LITMIR.BIZ

Margaret Annister is slated to die in Nevada City’s gas chamber but she’s not too worried. She’s been given a drug by the police matron that takes away all cares and concerns. Also, she knows that her good friend Yerxa Indergaard is due to appeal directly to the Governor in her behalf. Throw in local attorney Croxson Kalver who knows she’s been set up and you have the makings of a webwork mystery only Harry Stephen Keeler could have penned.

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Young Y. Cheung is in a pickle! In order to receive a $100,000 inheritance from his grand­father’s estate, he must get his name mentioned in 1000 U.S. newspapers, “in an honorable fashion” before midnight of the day before the estate is settled. On top of that, his family doesn’t consider his one-of-a-kind profession, business detective, “honorable”. How Y. Cheung uses his inscrutable wiles to gain happiness and the inheritance is a tale only Harry Stephen Keeler could spin. <P> "It was definitely loopy and is the second of his novels I have read to deal sympathetically and sensibly with Asians in 1930s while everyone else was demonizing or eroticizing them in genre fiction of that era. This is one of Keeler's forays into the 'locked room' and impossible problem genre, but being Keller it involves an outrageous and nearly unfathomable solution." – G. F. Norris, Golden Age Detection.

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When Kwan Yung, Chinese inventor, gets cheated out of $32,000, it sets off a whirlwind set of circumstances that will affect financier Christopher Thorne, his beautiful daughter, Alicia, and his loyal employee, Philip Erskine – for better or for worse! Throw in a brain-teaser and you’ve got the makings for one of the most complex webwork mysteries to escape the mind of Harry Stephen Keeler. You also get a third solution to the Marceau Case, which has baffled Scotland Yard. The action ranges from Chicago to New York to New Orleans in this classic work by Chicago’s own Harry Stephen Keeler.

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Several men find themselves stranded by a flooding river on Bleeker’s Island. The jewels known as Cleopatra’s Tears are missing, and one of the men is believed to be Actor Hart, notorious killer and thief – maybe even the one who stole the jewels. Can the sheriff figure out which one is Hart – and make sure he’s the one without a life jacket when the dam upriver gives way?

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The poor souls who spent the first two books of the Big River Trilogy stranded on a small island waiting for the dam upriver to break are still there, but this time there are more than four. And you can bet that each man has a convincing story why he’s not Actor Hart, the ruthless killer. <P> There are not enough life jackets to go around and the Sheriff must figure out which is the criminal so that Hart is the one left to die when the waters begin to rise. <P> Vintage Keeler, chock full of outrageous dialect and plot reversals. (Written in 1939. Published in U.S. by Dutton in 1942.) Third and final in the series that began with The Portrait of Jirjohn Cobb and Cleopatra’s Tears.

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The worst flood in decades has isolated an island in the middle of Big River and there’s no telling when the dam upriver is going to give. On the island are four men and three lifejackets. The sheriff’s got the rifle and knows one of the other three men is a brutal and ruthless killer. Each man has his own story and if you don’t think this is a situation ripe for the webwork machinations of Harry Stephen Keeler, you haven’t been reading one of the most original mystery writers of the 20th century. Told in outrageous dialect, this book will have you guessing from the first page to the last.

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From 1935 comes this thrilling novel about five odd people who happen to buy tiny jade figurines of a non-smiling Buddha. Only Harry Stephen Keeler could have come up with this plot!

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Originally written in 1921 (but not published until 1927), this newspaper thriller pits a young Chicago reporter against the fiend known as the Blond Beast of Bremen.

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If only Japan could lay her hands on the Thirteenth Coin of Confuscius, which was floating around somewhere in the United States, she could thwart a certain Chinese ambition. The Japanese Secret Service in New York had a clue and immediately a Japanese Secret Service Agent boarded the Chicago Flyer and never took his eyes of a white passenter with a short gray beard. It was the passenger's raincoat that the Secret Agent had his eyes on, and at the first opportunity he grabbed it and substituted a duplicate. Ina lightning fraction of a second, he shot his hand into the pocket. In the leather purse he found not the sacred gold piece but a dead finger wrapped in cellophane…<P> Thus the master mystery-man, Harry Stephen Keeler, lays the groundwork for one of his most fascinating stories in which he dramatizes the Oriental psychology of crime!

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At the time of its publication, 1932, this was the longest mystery ever written. Would you believe, 313,000 words – many of them in a strange Hispano-German dialect. It's a simple story about world war in 1942 between an alliance between Germany, Japan, and Mexico against the US and the rest of the world. 3D TV figures prominently, as well as a cactus that proves to be the world's most perfect food source. A remarkable novel, far ahead of its time!

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