Peter Cheyney is perhaps best known for his short stories and novels about agent/detective Lemmy Caution. Caution was first portrayed as a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent, and in later stories as a private detective. Another popular creation was the private detective Slim Callaghan who also appeared in a series of novels and subsequent film adaptations. He was constructed as a British response to the more hardboiled detectives of American fiction such as Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe. A meticulous researcher, Cheyney kept a massive set of files on criminal activity in London, but these were destroyed during the Blitz in 1941; he however, soon began to replace his collection of clippings. He dictated his work. Typically he would "act out" his stories for his secretary, Miss Sprauge, who would copy them down in shorthand and type them up later… Lemmy Caution Books This Man Is Dangerous Poison Ivy Dames Don't Care Can Ladies Kill? Don't Get Me Wrong You'd Be Surprised Your Deal, My Lovely Never A Dull Moment You Can Always Duck Slim Callaghan Books The Urgent Hangman Dangerous Curves You Can't Keep The Change It Couldn't Matter Less Sorry You've Been Troubled Calling mr. Callaghan Dark Novels Dark Duet The Stars Are Dark The Dark Street Dark Hero Dark Bahama Lost Novels Death Chair The Gold Kimono The Sign On The Roof The Vengeance Of Hop Fi Other Novels Ladies Won't Wait The Curiosity Of Etienne Macgregor The Deadly Fresco Dressed To Kill Short Fiction The Alonzo Mactavish Omnibus Lemmy Caution Stories Slim Callaghan Stories Other Stories

'The British, once they take the gloves off - once they forget to play cricket, to be English gentlemen - they are the toughest things on earth,' says one German espionage agent to another in Dark Duet. And the trouble with Michael Kane, hero of this spy thriller is that he never plays cricket with Nazi spies ... 'Dark Duet seems to me damn good' Raymond Chandler

Rene Burg, one-time Chicago gunman, finds himself mixed up in the Norwegian underground movement during the war. As well as gunning for the German Army in general, Burg is out to get one person in particular: a beautiful deadly woman who has brought the technique of double-crossing to a fine art. And he doesn't have much time, because they are both under sentence of death.

Provides information on the most influential English-language writers of the crime and mystery genre. Each entry includes author biographies; complete bibliographies; lists of critical studies; locations of manuscripts; the writer's own comments on his or her work, when available; and an essay written by an expert of the genre.

**** Cited in Sheehy and BCL3. The foremost reference in the field, completely revised and updated, and now covering about 600 authors, mainly English-language writers whose work appeared during or since the time of Conan Doyle. The entry for each writer consists of a biography, a bibliography, and a signed critical essay. Living authors were invited to add a comment on their work; many of them accepted, and their remarks are both entertaining and enlightening. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

In the second Lemmy Caution novel, the FBI man is sent by his bosses to Casablanca to investigate the disappearance of two million dollars, which have seemingly vanished into thin air. There he meets Carlotta de la Rue, the eponymous Poison Ivy, whose character is based on a true-life femme fatale nightclub singer. Lemmy soon uncovers a gang of gold smugglers, whose boss might be Rudy Saltierra, Carlotta's boyfriend. She, in turn, may or may not be on Lemmy's side ... This is vintage Cheyney, with a stunning twist.

A dame has to have more than beauty and breeding to stop Slim Callaghan doing things his way. Mrs Riverton has plenty of both, but when she begins to interfere in Slim's search for her stepson, things start to hot up. Slim's motto is: 'We get there somehow and who the hell cares'. The problem is that someone does ...