THE LAST WITNESS

California locales, quaintly dated pulp prose, and non-surprise surprise endings mark this collection of four stories and a novella, in which middle-class vigilantes avenge the death of a fiancée (“Death Is a Lonely Lover”) and a cuckolded father (“The Last Witness”); a cabbie with a gambling addiction loses big (“Never Come Back”); a counterfeiter and a con artist are outswindled by Colby’s serial sleuth T.C. Brock (“Paint the Town Green”); and lust personified by a chestnut-haired tootsie in a sparkly gold swimsuit gets gutted by a mesmerized lover and his dowdy partner while their co-vacationers mourn the loss of their sexual obsessions (the 175-page “Deadly Desire”).

Colby’s moral code, syntax, and penchant for last-page twists recall middling mystery writers of the ’30s. Skippable by all but Black Mask devotees.