Murder for Cash: Stories of Crime & Detection Vol 9

‘If that ain’t jest like life!  King Kennedy goin’ fifteen hundred miles t’ git shot with his own gun.’  Stories of Crime & Detection Volume Nine contains a novel and a novelette: Murder for Cash (The Fatal .45)  When aged millionaire rancher King Kennedy is murdered in Chicago, his old friend Sleepy Gus Williams and Kennedy’s son Dolf hunt the killers. They are soon identified as the well-known racketeers, Whispering Benny and The Carnation Kid, who will bump off anyone for money. But who inherits Kennedy’s millions? The murder weapon, a Colt .45, is disposed of in the river after the shooting, but it harbours an important secret, and doesn’t stay submerged for long.  An inventive gangster thriller.   The Man Who Made Monsters This pulp thriller tells a Fellinian horror story of kidnapping, plastic surgery and madness.     JAMES JACK RONALD (1905-1972) was a prolific writer of pulp fiction, mystery stories and dramatic novels. Raised in Glasgow, Ronald moved to Chicago aged seventeen to ‘earn his fortune’, later returning to the UK to pursue a writing career. His early works were serializations and short stories syndicated in newspapers and magazines around the world. Ronald wrote under a number of pseudonyms, including Michael Crombie, Kirk Wales, Peter Gale, Mark Ellison and Kenneth Streeter among others. Several books were adapted into films, including Murder in the Family (1938), The Witness Vanishes (1939), and The Suspect (1944).