MY LOVELY EXECUTIONERJimmy Gallivan is only three-and-a-half weeks from his prison release for trying to kill his wife's lover seven years ago. But fellow-inmate Rand has other plans for Gallivan. A break-out is engineered, and now they're hiding out in a sanitarium. But the whole set-up seems suspicious. Rand's boss wants Gallivan to help him with his drug operation. But is that all there is to it? Because it begins to seem like the whole escape was engineered just for him. And what about Jesse? Where does she figure in all of this? Is she the bait--or has she become Gallivan's new jailor? AGREEMENT TO KILLPunching Dixon had gotten Jake Spinner thrown in jail, but now all he wanted was a fresh start back on his farm. Suddenly Dixon is dead and Spinner in on the run, escaping town in the getaway car with Dixon's assassin in the back seat! He knows the cops won't believe his innocence. He knows his only chance is to keep the cold, clubfooted little killer known as Loma with him. Because Loma is his ticket to a new life. His respectable life shattered, Spinner figures that the only ones who'll take him in now are the guys who hired Loma. The choice is easy—until he meets Ann. Though the titles attached to Rabe's pulp thrillers often appear to have been chosen by a dart-throwing editor in the basement office of a seedy publishing house, the words inside were chosen with a precision belied by the speed with which they were written. Rabe can pack more into 10 words than most writers can do with a page: "Jessie sat next to me, but it was just clothes." In My Lovely Executioner, Jimmy Gallivan finds himself busted out of prison against his will--he only has three weeks left to serve on a seven-year sentence--because someone important thinks he knows something he can't remember. In Agreement to Kill , Jake Spinner walks out of prison on his own, having served his time, into an old grudge match that soon takes an unpredictable turn. Execu tioner is a tightly wound, claustrophobic thriller with a can't-miss predicament, while Agreement , a skosh less successful, is almost a character study, as we watch would-be criminal Spinner try to kill his humanity. Not all of Rabe's efforts gleam quite so brightly, but these reprints prove the publisher knows how to mine for gold. Keir Graff Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved "Few writers are Rabe's equal in the field of the hardboiled gangster story." --Bill Crider, Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers "When he was rolling, crime fiction just didn't get any better." --Ed Gorman, Mystery Scene Magazine "He had few peers among noir writers of the 50s and 60s; he has few peers today." --Bill Pronzini MY LOVELY EXECUTIONER Jimmy Gallivan is only three-and-a-half weeks from his prison release for trying to kill his wife's lover seven years ago. But fellow-inmate Rand has other plans for Gallivan. A break-out is engineered, and now they're hiding out in a sanitarium. But the whole set-up seems suspicious. Rand's boss wants Gallivan to help him with his drug operation. But is that all there is to it? Because it begins to seem like the whole escape was engineered just for him. And what about Jesse? Where does she figure in all of this? Is she the bait--or has she become Gallivan's new jailor? AGREEMENT TO KILL Punching Dixon had gotten Jake Spinner thrown in jail, but now all he wanted was a fresh start back on his farm. Suddenly Dixon is dead and Spinner in on the run, escaping town in the getaway car with Dixon's assassin in the back seat! He knows the cops won't believe his innocence. He knows his only chance is to keep the cold, clubfooted little killer known as Loma with him. Because Loma is his ticket to a new life. His respectable life shattered, Spinner figures that the only ones who'll take him in now are the guys who hired Loma. The choice is easy until he meets Ann. Peter Rabe was born in Germany as Peter Rabinowitsch in 1921, immigrating to the U.S. with his brother in 1938 to escape the Nazis. He enrolled at Ohio State University and received his Ph.D. in psychology from Western Reserve in Cleveland. Married, he began his writing career by turning in a humorous story about the birth of his first son. Soon after, he began submitting hardboiled stories to Gold Medal where he found an enthusiastic editor and a ready market. After three divorces, health problems and the death of the paperback original, Rabe eventually quit writing and took up teaching psychology at California Polytechnic State University in the late 60's. He died in 1990 at his home in Atascadero, California.