Fredric Brown_9 Titles (Hard-Boiled; Classic Pulp) PDF Only

Ed and Am have gotten away from the Carney life. These days, they're working for the Starlock Detective Agency. Ed's first case is a wealthy client trying to sound out whether an investment's worth it. But then he finds a body with its throat cut, and hears some external howling that might just be from a werewolf.



Uncle Am is kidnapped! Ed Hunter's partner-in-crime was just out on a routine case, a man who'd skipped out on some car payments, when the old fellow vanishes. There's also a fortuneteller who claims to know how to pick the daily "number," a gangster who'd like more info about same, a love interest for young Ed, and a Fortean collector of Ambroses, who might just be responsible for Uncle Am's disappearance.



In most murder cases, the setting stays put, if nothing else. But when murder comes to visit the J. C. Hobart traveling carnival, the entire operation has moved town before Captain Weiss can gather any tangible leads. For young Ed Hunter, the case throws him together with a gorgeous redhead from the posing show, but as another murder occurs, and then a third, he and his Uncle Am find their hands full with more than just their ball game concession. In a strange atmosphere of freak shows, show girls, and an escaped chimpanzee, Ed and Uncle Am take it upon themselves to find the killer on the loose - a killer who chooses his victims according to size.



Fifth in the Ed and Am series, but last for several years (Brown worked on other projects from '52-58.) Having opened their own detective agency, Ed and Am start by taking cases passed along by former employer Starlock. One day a girl walks into their door, in fear of murder caused by Martians. The pair don't take her too seriously... until she winds up dead.



1948 Edgar Award Winner! Ed Hunter is eighteen, and he isn't happy. He doesn't want to end up like his father, a linotype operator and a drunk, married to a harridan, with a harridan-in-training stepdaughter. Ed wants out, he wants to live, he wants to see the world before it's too late. Then his father doesn't come home one night, and Ed finds out how good he had it. The bulk of the book has Ed teaming up with Uncle Ambrose, a former carny worker, and trying to find out who killed Ed's dad. But the title is as much a coming-of-age tale as it is a pulp.



Here Comes a Candle is Fredric Brown at his most audacious in a novel that was far ahead of its time. It is the story of Joe Bailey, whose young life is at a crossroads. Not only is he involved with a tough Milwaukee racketeer and two completely different women, but he is haunted by childhood trauma. Psychologically complex and told in an array of stylistic variations, it is a tour de force with a savagely ironic ending not to be soon forgotten.



"He had a name, but it doesn't matter; call him THE PSYCHO.
That's what the newspapers and everyone who read them called him now, since his second murder two months ago. At first he'd been called by various designations: …homicidal maniac, sexual psychopath, and others. For convenience, for shorthand, it had boiled down to the psycho. The police called him that too, although they had been moving heaven and earth to find a better name for him, a name like Peter Jones or Robert Smith, a name that would let them find and apprehend him before he killed again. And again."

Ray Fleck is a small man with big problems. To what lengths will this indebted gambler go to appease the bookie threatening to destroy him? As Ray searches for a solution, his life becomes intertwined with a killer terrorizing the city while evading the police.

First published in 1959, Knock Three-One-Two was adapted for the short-lived NBC series Boris Karloff's Thriller and has remained one of Brown's most suspenseful works. Brown makes good use of the psychological processes that compel his characters to commits acts of both decency and violence, which culminate in one of the author's best twist endings.

Length: approximately 56000 words



KIRKUS REVIEW

Ed Hunter with his Uncle Am work along with other investigators on the postmortem of Jason Rogers, at whose death $46,000 in city funds are revealed to be missing. Through the dead man's daughter, and presumptive legatee, Ed tries to secure the truth behind his death and her loyalty to him pleads his guilt rather than innocence before the obscured facts and cash figures prove otherwise. Basic, brisk.



Howard Perry has become a drunk—a skid row bum. It wasn't always so and he has hopes of returning to be a respected university student. But now he spends his days washing dishes to buy enough booze to hopefully blackout at night. His only friend is a prostitute name Billie the Kid. But Billie is just a working girl, and it would be stupid for him to care too much for her. Of course Perry isn't exactly making the smartest choices as he continues his downward spiral. And when he goes to borrow a drink from Billie's neighbor, whom soon turns up murdered, things are looking even worse for Perry.