Mystery Authors (W)

Huddled on the floor, her body clothed only in the flimsiest of night gowns, lay lovely Marguerite Scholl. Robert Crocker, who first found the body, was suspected of the murder, but Peter Adams, a New York City reporter with an enquiring mind, thought it might have been done by someone else. The trail he picks up and follows leads him to the Pennsylvania Dutch country—from one nerve-racking experience to another—for very soon he discovers that “hexing” has a great deal to do with the murder. Even bluff old Sheriff Reed is nervous when they try to question the dour Kruger, father of the slaughtered girl, the testy Dr. Schneider or the strange Conrad Reifmayer who had put a hex on all the Kruger family. Peter Adams is helped a great deal by a fascinating red-headed girl, but it isn’t until they have shared many a danger together that they finally solve The Hex Murder.

The body of Dr. John R. Holstead, Gramercy Park inventor and owner of a wholesale drug house, is hurled out of an airplane above Market Street in Newark. Suspects are plentiful: his latest (and missing) formula is worth millions (as foreign agents well know), his nephew is suspected of peddling cocaine, his late best friend’s grasping widow is in dire need of money, and some clues point to shifty smugglers. Detective Sergeant ‘Pete’ Tonelli of New York’s homicide squad untangles the clues, leading to a lively climax and desperate battle.

A scream, mounting higher and higher over the bustle and clatter back-stage at the Bolton Theatre— A woman staggers from the star’s dressing-room, her white satin gown stained and patterned with the gory foot-prints of a little dog, her face contorted into a mask of horror— But the show must go on! The audience must be entertained—must laugh—while murder stalks among them. A killer may be on the stage among the players, he may be among the musicians in the orchestra, or he may be sitting there among the spectators. Anything might happen here. The Bolton Theatre is known to the theatrical profession as a “jinx house.”

Defying convention, public opinion, the press, the District Attorney himself, Detective-Sergeant Pietro Tonelli, who glories in the proud title of “cop,” carries out a bold plan to detect a murderer who has come and gone like a phantom.

In the midst of a demonstration staged by sit-down strikers, WPA Administrator Henry Ireton is murdered at his desk. Ex-newspaperman Jim Moore has been sent from Washington to look into trouble in Ireton’s district, and finds himself both the temporary new deputy administrator and sidekick to Lieut. Pietro Tonelli, the hard-boiled but human ace of the Homicide Squad, as they investigate the murder. The killer strikes again, but Moore and Tonelli discover further trouble as evidence arises that a secretive criminal organization has spread its tentacles throughout Ireton’s district, threatening to spread nationwide. Politics and murder go hand in hand in Murder in the WPA.