Böcker utgivna av Steeger Books

In this action-packed Cold War spy adventure, Milo March-private detective and former OSS officer during World War II-is recruited by Army intelligence to carry out a dangerous mission behind the Iron Curtain. An important British diplomat has defected to East Germany, carrying with him secrets about British and American codes. He can also help the Communists gain access to a physicist working in the British Sector on a top-secret project that involves tampering with energy fields affecting the human brain―a bizarre process that could disastrously alter the nature of warfare. "Operation Berlin" demands that Milo kidnap the diplomat before the Russians make him talk.Disguised as an American Communist delegate to an international Peace Festival in Berlin, Milo dashes into the Soviet Zone just as the news leaks that an American agent is coming to the event. Surrounded by suspicious comrades, he is congratulated on his mastery of Lenin quotes one moment, while the next he is subjected to arrest and a torturous interrogation. Even when he scores a point, he never knows whether he is fooling them or they are fooling him. While treading this unbearable tightrope of tension, he is distracted by two beautiful women: the sexually aggressive blonde Frieda and the soft-eyed, black-haired Greta, who has some secrets of her own. Either or both of these feminine comrades could be on the verge of betraying him. Although the efficient and fearless Milo always insists on working alone, help comes from an unexpected quarter in the nick of time.

Like an eerie devil-dawn, that green death-ray spread its lethal shadow over New York-burning to smoking crisps the helpless hundreds who dared its path. For the Eye of Flame had loosed his fire-fiends upon America's proudest city, and, as prisons poured forth their criminals, and the underworld came into its terrible own, no man could hope to combat that ray of death. Single-handed, Richard Wentworth, in the Spider's gruesome garb, dared the Flame-fighting for an entire people's safety against a monster who had learned to make millions out of human misery and the charred cinders that had once been men!

For the first time in book form-six stories from vintage men's magazines (1952-1961) featuring Milo March, the shrewd insurance investigator and brazen secret agent created by M.E. Chaber: "The Jelly Roll Heist." A series of thefts in Denver has the insurance executives biting their nails. Judging by the loss of a belly dancer's navel gem, it looks like a seducer is preying on ladies with sparkly things. Or is there a more sinister gang behind it?"Hair the Color of Blood." Milo's on vacation at a swank Santa Monica hotel when he hears a scream. He rushes to save the damsel in distress, and the next thing he knows, he's waking up in bed with the naked body of a red-haired corpse!"The Hot Ice Blues." A new jewel robbery occurs every night, while Milo sits around playing Dixieland platters with a real gone chick. Is the insurance company's star investigator really goofing off?"Murder for Madame." Someone swipes a worthless box, tossing aside the costly pearl necklace that was inside. Now four people are desperate to retrieve the box―five if you count Milo, who can't resist trying to figure out why."The Red, Red Flowers." Major March, U.S. Army Reserve, is sent undercover to Moscow, where a captured American U-2 pilot is on trial. As usual, Milo has no plan but makes it up as he goes along. He will have mere moments to retrieve a coded message and snatch the pilot from the Communists' hands-but things don't go exactly as expected."The Twisted Trap." Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. A wealthy old policyholder claims that his sexy young wife and her psychiatrist lover have teamed up to poison him with a drug that mimics the symptoms of madness. If he should die "accidentally" as a result of this condition, his wife will get an enormous life insurance payout. Having escaped from a sanatorium, the old man insists that Milo must rescue him. But doing so may cost Milo his own sanity!

Death to the Brides was completed in 1975 but never released during the author's lifetime, owing to the publisher's objection to its politically charged content. So this is the only unpublished Milo March manuscript left by Ken Crossen-now in print for the first time.The book is distinctive in another way. It is the only Crossen book in which characters from two different series interact. Colonel Kim Locke, featured in three other spy novels by Crossen, lends Milo a miniature-breed military dog for an Intelligence mission. Milo has never worked with a canine before, but man and dog quickly take to each other, and the dog will soon prove himself a valuable friend in a world gone mad.The American war against the Viet Cong is supposedly over now, and the only U.S. personnel in the South are advisors and attachés. Milo arrives under cover as the new military attaché, assigned to rescue an Intelligence man held captive in the highlands of the North. He decides to present himself to the Communists as an American officer who has come to plead for the release of the prisoner on the humanitarian grounds that he is a civilian and a personal friend who was captured while on an errand of peace. But how to reach Hanoi safely?An informant sends him to Madame Lê, a beautiful young Chinese Vietnamese woman who is a restaurateur and an officer of the Viet Cong. She is willing to guide Milo on an arduous walk through the jungle. Mindful of the possibility that Madame Lê or her comrades may lure him into the hands of the Viet Cong, to be thrown into the same cell with the American he came to rescue, Milo is taken by surprise when the real danger comes from a completely unexpected quarter.Milo, who never make plans in advance-except the plan to stay alive one more day-embarks on one of the craziest stunts of his espionage career. And the little dog holds the key.

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.

Before the horrified eyes of the Senate's jammed galleries, that revered Senator died by his own hand. And Richard Wentworth, who had reached Washington in response to the newspaper agony column's personal, "In the name of democratic humanity, come to Washington before September 9..." knew that this marked only the beginning of a yogi-ridden dictator's reign. Behind that welter of machine guns and storm troops moved the Cobra, striking at the nation's very chief-and the Spider was face to face with the strangest battle ever fought by man!

The last of three books collecting the Silver Trent short stories that appeared in Star Western following the cancellation of The Western Raider. Includes "Blood of the Yucca," "The Madness of Silver Trent," "Silver Trent's Blood-Bounty Feud," and "Silver Trent Rides Alone."

The defense forces of the United States have been crushed by the powerful war machine of Emperor Rudolph, Warlord of the World... From the Atlantic to the Mississippi the brutal conqueror is subjecting millions to his merciless, bloody reign of terror-and his ruthless gray-clad hordes are steadily sweeping westward, leaving a vast path of death and destruction in their wake... Faced with the surrender of America's army, only Jimmy Christopher-known to the Intelligence Service as Operator 5-and a pitiful handful of desperate men stand between the Mad Emperor and his bloody conquest of the nation...

Ruthless, invulnerable, that Scarred Hand reached out to destroy the entire law machine of New York-blasting into merciless oblivion those juries which dared convict even a single criminal. In that twilight of terror, when empty cells yawned for the felons who never arrived, and helpless Justice hid her bloodied head-no one but Richard Wentworth could combat this invisible Juggernaut which had paralyzed five mighty boroughs. Once more, in the Spider's weird vestments, Wentworth sets out-this time to annihilate a brain so evil that it is encased in two heads!

Invaders from the Central Empire held all New England and most of the Eastern Seaboard. The Purple Emperor, bloodthirsty and heartless, was subjecting millions of Americans to an endless reign of terror. Threat of the horrible Green Gas had driven our defenders to the Mississippi. The President had fled to a ramshackle courthouse in Florida. Despair filled every heart. Operator 5, leading a desperate guerilla band within the enemy lines, is America's only hope. This long novel, dramatized from Jimmy Christopher's own personal history of the invasion, presents a startling, thrilling picture of the Second War of Independence!

Looting, maiming, slaughtering, El Gaucho launched his colossal plot to unite the Underworld-to make himself King of America! No torture was too cruel for him to employ; no deed too bloody; no life too precious, except his own. Richard Wentworth-the Spider, who exacts justice when the Law fails-realized he alone could save America from wanton butchery, in spite of the grim reward posted for his head-its own weight in the purest gold!

Never before has the Spider, Master of Men, crusader extraordinary against the Underworld, been faced with such overwhelming difficulties. A magically persuasive radio voice luring thousands of young people to crime; a scientific madman dealing germicidal death over the nation; every criminal gang in the country organized to levy toll by stark terror... How can Richard Wentworth link these facts, weave a web of retribution for the Doom Dealer? With his beloved Nita captured and waiting for a ghastly old-world torture, his one-time friend Kirkpatrick ordering police on his trail to 'Kill at Sight!', his every movement hampered not only by outlaws but by the law itself-can even the Spider find a way to free humanity from the grip of wholesale destruction being planned for it by the greatest of all Crime Masters?

Exactly at eleven-thirty each Thursday night the Death Fiddler conducted his unholy orchestra in a symphony of murder which sounded the doom of some marked victim. A master of the grotesque, he held an entire city in the strangle-hold of a helpless terror; even the forces of the Law stood in shuddery, superstitious fear of this new destroyer. And then the Spider, Master of Men, modern knight-errant of mankind, rose up against him! But the Spider, too, was baffled; not all Richard Wentworth's efforts seemed enough to destroy this new, this ugliest of all Hydra heads rearing out of the noxious slime of the Underworld...

Richard Wentworth was playing the most dangerous game in the world-a man-hunter outside the law; a righteous lone-wolf avenger of the weak; a scourge of the evil, the wicked and the corrupt! Loathed by the organized armies of the underworld, hunted ruthlessly by the forces of the law, he was ever between two raking cross-fires... Seldom, however, had the Spider, Master of men, faced the odds which challenged him when the man called Aronk Dong summoned all the underworld to serve him in the most ghastly campaign of rampant crime and wholesale slaughter this country had ever experienced. Armed with a weapon which struck through stone walls at victims sleeping peacefully in their beds, it was small wonder that criminals everywhere hailed the new leader-and flocked in evil glee to his dark banner!

The madness first struck at sea! As if at a signal, young and old initiated the wild bacchanal of self-destruction! Never before had a criminal of such horrible, death-dealing genius preyed upon the American people. Never before did Richard Wentworth, who was in secret the dread Spider, combat a foeman of more deadly power. And while the Spider lay gravely wounded, his beloved, Nita went forth alone to battle for her sweetheart as only a brave woman can do!

In the heart of New York's Chinatown, on his imperial throne, guarded by swordsmen and gunmen and a labyrinth of death traps, sat the Arch-Criminal of all time. Master of life and death, of disease, of horrible, crawling things-the Emperor of Vermin released destruction over city and nation. The Spider, Master of Men, champion of humanity, fought with every ounce of his cunning, against the monster who personified evil incarnate-while one faithful servant gave his life in this, the Spider's most bitter, hopeless battle, and Nita herself was faced with a doom more ghastly than any criminal mind had conceived before!

Hideous maniacal laughter shattered the dark silence of ghostly tenements. Sleepy-eyed men and women, stumbling through the dim halls of the building, found a sight that chilled their souls with terror. On a blank wall, spikes driven through her, hands and feet, blood coursing down her arms and breasts in tiny rivulets, a beautiful young woman was hanging, crucified, dying. Still another victim of the Torture Trust! And while panic spreads, while hundreds die victims of the Killers, the Spider is blinded, his faithful servants imprisoned, his friends dishonored! How can Richard Wentworth, desperate and alone, combat the powerful, well-organized Murder Syndicate whose gun hirelings hunt him down like a vicious mad dog?

Thousands of busy persons bent over their desks in the tallest building in the world-conducting the commerce of the nation-when suddenly the steel girders began to creak and twist, and the gigantic edifice swayed giddily in the rising wind. Never before had criminal brains devised a more cunning or a more horrible weapon to garner their ill-gotten treasures. And never before was the Spider so strenuously put to test-for the Master, the man behind the devastation and death, eluded every suspicion, foresaw every contingency, left no tell-tale clues behind him as he ravaged, slayed and pillaged... Richard Wentworth, working for once hand in hand with the organized forces of law and order, fights the grimmest battle of his long career. Can the Spider avenge the countless dead who have already fallen? Can he bring the Murder Master to the justice he so richly deserves?

In a hundred thousand homes, families sat down together at the supper table. A few hours later, those persons were dead-killed by poison in canned foods! Thousands of women used cosmetics, and acid made their faces forever hideously scarred. A master criminal, daring and clever, was ruthlessly slaughtering Americans to win immense illicit profits for himself. Only one man was powerful enough and wise enough to stop this wholesale murder-Richard Wentworth, champion of oppressed humanity, better known as the Spider. And the Spider was engaged in the bitterest battle of his career, fighting the Avenger, a false, wily crusader who was determined to destroy him!

A woman lighted a cigarette, puffed it a few times, and began to scream, to tear her clothes from her body. Her head twisted back between her shoulders and she died a horrible convulsive death-death from tobacco smoke! The lascivious cultist, Deacon Coslin, had seen his mad prophecy fulfilled... for already other smokers, everywhere throughout the land, were dying by tens of thousands! With Richard Wentworth's beloved Nita in the power of the enemy, facing an unspeakable death; with his faithful servants drugged and out of the battle; with the police hounding hint and the arch-criminal foreseeing every strategy, how can the Spider combat the overwhelming odds aligned against him? How can he save his compatriots from the Red Death Rain-save the land he loves from domination by an ambition-twisted brain?

In the gaunt desolation of those dark Kentucky hills, the Dixie Limited, crack flyer, stood gutted of all living passengers... The Spider, the only survivor, stood alone at that bleak scene, vowing silently, solemnly, to destroy the ambition-mad arch-criminal who had plotted this wholesale ruin. For this, and manifold like disasters, were occurring everywhere in the land-at the direction, Richard Wentworth knew, of some diabolical brain which was unleashing hordes of primitive barbarians to lay waste civilization. But later, at the very moment when the Spider should have struck his most telling blow, he was pacing a narrow cell in the death-house at Sing Sing!

Never had Richard Wentworth-he who is the scourge of the Underworld in his guise of the Spider-faced such tremendous odds or been so alone in the strife! Nita, his beloved, had tried to kill him, was hopelessly insane. His faithful servant had been tortured beyond human endurance. And the Master of Madness, chief of a powerful, fiendish syndicate, was spreading his germs of mania unchecked. Who could rescue America from screaming, murderous frenzy when the Spider, harried by Law and lawless, himself half-doubted his own skill and bravery?

In that single, unguarded moment while he played his precious Stradivarius, the combined forces of the Mayor of Hell-the crooked Law and the vengeful Underworld-besieged Richard Wentworth, otherwise known as the Spider, nemesis of criminals! Mourned as dead, the Spider must start life anew, without friends or funds or hidden refuge, so that the Mayor of Hell's bloody-handed henchmen-who judge no deed too base, who respect neither man nor God-may find their just reward-in death!