Murder For Madame

by Adam Knight

DEATH
in the Red Light Set

Mary Ray was queen of New York's call girls. Her friends were wealthy and influential, included Broadway columnists and cafe society characters as well as men of affairs, writers, artists and other highbrows.

But Mary had an enemy - an enemy who dealt in murder. Steve Conacher vowed to track down the killer before others died - and he had to slug his way through plenty of slime - and illicit temptation - before he nailed the murderer!

ADAM KNIGHT, who wrote Stone Cold Blonde (Signet #1322) and many other bestselling thrillers, is one of the most exciting new mystery writers. His stories pack a wallop. If you like your action furious and your women fast, you'll enjoy his books.

157 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

Before I got into anything else in my rather hectic life, I knew I was a writer. From a young age trying to write stories about Star Wars, expanding on comic book theories - basically creating "FanFics" before there ever was such a term, I knew that writing was my true passion in life.

Now that I am adult (shudder) and have fallen off the written path a touch, I find myself with a new hope, a new vigor.

But more on that later.

Check out the links provided. I am excited about writing again and making a real go of this. So many stories in my head.

I hope you love them as much as I do.

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 3.75 out of 5]

Lawrence Lariar is best known as a cartoonist, but he also wrote numerous mystery stories, including his Steve Conacher private eye mystery series, which were originally published by Signet in the 1950’s, but have now been republished and are available through Mysterious Press. “Murder for Madame” is the third book out of eight in the series which consists of (1) “Stone Cold Blonde” (1952), (2) “Murder for Madame” (1951), (3) “Knife at my Back” (1952), (4) “The Sunburned Corpse” (1954), (5) “Kiss and Kill” (1954), (6) “I’ll Kill You Next” (1954), (7) “Girl Running” (1956), and (8)”Triple Slay” (1959). The books in this series were originally published under the psuedonym Adam Knight.

In “Murder for Madame,” the publisher got his prepositions crossed because it should really have been Murder of the Madame. NYC private eye Steve Conacher gets lured into this case when a blonde bombshell appears at a bar he frequents and tells him Mary Ray needs him to come over. Nevertheless, by the time Conacher gets there to speak with his old friend who operated a high-class brother in a NY brownstone, he might as well be talking to himself because Mary was not having any more conversations with anyone.

Since the official police investigators weren’t focused on the death of a Madame, Conacher takes it as his own personal mission to catch his friend’s killer, questioning the women she employed, the painters they often posed for, and trying to trace down the mysterious Joy Marsh, the knockout who started this whole thing.

Lariar fills this novel with a sense of immediacy as the pace is quite electric even though there is no real emergency as Mary isn’t going to be saved.