Kirjahaku

James Hadley Chase (Ren Brabazon Raymond) was born in London in 1906 and started his career as a bookseller. With the aid of a dictionary of American slang and reference books on the American underworld he wrote his first novel, NO ORCHIDS FOR MISS BLANDISH, over six weekends. The book achieved remarkable popularity and became one of the best-sold books of the decade. FLESH OF THE ORCHID is a wild, thrill-ride of a sequel to NO ORCHIDS. Taking up the story 22 years later, the central figure is once again a Blandish girl, but Carol Blandish is not the helpless victim that her mother was. Indeed, she is a volatile blend of simmering sexuality, strained innocence and hair-trigger cruelty. Her explosive outbursts of savage violence make her a force to be reckoned with. Escaping from a mental institute during a raging storm, and definitely off her meds, Carol Blandish is soon pursued by a seedy cast of characters who all want a piece of the Blandish fortune. The novel bristles with crazy plot twists, edge-of-the-seat suspense and intriguing low-life's who mix it up for an immensely enjoyable read.

When Dave Fenner is hired to solve the Blandish kidnapping, he knows the odds on finding the girl are against him - the cops are still looking for her three months after the ransom was paid. And the kidnappers, Riley and his gang, have disappeared into thin air.But what none of them knows is that Riley himself has been wiped out by a rival gang - and the heiress is now in the hands of Ma Grisson and her son Slim, a vicious killer who can't stay away from women, especially his beautiful new captive. By the time Fenner begins to close in on them, some terrible things have happened to Miss Blandish ...

Eve: mysterious, tantalizing, alluring, wanton. Deep within this desirable but strange girl burns the violent fire that could destroy a man.Clive Thurston had swindled his way to fame. He thought he knew the ropes and women. Maybe he did. But he didn't know Eve, otherwise he'd have realized that he was just another fly stumbling into the deadly web of a woman who was beautiful to look at, but lethal to love.

George Fraser, a lonely, timid fellow, lives in a dream world of gangsters, gunfights and beautiful women. He begins to imagine himself as the toughest gangster of them all to bolster up his feeling of inferiority. But George boasts once too often - and to the wrong person.From that moment on, harmless George is caught up in a deadly net of intrigue, and finds himself committing the deadliest act of all ...'An intelligent and harshly revealing piece of work with not a little serious penetration and power' The Times

Sudden death lurks along the canals of Venice ...That's what Don Micklem, millionaire American playboy on the trail of a disappearing one-time British agent, discovers the hard way. Has his quarry been murdered or has he committed treason?Against the backdrop of Venice's sinister waterways, Micklem must fight a ruthless political organization while facing the prospect of a violent death at every turn.

For years the worldwide operations of a mysterious and ruthless extortioner who calls himself the Tortoise have baffled Scotland Yard and the police forces of Europe. But the Tortoise makes a mistake when he interferes with wealthy American playboy Don Micklem, who has friends in high places, and soon tracks him to his lair ...'The thriller maestro of the generation' Manchester Evening News

Cannes. Film Festival time. Classy hotels, wonderful food, expensive movies - and a beach full of starlets showing off their curves. And delicious blonde Lucille Balu is more curvaceous than most. When she hears that world-famous movie mogul Floyd Delaney wants to meet her she jumps at the chance. But as she taps softly on the door of his suite at the Plaza hotel, the last thing she expects is a date with death.

Terry Regan, who'd dropped into the Delaneys' cabin up at Blue Jay Lake to sell them a TV set, took in the situation at a glance. Gilda was young and stunningly attractive. Jack Delany was a vicious, hard-drinking cripple, imprisoned in a wheelchair.Regan should have left them ... but he didn't.

When Chet Carson broke jail he thought he'd found a safe hideout in a lonely filling station. But instead he finds himself caught up in a dangerous threesome - an elderly owner, his gorgeous wife, Lola, and a safe with a fortune inside, which Lola wants. Her chance comes when she uncovers Chet's identity and threatens him with jail unless he opens the safe.Chet is in dead trouble. If he lands in prison again he'll be crucified, but if he opens the safe Lola will pin the rap on him anyway. Somehow there has to be a third way ...

She came out of his past to threaten his futureOut of Jefferson Halliday's past comes Rima Marshall. She's got nothing to lose - she's sunk just about as far as a woman can go. But she knows enough to put Jefferson in the hot seat. And he knows she knows. With the deck stacked against him, blackmail becomes a deadly weapon to fool around with ...'The thriller maestro of the generation' Manchester Evening News

A man will do almost anything when a rich and beautiful woman offers him fifty thousand dollars just to make a telephone call. But when that telephone call is part of a fake kidnap plan to extract five hundred thousand dollars from one of the richest men in the world, only a sucker would gamble on the deal paying off in his favour.Harry Barber is a sucker. After three and a half years in jail for a crime he didn't commit, with no job and no money, he is the perfect target of a brilliant plan to frame him for the brutal murder of a young girl.

Like most bank managers, Dave Calvin had acquired an irresistible charm that he could switch on whenever he felt the necessity. Underneath it he was cold, calculating, brutal - a perfect murderer.For years he had waited - watching an endless stream of money pass through his hands - knowing that a risk was only worth taking if the reward was justified. And a $300,000 payroll was justification enough - even for murder ...

It was the easiest £3,000 Nelson Ryan had ever made - but suddenly he realised he was being played for a sucker. A telephone call, seemingly innocent enough, led him to the murder of a Chinese call-girl who talked too much. It also pitched him straight into the teeming, sordid night life of colourful Hong Kong.From now on, Ryan would stick at nothing to get the killer who'd crossed him up.

When a small-time clerk insures his life for $50,000 and then suddenly dies ten days later, it doesn't take a genius to work out something suspicious is going on. So when Maddox, the top man in the insurance business, finds out, he is determined to get to the bottom of it. And this means trouble for someone. In fact, it means trouble for the beautiful, auburn-haired Meg Barlowe, a woman with a serious past.'The thriller maestro of the generation' Manchester Evening News

Successful dramatist Victor Dermott rents an isolated ranch-house in the Nevada Desert. For two months all is ideal, then one bright summer morning he wakes to find his dog, his guns, his servant vanished - and the telephone dead. The terror has begun ...'Agonising tension sustained throughout a first-rate story' Evening Standard

This swift-moving story of murder and suspense culminates in an unexpected and dramatic climax that is the hallmark of a James Hadley Chase novel. Chris Burnett - successful, wealthy and married to the daughter of a multi-millionaire - receives severe brain injuries in a car accident. While convalescing Burnett disappears for 24 hours, during which time a prostitute is brutally murdered and mutilated. Evidence found by a private inquiry points to Burnett. His wife, blackmailed by the inquiry agent, sets out to prove her husband's innocence ...

Mark Girland's problems begin when a beautiful blonde is found lying on a dark deserted quai in Paris - the initials of the top Chinese atomic scientist tattooed on her upper thigh.The girl is suffering from acute amnesia. Girland, desperate for money, is ordered by the CIA to get any information he can - by posing as her husband.But the appeal of the mission begins to wear thin when Girland discovers he has involved himself in a life and death race to extract vital atomic secrets from the scientist's beautiful mistress.

Mark Girland, good-for-nothing secret agent with a distinct weakness for money and women, finds himself in Prague for his latest adventure. But events in the Communist country prove all too much for Girland as he comes face-to-face with a sinister world of deception, fraud and corruption.'The same compulsive readability and sheer hard story-telling as in every other' Sheffield Telegraph

The Russians will pay $4,000,000 for the top secret formula to a revolutionary new metal ... and the CIA will do anything to stop them.American inventor Dr Paul Forrester is the man that both sides want. He alone can decipher the vital code but, for two years, Forrester has been in a mental asylum - ever since that bloody day when he walked in on his beautiful wife and her lover.So it's Nona Jacey, Forrester's former lab assistant, who becomes a helpless pawn in the power struggle to possess the scientist. Because she is the only person that holds the key to unlocking Forrester's mind ...