Two 1940s crime classics from the author of No Orchids for Miss Blandish. “Crime, Money, Deception, Blonde. All the essential ingredients of a thriller are in place, along with twists and surprises.”—GoodReads. Crime, Money, Deception, Blonde. All the essential ingredients of a thriller are in place, along with twists and surprises. --Athul Raj, GoodReads His best works sometimes read like a pastiche of a Gold Medal original or noir film...They move fast, and at their best manage to recreate the kind of doomed noirish atmosphere of James M. Cain. --David L. Vineyard, Mystery*File Early Hadley Chase thriller about a series of disappearances in a small American town...it's fast-paced and the ending is decidedly creepy and dramatic. --Charles Goodger, GoodReads JUST THE WAY IT IS If it hadn t been for Lorelli, a waif from the underworld, Harry Duke would never have bothered to interest himself in the affairs of Bellman, the night-club owner. If it hadn t been for Harry Duke, no one would have known that Timson had been murdered. And if it hadn t been for a chance remark that was overheard, Vardis Spade might still be operating in a big way today. The small pieces built into larger pieces and the larger pieces completed the jig-saw. The extraordinary thing was that although this gambling organization had been in existence six years, it only took three days to pull the foundations from under them. This is the story of those three days . BLONDE S REQUIEM Let me get all this right. There are three separate investigations going on to find these missing girls. Wolf, Esslinger and Chief of Police Macey know that whoever finds them has the best chance of becoming mayor. I ve been hired by Wolf but I m not likely to get any help from the police and I won t be popular in Cranville because I m an outsider. Esslinger s investigator is a woman and likely to get support from Cranville, but not from the police. And Macey s candidate is a crook. That s about it, isn t it? Now all I have to do is find the missing girls, and we can pry the lid off this town René Lodge Brabazon Raymond, better known by his pseudonym, James Hadley Chase, was born on December 24, 1906, in Ealing, London and was educated at King's School, Rochester, Kent. He left home when he was about eighteen and worked as a traveling salesman selling children's encyclopedias. Later, he joined a wholesale book firm. Chase took up full time writing in 1939 after his first novel, No Orchids for Miss Blandish, became an immediate success. He moved to France in 1956 and over to Switzerland in 1961, living a secluded life with his wife Sylvia in Corseaux-sur-Vevey north of Lake Geneva, where he died on February 6, 1985. The author of over 90 books, most of them hardboiled Americanized thrillers, Chase remains one of the best known mystery writers of all time.