"A one-of-a-kind treat from the golden age."— Kirkus Reviews From music conductor turned crime fiction novelist, Sebastian Farr, comes an epistolary tour de force that hits the perfect murderous crescendo for music and crime fiction aficionados alike. During a performance of Strauss' tone poem 'A Hero's Life', the obnoxious conductor, Sir Noel Grampian, is shot dead in full view of the Maningpool Municipal Orchestra. He had many enemies, musicians and music critics among them, but to be killed in mid flow suggests an act of the coldest calculation. Told through the letters of Detective Inspector Alan Hope to his wife, he puzzles over his findings, and other documents such as the letters of members of the orchestra and musical notation holding clues to the crime. This addition to the Crime Classics series is an immersive musical mystery, featuring diagrams of the orchestra arrangement and four pages of musical notation with relevance to the plot. First published in 1941 but out-of-print since, this is by a lost writer of the genre, Sebastian Farr (a pseudonym for Eric Walter Blom), a prolific Swiss-born and British-naturalised music lexicographer, music critic and writer.

Suddenly I saw a pale gray shape dart in front of my car. At first I thought it was just a large dog, thin and long-legged. Trapped between the high wall on the left and the unbroken row of parked cars to the right, the animal ran at a relaxed canter directly down the center of the road a few feet in front of me. I slowed even more. The beast was caught in the headlights and I saw it was no neighborhood pooch out for a midnight stroll. It was a coyote and it was hunting.

The Atlanta Jazz community is the target of another serial killer. Who could it be and why are they sending packages of poisoned cookies and wine? The Adman, his wife CC, members of the Amateur Sleuth Society, Adman's best friend Misha, and Harold join Detectives Love and Hepcutts in the fun chase for the killer.

“The wildest, strangest, best Dresden adventure to date...Butcher’s blending of modern fantasy with classic noir sensibilities ensures that there’s never a dull moment.”—SF Site Paranormal investigations are Harry Dresden’s business and Chicago is his beat, as he tries to bring law and order to a world of wizards and monsters that exists alongside everyday life. And though most inhabitants of the Windy City don’t believe in magic, the Special Investigations Department of the Chicago PD knows better. Karrin Murphy is the head of S. I. and Harry’s good friend. So when a killer vampire threatens to destroy Murphy’s reputation unless Harry does her bidding, he has no choice. The vampire wants the Word of Kemmler (whatever that is) and all the power that comes with it. Now, Harry is in a race against time—and six merciless necromancers—to find the Word before Chicago experiences a Halloween night to wake the dead...

Death on the Downbeat She was a glamorous blonde who ran a jive joint that specialised in cool jazz ... and hot corpses! In Death on the Downbeat, "unorthodox" Lieutenant Al Wheeler is ready for love until three cool corpses get in his way. He finds the first in a jive joint run by a sultry blonde who calls the tune when it comes to music and men. The second turns up in a back-street rooming house that's a front for dope peddling. The third, smack on his own doorstep. Suddenly Al is up against a plug-happy killer out to make a cop his fourth corpse. A cop named Wheeler. The Blonde The party girl was going to tell all about a Hollywood scandal-- right on TV. But then she was scooped ... by her murderer! In The Blonde, Al Wheeler is sent to investigate the alleged suicide of filmland Romeo Lee Manning. Georgia Brown knows what really happened and is ready to spill the beans on TV. But before the story gets a chance to sizzle the airwaves, a killer steps in and stops George Brown dead. Al Wheeler finds himself playing a near fatal role in an underground production of murder. ...