

The shades of night were falling fast when Arthur Crook drove the old Superb over the Lakeland Fells and into the valley, to stop at a mysterious house where, though a light burned in an upper window, no one answered the bell.

Here opens a double murder mystery in which Crook acts in the defence of a young prisoner on the run, whose guilt appears evident.

‘The usual gusto, racy prose, good plotting and up-to-the-minute social observation’ Sunday Times

If you ever need my help, I’ll be there. But by the time he arrived, she had already disappeared…
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club


Arthur Crook and Miss Pinnegar meet by accident and take to each other on sight, parting with mutual appreciation and an invitation by the detective to call on him professionally should she ever need help – unlikely as that may be.

But when Miss Pinnegar receives a visit, it threatens to shake her life to the very foundations. She sends Crook an SOS and he comes at the double, but by then Miss Pinnegar has already disappeared . . .

Blackmail was a dirty business and Donald Lam liked to stay clear of it. But for his partner, Bertha Cool, no business was too dirty to handle at the right price. And the price for this job was certainly right.

What was wrong, though, was a payoff for pictures that weren’t worth a dime, a free dinner that cost the blackmailer his life, and more than a couple of double-crosses that framed Donald Lam quite neatly for a charge of murder …

Roberta Fenn was every man’s dream – a clinging climber with photogenic features and a phenomenal body. She had what it took to get what she wanted, and she wanted a lot.

But one thing she wasn’t looking for was an early grave, and that was where she was heading – unless the redoubtable Bertha Cool and the inimitable Donald Lam jumped in, guessed right, and moved fast to save this bedevilled dream girl from a nightmare of blackmail, double cross and murder.

Bertha Cool has just been released from a sanitarium where she has been recovering from flu and pneumonia, but soon she and Donald Lam are on the hunt for a missing bride-to-be.

They become tangled in case filled with slot-machine skullduggery, a double-crossing client, murder and a spot of financial finagling before they eventually achieve their goal.

Perry Mason orders a double serving of trouble the night he and Della Street dine at an intimate restaurant after a hard day at law. In the middle of their steaks a waitress flees the premises in terror, leaving the puzzled proprietor holding her mink coat.

Why a humble working girl abandons such a pricey wrap is only the first question in a cop-killer case that traps Mason’s client with both an impossible story and the murder weapon, makes Perry himself a prime suspect, and blazes a gunpowder trail that leads straight to the heart of the police department itself.

On the face of it, the double homicide of Arnold and Marie Robbins looks like just another brutal Miami Beach murder – except that teenage Cathy Robbins is lying between the bodies, traumatised but unharmed. Is she a silent witness to murder, or is she a killer?

‘An absorbing, cleverly constructed thriller by an ever-popular British writer’ Books Magazine

A police officer needs the quickness and guile of a bookmaker, the ingenuity of a psychiatrist and the physical reserves of a Marine, or so it seems to Detective Chief Superintendent Manton, who is called in to investigate a huge bullion robbery and its possible link with the death of a solicitor in a car crash.

But even when a supposed double murderer is charged and tried there is still a taunting question mark over the case. Whose was the brain that planned the audacious gold robbery and does Manton know enough about the criminal mind to find out?

When Meg Jeacock let out the furnished cottage next to her house she did not care that her new tenant had certain rather sinister characteristics – he’d paid three months’ rent in advance. But Meg’s husband Marcus sensed he was a crook.
And when the stranger shows an inexplicable interest in Shandon Priory, the big house nearby, whose elderly owner has recently died, it becomes clear that there is trouble brewing – which, when it comes, takes the form of double murder . . .

Kit Hendry has several criminal convictions, but now he is given the choice of a twelve-year sentence or a government mission to trace the security leakage from a Dusseldorf installation. Kit can crack safes – he can also speak German.

Under the vigilant surveillance of Gaunt and also of Bernadette, with whom he is infatuated, he crosses the channel and is exposed to a smallpox victim, but the film he secures becomes the final double take . . .

Paul Henderson is a big time jewel thief on a run of bad luck. He has a seven-year-old daughter to support, so when he’s offered a partnership in the biggest heist of all time he decides to try to take the baubles and run.

He reaches Switzerland, where the crime is to take place, and wangles an invitation to a gala only to be confronted by a double threat, a double cross and a kidnapping. And all this is before the night of the burglary arrives . . .

‘Donald MacKenzie is a born storyteller’ Guardian

On New Year’s Eve, solicitor Rosa Epton spends a pleasant evening talking to a man who seems to be finding the date he has brought with him less than satisfactory company. The next morning she receives a call from the police. Toby Nash has been charged with raping the woman with whom he attended the party, and has asked for Rosa.

Unfortunately for Nash and Rosa, the detective inspector in charge of the case is determined to get a conviction by any means.

Chet Logan, known as the Axe Killer, escapes from custody while being escorted to jail. Disguised as a police officer, he meets up with movie writer Perry Weston and persuades him to drive to Weston’s remote fishing lodge. Once there, and somewhat to Weston’s surprise, Logan agrees to talk about his life and how he came to murder six people.

The police become suspicious and put a watch on the lodge. Then Weston’s wayward wife visits him and promises a fresh start. Logan wants money and a chance to start again …

Can either of them deliver or will Weston and Logan share a double funeral?

Keith Devery, burdened with a criminal record, arrives in Wicksteed, a prosperous little town on the Pacific coast. He is looking for any job that will provide eating money. It is when he meets Beth Marshall – whose husband, a local drunk, is to inherit $1,000,000 – that he realises there’s a way to get back in the big league.

Together they ruthlessly plot the perfect murder, but Keith soon finds himself at the centre of a double-bluff. Beth has plans of her own once the money is hers …

Drug barons Ralph Ember and Mansel Shale have co-existed peaceably for years, tolerated by Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles as a way of keeping violence off the streets. But times are changing.

In a downward spiral of paranoia and panic, Ember fears Shale has a plan to kill him and take over his firm – after all, one of his people has already been gunned down and nobody’s taken the rap for it. Shale is about to remarry and has asked Ember to be best man. Iles and Detective Chief Constable Colin Harpur, alert to their potentially deadly double game, know that they have to act fast to avoid out-and-out carnage.

‘Dazzles . . . a modern morality play of epic scope’ Publishers Weekly

The sixth title in the popular Harpur and Iles series.

‘Planner’ Preston, a lifetime of successful robberies behind him, is organising a heist against a wages van, ill-guarded and with a predictable route. After hiring the necessary manpower and allowing for every contingency, Planner sets a date. Then one of his team learns that the route has lengthened and the guard has been doubled. Against his instincts, but goaded by the young recruits who think he has become timid in his old age, Planner agrees to go ahead – even though he knows the risks.

Harpur and Iles always suspect Preston is planning something and view even a visit to the dentist as cause for speculation. Now, the increase in activity surrounding Planner’s associates begins to turn their detective antennae firmly in his direction.