James Hadley Chase

When Claude Kendrick, owner of a shadily run art gallery in Paradise City, is approached by Ed Haddon, the King of art thieves, to find a buyer for a priceless icon of Catherine the Great, he believes his dreams have come true.Herman Radnitz, a multimillionaire, is the man prepared to pay six million dollars for the stolen art, but there's a catch: Radnitz wanted the icon delivered to Zurich as part of the deal.To his joy, Kendrick learns of a couple travelling to Europe. All he has to do is make sure the icon is planted on them unawares. But he's picked the wrong couple ...

The only clue that could lead to the arrest of a homicidal killer is a golf ball button, torn from the jacket the killer was wearing, and found next to the horrifyingly mutilated body of a young hooker. There are four owners of jackets with golf ball buttons living in the city. When Detective Tom Lepski of the Paradise City Police checks out these jackets, suspicion falls on Ken Brandon, an insurance agent. But just when Lepski is sure he has his man, two more horrifying killings occur, and he is faced with the trickiest case he's ever had to solve.

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 ...

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.

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.

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

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.

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 ...

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.

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

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.