The Stopped Clock

by Joel Townsley Rogers

Story of the incredibly beautiful Nina WandIey, who rose to fame in the make-believe, glamorous world of Hollywood but whose private life was a vortex of violence and hate for the five men who loved her. Each in his turn gave her what she craved: love, fame, wealth, position, power—and she left each of them with no thought of the bitterness, the frustration she had fostered. The movie star, the tycoon, the Italian prince, the rajah had suffered because of her. The tyrant who had made her his Galatea suffered most of all. Only one man, though, could look upon her with the eyes of death.

Crumpled on a blood-splattered rug, savagely beaten and dying, she thinks of these men; of the hate she had engendered, the violence she had unleashed. But all of this is nothing, now, as she crawls slowly, painfully, from door to window to door in the dark shambles of her home, trying feebly to lock out a murderer who is coming back to finish his work.

311 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Joel Townsley Rogers, (1896-1984), is best remembered today for his mystery novels such as “The Red Right Hand” and “Once in A Red Moon.” But beginning in the early 1920s, he was a prolific writer of short stories, contributing regularly to the booming all-fiction pulp magazine field, appearing in such titles as Adventure, Short Stories, and Everybody’s. When tales of the Great War became the rage, and aviation excitement grabbed reader interest, Rogers directed his fiction to the air war markets with numerous stories written for Wings, Air Stories, Air War, War Stories, War Novels and Flying Stories among others. By the 1930s, he was selling to the better paying pulp markets of Argosy and All-American Fiction and quickly transitioned into the detective field with sales to Detective Fiction Weekly, Detective Tales, Detective Book Magazines, and New Detective. After World War II, Rogers continued selling fiction to such slick market magazines as The Saturday Evening Post and turning out new mystery shorts for Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. His final novel, The Stopped Clock, appeared in 1958.