David Alexander

The Third Golden Age of Mystery and Crime MEGAPACK® focuses on acclaimed mystery novelist David Alexander, who also produced a significant body of short fiction. Included in this volume are 20 stories and an essay:<P> COFFEE AND—<BR> AND ON THE THIRD DAY<BR> THE OTHER ONES<BR> DIE LIKE A DOG<BR> FIRST CASE<BR> MAMA’S BOY<BR> SCARECROW<BR> UNCLE TOM<BR> SURPRISE! SURPRISE!<BR> MAMA’S BOY<BR> THE GENTLEST OF THE...

Along with John Dickson Carr and Rex Stout, David Alexander is not only a master of atmosphere and suspense, but creator of some of the most ingenious, diabolically clever plots in detective literature. Alexander’s famous murder expert, Bart Hardin, tracks a devious killer through Times Square’s murky night-world to solve his most fascinating case!

August is just crazy in Greenwich Village when you&apos;re a cop—a full moon, an exceptionally heat wave, missing handcuffs, and all the drama of a police station and the lives—and wives—of the officers…all leading up to murder!

At the age of eleven, while a bootblack working in Barnaby&apos;s Tavern in Boston, he first met The Man Who Always Wept.

Bardo, an agent for the secret police in an unspecified «Capital,» is in a particular town to bodygurd a local official, who is there to announce a new tax policy. Suspecting trouble, Bardo lingers long after the official leaves, observing peasants acting suspiciously around a run-down building. Does it hold a secret arms cache? There is more here than meets the eye!

Miss Elsie Petty is a former copywriter who quit her last job to attend the murder trial of Maria Valdez, accused of smothering to death her illegitimate child. The son of her ex-lover, Winston Knight, is counsel for the defense…

It was noon and the stocky detective with the swarthy face waited in the corridor of the City Hospital. He was a middle-aged man with heavily defined features. His coarse dark hair was salted with gray and a little string of sweat beads glistened on his forehead. His heavy shoulders drooped from fatigue. His eyes were large and dark and there was weary compassion in them as if they had looked upon the thousand faces of human life, neither with despair nor hope, but only with a patient...

It was supposed to be a happy vacation in Switzerland. But afater an avalanche traps him, his wife, and their Swiss mountain guide, they realize it could be months before rescue gets there…and at last one of them intends to survive…

"I want to get this written down on paper fast, while there&apos;s still some Sneaky Pete in the bottle, just in case my hand gets shaky and I need it. Not that I&apos;m stooling, understand. When you&apos;re a wino on Skid Row you don&apos;t holler copper. But this is different from steeling the shoes off a mission stiff or jack-rolling a lush. This is murder."

David Alexander&apos;s take on a morality play of the Old South, when a white girl goes missing… An unsettling story, but one that all too easily could have really happened.

The detective “team” in this story, Tommy Twotoes and Terry Bob Rooke, known as “Soldier,” were introduced in my first two mystery novels, Most Men Don’t Kill and Murder in Black and White, both published by Random House in 1951. The main character, Tommy Twotoes, was (aside from his 300-pound avoir-dupois) based upon my great good friend, the late “Sunny Jim” Coffroth. Coffroth was without question the greatest sports pro­moter of all time, and I’m not forgetting Rickard or any of the others....

Doing God&apos;s work takes on a whole new meaning in David Alexander&apos;s tale of suspesne.

What happens if you&apos;ve killed someone famous and end up in the afterlife? Here is a tale of the world&apos;s greatest killers and assassins – in the Great Beyond!

He was six feet tall and had the bulging, hourglass build of a professional weight-lifter. His body was always bronzed. He needed it, in his line of work. He was a grifter who liked to target middle-aged ladies…

Kevin McCarthy, lay brother at a seminary, learns of the suicide of Rose Kathleen, his sister. She had been an exotic dancer and prostitute for a childhood bully turned crime lord, Rory O&apos;Bannon. In her suicide note, she also sent Kevin a diary naming names, detailing narcotics transactions, and prostitution activities. Kevin renounces his vows, confessing to his superior his plan to kill Rory O&apos;Bannon…

Kearney is an alcoholic, trying to recover, and spending his second full day sober. When he witnesseses a «hairless man» kidnap a girl, he pursues them, despite his desire for a drink. But you know the old saying – no good deed goes unpublished…

A COP-KILLER WAS LOOSE<P> The Cop: «Just find Ellison.» Inspector Sanson said, «– and leave me alone with him in a locked room –»<P> The Girl: "He used to make me scream and cry when he tore the wings of butterflies, and now – and now –"<P> The Killer: «I have to kill her. I have to kill her now because of you. I’ll have to kill you too, of course.»

Bart Hardin trails a mad butcher – a killer who hates the pretty girls of the Great White Way!<P> With this taut and chilling tale, David Alexander, author of «Murder Points a Finger,» introduces Bart Hardin, sardonic, Broadway-wise editor of «The Broadway Times,» a racing and sports newspaper . . . Hardin of the fancy vests, with the rococo apartment over a flea circus, with a handout for every stumblebum around the Garden, with an impact on dames and an affinity for violence.<P> ...