Talmage Powell (1920-2000) was one of the all-time great mystery writers of the pulp magazines (and later the digest mystery magazines). He claimed to have written more than 500 short stories, and we have no reason to doubt him -- we are working on a bibliography of his work and have documented 373 magazine stories so far...and who knows how many are out there under pseudonyms or buried in obscure magazines? He wrote his first novel, The Smasher, in 1959. He went on to pen 11 more novels u...

Talmage Powell (1920-2000) was one of the all-time great mystery writers of the pulps (and later the digest mystery magazines). He claimed to have written more than 500 short stories (and I have no reason to doubt him—I am working on a bibliography of his work, and so far I can document 373 magazine stories...and who knows how many are out there under pseudonyms or buried in obscure magazines!)HER DAGGER BEFORE METHE WIND OF FEARMURDER GOES TO THE DOGSTHE BEAUT...

Give her five minutes more, I thought . . .More than an hour had passed since Jean Putnam’s voice had promised on the phone that she would be there. As I started back to my office I gave a final look down the corridor, and suddenly she was there, framed in the stairwell. She was dressed in a very fetching pirate costume, the purposely ragged bottoms of her scarlet pants reaching to just below the hips. Her legs were bare from there on down to black oilcloth boots. She hadn’t moved,...

Late summer in a sleepy South Carolina mill town, where heat shimmers and gossip travels faster than truth. A prosperous young bachelor stumbles on a vision he cannot shake: a dark-haired stranger rising from a hidden creek, water beading on her bare skin like diamonds. By nightfall, he has been introduced to her at a neighbor’s dinner table; within weeks, he is utterly lost.The girl carries a shadow. She spent three years in a private sanitarium after a family tragedy, and she fea...

The dirtiest killer of the year was the man private investigator Ed Rivers had to save from the chair.Wally Tulman, Florida socialite, had been convicted of molesting and murdering a young girl.Tulman’s lovely wife begged Rivers to take his case - to prove him innocent.Rivers wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.Then somebody tapped him over the head, just to make sure.Ed Rivers got the message. Somebody didn’t want him on the case.So he wa...

My name is Ed Rivers.I live in Tampa, Florida, where I work as a private cop. I’m six feet tall, weigh in at about one ninety, and am forty years old.When I look in the mirror I see a heavy, bearish face, dark-tanned and creased, the thick lids giving the brown eyes a lazy look. Women either get a charge from that face or want to run from it. Men fear it or trust it to the hilt. It isn’t a face that ever meets a neutral reaction.I’m not always happy...

This one was for keeps.It started the night private eye Ed Rivers went to the rescue of a damsel in distress and almost ended up at the bottom of Tampa Bay.Ed knew who was lurking behind him. His name was Russ Leppert. Russ liked to kill people. Not for any real reason - just because he liked it.Then there was the man who had once been the business of hustling pornographic stag movies. He wanted to get back into the racket again, in a big way.And, of course,...

A private detective hired to investigate a husband's death that was ruled a suicide tangles with mobsters—and a missing dog.

Nick Ramey, a gangster money handler, finds himself at the wrong end of a bellhop's gun, when he's robbed of a case full of money. But Nick may have the last laugh after all!

Three people were dead, their heads bashed in, their bodies hacked with a samurai sword. All three victims were Japanese. The murder weapon was traced to Nick Martin, a veteran of Iwo Jima. Nick had spent fifteen pain-ridden years in and out of Army hospitals. He tried to drown his memories of the horror, but whisky only put him right back in the middle of that fierce battle.Nick drank a fifth the night of the killing.That’s the kind of case the police call 'open and shut.'...

Welcome to the second volume of The Black Cat Mystery Community’s "Thrillogy" series, celebrating classic mystery short stories. This time we focus on the work of Talmage Powell (1920-2000). Included are:EASY MARKLIFE SENTENCEREWARD FOR GENIUSAt the beginning of his career, Powell published, under his name and many pseudonyms, more than 200 stories in top crime and mystery pulp magaziness like Dime Mystery and Black Mask Mystery Magazine. After the collapse of...

Veteran detective Odus Martin believes there’s always somebody who cares about a death, that no one is truly alone. When he and a rookie investigate the death of a shy orphan with no friends, they discover her landlady, her boss, and the head of the orphanage are indifferent to her. Who will care this time?A definite change of pace for Talmage Powell!