Lindsey & Plum

He was a white, suburban bachelor. A total square. Lived with his mother. Worked for an insurance company. She was a black, tough, streetwise cop. Then somebody stole a quarter million dollars worth of rare comic books. And then people started getting murdered. Lindsey and Plum were like oil and water, but they had to work together, like it or not! The Comic Book Killer is the first volume in Richard A. Lupoff's hugely popular Lindsey-and-Plum series. Readers will cheer the return of these grand characters and their exciting investigations.

Prior to World War II, black actors were restricted to mainstream film roles as chauffeurs, maids, night club entertainers, and comic buffoons. But there was a second Hollywood, a Black Hollywood, where great producers and directors like Oscar Michaud created films with all-black casts for exhibition to black audiences. Some of the actors worked only in black productions. Others, like the talented Eddie Anderson, could play comic roles in white productions and serious roles in all-black films. When a cache of long-lost African-American films is discovered by cinema researchers, the aged director Edward "Speedy" MacReedy appears to reclaim his place in film history. But insurance investigator Hobart Lindsey and homicide officer Marvia Plum soon find themselves enmeshed in a mystery with its roots deep in the tragic events of a past era, as they seek out...

Who was that gorgeous model? When a helicopter loses power and plunges into the icy waters of scenic Lake Tahoe, killing its only passenger, millionaire Albert Crocker Vansittart, what looks like a routine claim against a life insurance policy turns into a mystery for investigator Hobart Lindsey and his sometime collaborator Marvia Plum. The reason: half a century ago, the youthful Vansittart had come across a hardboiled mystery novel and become obsessed with the glamorous model who'd posed for the cover painting. Now, Vansittart's multimillion dollar policy is to go to "the girl on the cover of Death in the Ditch." Lindsey's pursuit of the now-aged model (if she's even still alive!) leads him into a maze of violence and deception with its roots in the politics and wars of past decades. Another first-rate combination of crime, collectibles, and American history!

WHEN A MAN’S PARTNER IS KILLED... So begins one of the most famous quotations in all of crime fiction. And just as the murder of Sam Spade's partner, Miles Archer, sets off the quest in the great Dashiell Hammett's greatest novel, so the murder of Hobart Lindsey's partner, Cletus Berry, sets off the quest in The Silver Chariot Killer, the sixth of Richard A. Lupoff's classic series of "Killer" mysteries. It's Christmas week in New York and Cletus Berry's body has been found literally frozen in the ice in an alley in Hell's Kitchen, a black circle marking the entry wound of the bullet that scrambled Berry's brain and ended his life. This wouldn’t normally be Lindsey's case, but "When a man's partner is killed, he's supposed to do something about it." Earlier novels in the series built a popular following for Hobart Lindsey and Marvia Plum. Now Lindsey is on his own and on alien turf, and the action grows darker as Lindsey's world grows colder. The Silver Chariot Killer is a case unlike any that Lindsey has faced in the past, and unlike any that the reader is likely to have encountered until now. Great crime fiction by a master storyteller!

Bob Bjorner is the last of the "red hot lefties" at radio station KRED in Berkeley, Calif. His paranoia makes him bring his personal lock to keep intruders out of the studio while he's on the air-but they get to him anyway! He opens his lunch, takes his first mouthful of sashimi, and falls over dead. Homicide detective Marvia Plum scrambles to the station in time to see broadcasters, engineers, and administrators trying to figure out what to do next. Bob Bjorner, Radio Red himself, is clearly visible through the window between the on-air studio and the control room-and nobody can get to him! THE RADIO RED KILLER is the most baffling-and fascinating!-case yet in Richard A. Lupoff's irresistable "Killer" mystery series.

Their Last Bow. A cache of stolen comic books had originally brought insurance man Hobart Lindsey and police officer Marvia Plum together. They were as different as different could be: he, a diffident suburban bachelor living with an emotionally damaged mother; she, a tough inner-city cop raising an at-risk child. Their tumultuous relationship endured for seven years, then seemingly ended as Marvia Plum abandoned her career to return to the arms of an old flame while Lindsey's duties carried him thousands of miles away. Now, after fifteen years apart, Lindsey and Plum are thrown together again by a series of murders, all of them centering around a lurid, trashy paperback novel. For the legions of fans who demanded to know what would become of these two so-different figures should they ever find their way back to each other: the answers are all in “The Emerald Cat Killer”, the eighth and final novel in Richard A. Lupoff's mesmerizing mystery series!

Is it really over? Have Hobart Lindsey and Marvia Plum solved their last case? Lindsey, the mild-mannered bachelor insurance adjuster. Plum, the tough inner-city cop and single mom. You can hardly think of an odder couple, but somehow they were able to bring out the best in each other. Through a series of eight novels that carried them from California to Louisiana, from Denver to Chicago to New York to Rome, they explored the eccentricities of American pop culture, from comic books to race movies, from classic cars to sleazy gangster novels. And now...is this really the end? One Murder at a Time chronicles eight shorter cases of Lindsey and Plum, originally published in magazines and anthologies in the United States and Great Britain. Bonus material in this surprising book are the complete text of "Death in the Ditch," the McGuffin in The Cover Girl Killer, as well as "Yesterday Calling," the complete radio scripts of The Radio Red Killer. And the biggest treat of all-an alternate ending that was omitted from The Emerald Cat Killer, something that will delight every Lindsey and Plum fan. First-rate mystery and suspense writing from a master of the genre!

A 1928 Duesenberg! Most of them were rich, most of them were beautiful, and now one of them was dead in an unexpected and particularly nasty way. Oh, and a perfectly maintained, priceless 1928 Duesenberg Phaeton, the royalty of collectible, classic automobiles, had disappeared. Where do you hide a totally recognizable Dusie? Insurance man Hobart Lindsey is back on the case...along with his sometime sparring partner and lover, homicide investigator Marvia Plum, Lindsey's troubled mother, and a cast of unforgettable characters. Introduced in “The Comic Book Killer”, Hobart Lindsey and the rest of those memorable characters return in a baffling, complex mystery with roots stretching back to the violent era of World War Two and the dark despair of the American Depression. Introduction by Donald E. Westlake.

During World War II, due to a shortage of qualified pilots, Uncle Sam began a program of training thousands of military pilots. Among these were the Tuskegee Airmen, a unit of African-Americans eager to fly in combat. Fifty years later a Hollywood studio sets out to create a documentary about these brave airmen, featuring grizzled survivors of that long-ago era flying lovingly maintained vintage aircraft. And then...murder strikes on the movie set, and Hobart Lindsey, insurance investigator-turned-detective, enters the scene. Along with his sometime rival (and sometime love!), Marvia Plum, Lindsey plunges into a mystery with roots stretching half a century into the past.

Is it really over? Have Hobart Lindsey and Marvia Plum solved their last case? Lindsey, the mild-mannered bachelor insurance adjuster. Plum, the tough inner-city cop and single mom. You can hardly think of an odder couple, but somehow they were able to bring out the best in each other. Through a series of eight novels that carried them from California to Louisiana, from Denver to Chicago to New York to Rome, they explored the eccentricities of American pop culture, from comic books to race movies, from classic cars to sleazy gangster novels. And now...is this really the end?