Richard S. Prather

Shell Scott, the shamus who has Sherlock whirling in his grave...This is the first book in this action-packed mystery series....

'The scarlet bikini which had covered a minimum of the eye-popping curves on the dead woman, lay at her feet, and my eyes focussed on her as glassily as did the dead man’s next to her....

Shell Scott is hired to help State Senator Paul Hershey gather information against Joe Blake, one of the biggest crooks Los Angeles has ever produced....

I’m Shell Scott, the human target for every gun in the State of California. And that’s no private eyewash...I was made to feel wanted all right....

The strait jacket’s canvas held my arms tight. My six-two was horizontal on a stretcher and the two bruisers carried it and my 205 pounds easily down the long corridor....

"There was a fire in her eyes that was scorching me - me, who couldn't tell whether a dame wanted to kiss me or kill me....

"I'm Shell Scott, a P.I. with 20-20 vision, particularly when I have a 36-22-36 assignment. This one was a chaste girl who was being chaste-by me. And I was being chased, too, by a hired gun....

"Suspicious and dangerous accidents were happening. People were dying, including the private eye I had been sent to replace....

J. Harrison Bing after receiving no word from his daughter in nearly a year, went to her home in L.A. only to find she had sold the home and left without a trace....

Constanza Carmocha was unarmed - that is, she didn't have a gun....

When business owner and personal friend Jay Weather is murdered, all the evidence points to P.I. Mark Logan as the killer....

There were 12 of them. Bottoms, that is. Au naturel. The most eye-wrecking collection of derrieres ever to pop out of a printed page....

Shell Scott's mental contemplation was rudely interrupted when his office door was suddenly opened and an unpleasant little man walked in with a .45 caliber automatic pointed right at Shell's midsection....

A rash of hit and run deaths in Los Angeles has the press in an uproar. The police have no clue as to the primary cause and the deceased are all men who appear to have been brutalized prior to the time of the accident....