MURDER ME!

This 60-year-new novel--serialized in 1937 but never before published in book form--starts with a bang when philanthropist David Barry, facing a ruinous police investigation of his contracting firm, asks his old enemy Richard Willett to kill him. An hour later Willett finds him already dead, strung up from his library balcony. Before saltand-pepper Sgts. Angus Campbell (the idealistic one) and Patrick O'Rourke (""facts are what count"") can get the cuffs on the killer, there'll be endless face-offs in which the five suspects hurl accusations at each other and reveal how many of them were popping in and out of the crowded murder scene on the fatal night. Pulp king Brand (Destry Rides Again, etc., etc.) keeps the pot bubbling merrily without letting any depths or longueurs get in the way of his story. The whole project has the winsome charm of an old B-movie on late-night cable.