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He blasted the Vice Racket wide Open.

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1952

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About the author

William Ard

83 books11 followers
aka Ben Kerr, Mike Moran, Jonas Ward, Thomas Wills.

William Thomas Ard has been one of the most elusive writers in the collecting world.

Odd for a man who was one of the most popular hardboiled writers of the 1950s. He was praised by critics from the St. Louis Dispatch to the New York Times.

Few imagined the dark side of the city and the entertainment business better than William Ard. When he turned his gaze west, he gave life to one of the genre's most enduring heroes.

Today his name is all but forgotten. His hardboiled titles are scarce. His paperback titles in fine condition are nearly impossible to find.

While he went by many names, he is essentially a man of two faces. Ard was the creator of hard-hitting detective Timothy Dane of New York and an even harder living and loving detective, Lou Largo, of Florida.

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Profile Image for Karl.
3,258 reviews368 followers
September 29, 2018
Rinehart & Co, New York ~ 1952 FIRST EDITION hardcover.

251 Pages

Cover art by Ben Feder.

A Murray Hill Mystery

"The Perfect Frame" introduced what was to be William Ard’s best-known detective, Timothy Dane. He would eventually appear in nine more novels. This is book number two in the series.

Ard's career lasted little more than a decade, fitting almost exactly into the ’50s. His first novel was accepted in November 1950, and he passed away in March 1960.

Utilizing the pen name of Jonas Ward, Ard cranked out a string of almost two dozen Westerns featuring rambling West Texas gunfighter 'Tom Buchanan', and under his own name (as well as several pen names, including Ben Kerr, Thomas Wills and Mike Moran) he wrote another 30 or so crime novels, most of them hard boiled. Ten years. Fifty-five or so books. That’s five books a year,

In this book protagonist Timothy Dane, as he investigates Lucy Malone, a poor security risk for an insurance company, but good in bed, leads to his search for a missing girl.

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When William Ard, passed away he had written two books in a series, featuring "Lou Largo", a different Privet Eye, though based on the Timothy Dane character, the books are:

All I Can Get (1959)
Like Ice She Was (1960)
Babe in the Woods (1960; written by Lawrence Block)
Make Mine Mavis (1961; written by John Jakes)
And So to Bed (1962; written by Jakes)
Give Me This Woman (1962; written by Jakes)

Although the last four books were written by two other writers they were credited as by William Ard.
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