Kendell Foster Crossen

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People always say it sounded like a firecracker at first. But it was a rifle shot that rang out from the fourth story of an apartment building in Cleveland, killing a handsome young Congressman as he delivered a speech. The suspect is Eugene Crown, an escaped convict who rented the apartment, but no one knows where he is now. After four weeks of intensive nationwide search, the police and the FBI have still not captured him. Then Intercontinental Insurance gets the bright idea to hire its best investigator, Milo March, to capture the killer―as a public service, of course. They are determined to prove that a large corporation can have a soul, and they're going to do it even if it kills Milo. But it won't. Milo will crisscross the country and the globe in search of the truth: Cleveland, Columbus, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Reno, Lisbon, New York City, Hong Kong, Cape Town, Paris... even a little old mining town in Arizona. All the while he is dogged by a sneering white-haired gangster determined to get to Crown before Milo does―to shut him up. Milo doesn't believe that Eugene Crown is the real culprit. He was a born loser by all accounts, and now, suddenly, he's a master criminal? Clearly Crown is no more than a pawn in a well-organized game of death. But why the Congressman? Because he was for civil rights? anti-Communist? anti-union? pro-Israel? There had to be an international conspiracy behind the deed, a group of men with a lot of money and one simple idea in common: Stir things up. Put the blame on the Left, the Right, the blacks, the whites, whoever-but scare everybody so that the men can get the things they want....

Milo March heads for the historic mining boomtowns of Nevada, but he's planning to dig at people, not rocks. The case involves three men who bought an old gold mine outside Reno. Though it had been abandoned for a century, the mine has miraculously started producing again. Armed with a glowing assay report, the owners persuaded the insurance company to issue a large policy against the mine's running out of gold before they have taken two million dollars in gold from it. You guessed it-a few months later the owners claim the mine has run dry, and they want their payout. The insurance company screams at once for its top investigator, Milo March. Milo first has to solve a riddle: How do you get gold out of a mine that has no gold in it? The easy explanation is the old con job known as salting, but that only involves a sprinkling of gold around a mine to deceive buyers. This mine had a helluva lot more gold than that. So the answer to the riddle must be that you bring gold into the mine, then take it out again. Now this raises another question: Where did they get a ton of gold bricks to put into the mine? One of the owners of the mine belongs to a crime family that Milo has tangled with before. The Syndicate must be using the mine as a front for something else. Milo can't imagine its being a front for anything except gold. That sounds silly. But the case is anything but silly, turning deadly as Milo gradually unravels its complexities. Though it's a case for the FBI, Milo wraps it up in his own way, determined to set things right for an innocent victim whose friendship has come to mean a lot to him.

At the time, the two naive young women took it as a joke. Wilma and Jane, both bonded employees at a New York brokerage firm, were squares aspiring to be swingers. And so, at the suggestion of their new boyfriends, they left work one day carrying oversized pocketbooks. The next day it was discovered that bonds and securities worth $1.5 million were missing. And so were Wilma and Jane. How would amateurs like Wilma and Jane dispose of stolen securities? The only way is to sell them to someone with connections in the Syndicate. He in turn sells it to one of his connections, who sells it to another connection, and eventually it winds up somewhere in Europe where they can't be traced. The boyfriends must have helped the girls by making these sales. But what if the girls spill the beans? In a way it's no surprise when the Miami cops pull Wilma's body out of the Everglades. Obviously she was murdered so that she couldn't be a witness. The suspect, the man she loved, has an alibi-furnished by a Syndicate don who bought the goods. It is up to Milo March, chief investigator for Intercontinental Insurance Company, to find out who has the bonds and securities, and arrange to get them back. But first there is the matter of Jane. She is now the only person who can put the finger on the two men who committed the original crime; and those two men are the only ones who can reveal who in the Syndicate they sold the goods to. If the gun-toting thugs who are dogging Milo's every step haven't already killed Jane, they will when they catch up with her-unless Milo gets to her first. With her disguised identity, it may to be tough to track her down. She may be in Florida or she may be somewhere else. She's just one more good-looking broad in the sea of desirable women that seem to surround Milo-almost indistinguishable, except for a very unusual scar that she is known to have....

It is the time of the infamous Los Angeles riots of 1965-several days of arson and looting in protest of police mistreatment of black residents of the Watts neighborhood in the southeast of the city. During this tense time, Milo March is summoned to L. A. to investigate because one of the properties that has burnt down is heavily insured, as are two of the three people who were killed Harry Masters, the wealthy owner of the building, and his brother-in-law, who owned a store on the first floor. Milo questions whether the arson and deaths were truly the work of black rioters. Maybe the arson was separate from the rioting, a setting that merely enabled white men to cover a more serious crime. Focusing on the character and habits of Harry Masters is the key to these questions. No one makes a fortune without also making enemies; could that be why someone torched Masters' building? People said Masters was a no-good bastard, but good at it. Maybe he had decided he wasn't satisfied with just making a few million a year. Maybe he wanted to score big and go off somewhere with a delicious broad. It's possible Masters engineered the whole thing, then, with the help of a couple of cheap punks connected to the Syndicate-the same punks who are now tailing and threatening March. Masters could steal money from his own company, leaving it crippled or destroyed, and disappear. He could start over in another country and might never be found. Milo just has to prove that he did it, how he did it, who helped him, where he was, and how to get him back to face the music. That's all, nothing to it. But Milo has some helpers, too: One is a girlfriend of Harry's, a voluptuous stripper who seems determined to drink Milo under the table. The other is a young black hipster from the neighborhood. Once Milo has won his trust, he proves to have access to key information that none of the white people suspect.

Once again, private eye Milo March, a Major in the Army reserves, is recalled by the CIA for a special mission. At a time when relations between the U. S. and Soviet Russia are somewhat relaxed, the Russians have asked a Syndicate-owned American company to send an expert to teach them how to build coin vending machines and plan where to install them. The CIA easily makes a deal with the Syndicate, and Milo is assigned to go undercover in the guise of this expert. Since both the Syndicate and the Soviets know who Milo March is, his identity must be kept secret. The CIA provides Milo with I. D. papers and a history covering his entire life as a gangster named Peter Miloff. After a crash course in vending machines, he is off to Moscow. Never mind that the Russians have his fingerprints on file. He will spend much of his time opening doors with his palm and closing them with his elbow. Milo's mission is twofold. First there's an American agent who disappeared into a Russian prison somewhere, and Milo has to figure out where he is. The other assignment is to finish that agent's job: find out whether a master Soviet spy who was believed killed during the war is actually still alive and running a special espionage bureau. And so our hero arrives in Moscow armed with several 007 gadgets and a gun, without which he would feel naked. He has also been offered the assistance of four double agents, two Russian nationals and two Yugoslavs. Just as Milo is deciding that he cannot expect much from these little helpers-apart from the company of the two who are lovely young women-a warning comes from Washington that one of the four agents is a traitor. But which one? The Russians are good at playing the cat-and-mouse game, and now Milo had become the mouse....

Milo March is sipping a martini at the pool of the Far Eastern Hotel, a lovely British blonde on his left and a Chinese beauty on his right, both in bikinis. What more could a man require? But then he is rudely interrupted by a call from Intercontinental Insurance in New York. They have a serious case that only he, their best investigator, can tackle. As usual, many millions of dollars are at stake. A large, well-organized ring is transporting stolen goods from the U. S. to Red China via Hong Kong. Milo doesn't doubt that organized crime is responsible, and he is determined to put and end to the whole operation-not only the stealing, but the dealing with an enemy country. Milo persists with plodding but dangerous work, then suddenly, when he gets warm around the edges, he springs into action. Assuming a secret identity as a tough loner named "John Milo," he hangs out at a couple of bars frequented by con men. The V. O. and martinis keep flowing as he waits to make a connection to the smuggling ring. Through an unpleasant police informer described as a "sick bulldog," Milo makes a deal with a couple of men peddling stolen liquor, as this may lead him to the Syndicate men responsible for the smuggling. It does, but it also lands him in jail, charged with conspiracy to receive stolen property, possession of stolen property, and three counts of burglary-another day in the life of John Milo. Out on bail, Milo continues his quest and manages to land a job as a bagman for a Mafia don. Before closing the case, Milo will spar with some tough customers. A weasel-faced punk will stick a gun in Milo's back, and someone will get badly injured. Milo will get lucky in Vegas and even luckier with the sensational woman known as the Dragon Lady of Hong Kong. And at the end, Milo will get a promised $20,000 bonus whether he solves the case or not. The latter outcome is highly unlikely...

It was a well-planned heist. An armored truck had picked up money from banks to be delivered to the Federal Reserve. The car climbed the winding road of Storm King Mountain in New York State. At the summit were the men from the state highway truck, placing a detour sign in the road. Parked at the side of the road was a police car, its warning light blinking. Minutes later, the two guards from the armored car had been lured from their truck by the phony troopers and shot dead. The money that had been safely locked up in its armor-plated vault was loaded into two ordinary cars and driven away. It is Milo March's job to get the money back for the insurance company-one and a half million dollars in cash, securities, and bonds. The trail leads Milo to three more murders; the men who pulled the robbery had been killed too. As he follows the clues, he discovers that three others-two tough men and a striking blonde-had run away to Miami. They purchased a fishing boat, and the seller was found shot to death. The boat did not return. Where did they go? There was only one place to go if you had a lot of money and were wanted by the American police. Brazil had no extradition treaty with the U. S. and had long been a haven for American crooks who were loaded with loot. Is it unreasonable of Milo to think he can talk all three of them into voluntarily returning to the United States? While frequenting the beaches, bars, and nightclubs of the Marvelous City, and romancing a beautiful Latina jazz singer, Milo is steadily working on his problem: how to get the criminals back to the United States before they kill each other-with the money, securities, and bonds intact, untouched by the hands of a persistent Brazilian police lieutenant with a nose for money.

Milo March is on a new case for Intercontinental Insurance, and it's a real puzzler this time. Actually, Milo was just settling into a hedonistic vacation in Los Angeles when Intercontinental called him from New York and convinced him, with the promise of a large bonus, to try to solve a series of jewel robberies in Beverly Hills. Since Intercontinental carries the bulk of the policies on the jewels, they are desperate for Milo to get the loot back-and to see the thieves put away, as a cautionary lesson to other would-be lawbreakers. The police have identified their prime suspect: Johnny Rinaldi, a gangster with a cross-country criminal record. But just as Milo takes on the case, the cops are busy arresting Johnny's beautiful girlfriend, Lita, for the murder-she's been found standing over his body with a revolver in her hand. Yet Milo won't believe Lita did it. He had just been on a date with her the same night He also doesn't believe Renaldi is the chief culprit. The thefts must have been committed by a gang of seven or eight people, and Johnny didn't seem smart enough to be the mastermind. In each case a home was broken into at the exact time the owners had taken their gems out of a bank vault. Somebody was tipping off the thieves. Milo has a good idea of who is involved-for example, the hoods who keep warning him to stay off the case, constantly tailing him, and threatening him with fists and guns. But one problem is how to pin it on them, and the other is: where the hell is the large amount of stolen jewelry, especially the three hundred loose diamonds hidden in a place only known to the dead man? The question is a little like the old gag about looking for a lost dog: "Where would you go if you were a dog?" Milo tries to guess where Renaldi might have hidden the jewelry. There had to be a lot of it, so he couldn't just dump it in a dresser drawer. And why hadn't any of it turned up on the market? Surely he wasn't saving the diamonds to trickle through his fingers, or to run barefoot through a collection of costly baubles. The answer is just on the tip of Milo's mind, and he's got to access his intuition or else several millions swill have to be paid out-and Lita could go to the gas chamber.

When Milo March heads for an island in the sun to recover the stolen copy of a heavily insured manuscript, it's like a one-way ticket to hell: his destination is a brutal Caribbean dictatorship called the "Monican Republic." The manuscript, a scandalous expos of the government, is in the hands of the dictator himself, who seized it before it could be published. The author is a Monican professor who has been kidnapped on American soil and forced back to his homeland to face the wrath of the dictator. And two other men-one a U. S. citizen-have died under suspicious circumstances in connection with the kidnapping. Milo's assignment is just to get the valuable manuscript back for the insurance company. But he also wants to investigate whether the deaths of two men were murders engineered by the regime. He also wonders what had happened to the large sum that the professor withdrew from a charitable fund for Monican refugees the same day he vanished. It would be great to deliver the regime's chief assassin into the hands of the New York police. Not to mention that Milo has to figure out how to smuggle the manuscript out of the presidential palace. Oh, and what happened to the professor? There was no problem getting into the Monican Republic; it's getting out with all of this that might cause some trouble for Milo. And then there's the small difficulty of two Latina beauties who may have been set up to trap him... From the moment Milo lands in Torcido's island, he is marked for murder. The finger man is an international playboy, and the executioner is a sinister mystery man called El Nariz-"The Nose." The bait is a dark-haired Latin beauty with her own brand of Caribbean allure. It could be a lovely way to die... if only the sadistic Monican police chief doesn't finish Milo off before he can fully enjoy the perks of the job.