Blackmailers Don't Shoot

This collection gathers early short crime stories, including the 1933 title piece in which a Chicago gunman hired for a Los Angeles kidnapping job is pulled into a blackmail tangle among studio people and a private detective. Companion stories likewise follow lone investigators, gamblers, and hired men through hotels, offices, and night streets, where a simple errand becomes a double-cross. The pieces are pulp mysteries of the 1930s: clipped talk, sudden shootings, and plots that turn on who is paying whom. They show a detective-story form built from hired guns, studio money, and private investigators, without yet settling on a single named hero throughout.

Bound in grey cloth printed with a design in black and silver by Grandfield. Silver endleaves. Black slipcase.