Dolores Hitchens

One woman drugged, another murdered - and a cat is the only witness. If you like Miss Marple, you'll love this! Terrific classic crime - with a new introduction by Joyce Carol Oates. 'You will never regret having made the acquaintance of Miss Rachel Murdock' NEW YORK TIMES When Rachel Murdock and her sister Jennifer receive a call for help from their favourite niece, Lilly, they quickly hop on a train to see her - but not before collecting their prized cat Samantha in a picnic basket and bringing her along for the ride. Samantha, it turns out, is an heiress, the inheritor of a fortune left by a wealthy relative, and so the attempt on the cat's life, made right after they arrive, comes as a shock. The cat survives, but Lilly, murdered soon thereafter, is not so lucky. By the time the police arrive, the clues are already falling into place, with gambling debts just being the tip of a brutal killing spree iceberg. With the authorities distracted by lurid details, it's up to Rachel and her furry friend to uncover the truth.

The Cat Saw Murder

Two teenagers fresh out of stir set their sights on what looks like easy money in this classic thriller from 1958, only to get a painful education in how quickly and drastically a simple plan can spin out of control. Dolores Hitchens wrote crime novels that were both tough and compassionate, with a sharp eye for the emotional scars that violence leaves. The basis for Jean-Luc Godard's film Band of Outsiders, Fools' Gold is a swift and unadorned tale of three young people--two boys just released after being incarcerated for a juvenile offense, and an orphaned girl living in a house full of secrets--whose lives are rapidly torn apart by what starts as a simple plan of robbery. It echoes other classic American narratives of youth astray and on the run, and with its headlong pace catches the rhythm of adolescent crisis, as Hitchens's protagonists find themselves caught up in a situation spiraling beyond their control.

Fools' Gold

Patricia Highsmith

Margaret Millar

Charlotte Armstrong

Though women crime and suspense writers dominate today's bestseller lists, the extraordinary work of the mid-century pioneers is largely unknown. Their work, influential in its day and still vibrant and extraordinarily riveting today, is long overdue for rediscovery. This volume, the first of a two-volume collector's set, gathers four classic works that together reveal the vital and unacknowledged lineage that leads to today's leading crime writers. From the 1950s here are Charlotte Weinman, Patricia Highsmith, Margaret Millar & Dolores Hitchens.

Four Suspense Novels of the 1950s: Mischief / the Blunderer / Beast in View / Fool's Gold

Women Crime Writers

This classic mystery features a family feud, feline intervention, and the spirited septuagenarian sleuth from The Cat Saw Murder. A strange encounter with a little girl named Claudia and a dead toad sparks Rachel Murdock’s obsessive curiosity, and she winds up renting the house next door just to see how things play out. But soon after she and her cat Samantha move in, Rachel realizes they’ve landed right in the middle of a deadly love triangle that’s created animosity among the three families who now surround her. When Rachel finds Claudia’s great-grandmother dead in her basement, she reaches out to a friend in the LAPD to solve the crime. They soon learn the three households have been torn apart by one husband’s infidelity and a complicated will that could lead to a fortune. In a house plagued by forbidden love, regret, and greed, Rachel will have to trust her intuition, as well as Samantha’s instincts, to survive—and keep Claudia out of the hands of a killer whose work has just begun . . . “You will never regret having made the acquaintance of Miss Rachel Murdock.” —The New York Times The Alarm of the Black Cat was originally published under the pseudonym D. B. Olsen. Praise for Dolores Hitchens “High-grade suspense.” —San Francisco Chronicle on Stairway to an Empty Room/Terror Lurks in Darkness “For those who enjoy Little-Old-Lady detectives, this should be a pleasing mystery, particularly if active LOLs are preferred. . . . Both interesting and unusual is the motive for murder.” —Mystery*File on Cats Don’t Smile

The Alarm of the Black Cat

An elderly woman drugged, a young woman killed, and the cat’s the sole witness… When Rachel Murdock and her sister Jennifer receive a call for help from their favorite niece, Lilly, in Breakers Beach, CA, they quickly hop a train from Los Angeles to see her — but not before collecting their prized cat Samantha in a picnic basket and bringing her along for the ride. Samatha, it turns out, is an heiress, the inheritor of a fortune left by a wealthy relative, and so the attempt at the cat’s life, made right after they arrive, comes as a shock. The cat survives, but unfortunately, Lilly, murdered soon thereafter, is not so lucky. By the time the police arrive, the clues are already falling into place. The source of Lilly’s trouble is revealed to be a gambling debt incurred during an attempt to cheat at bridge, and the suspects in her slaying quickly pile up. But then another corpse is discovered, buried in the nearby sand, and it becomes clear that the killing spree concerns more than just the young lady’s personal money trouble. With the authorities distracted by lurid details, it’s up to Rachel and her furry friend to uncover the subtleties containing the solution to the puzzle. A prototypical early “cat mystery,” written before the subgenre became a staple of cozy mystery fiction, The Cat Saw Murder is an entertaining and endlessly surprising whodunit with a focus on felines. Reissued for the first time in over half a decade, the book, written pseudonymously by the author better known for her hardboiled and suspense novels, is the first in the long-running Rachel Murdock series. Includes discussion guide questions for use in book clubs.

A Rachel Murdock Mystery

Stairway to an Empty Room

Bert Hitchens

Collins and McKechnie, special agents of the railroad police in Los Angeles, had a number of problems on their hands. There was the matter of that starving, badly beaten young Mexican whom Collins had found in the refrigerator car. He had whispered, "Joya" -- Spanish for "jewelry." And then there was the blonde who reported $75 worth of baggage stolen, undervaluing her loss by many thousands of dollars. McKechnie's case involved a shapely, violet-eyed number who demanded to know what had really happened to her father in the freight yards. And what had happened to his money. When the cases merged into one, Collins and McKechnie found that they were up against something far from routine -- large-scale racketeering, with side effects of theft, brutality, and murder --

F.O.B. Murder

Two teenagers fresh out of stir set their sights on what looks like easy money in Dolores Hitchens’s Fools’ Gold (1958)—and get a painful education in how quickly and drastically a simple plan can spin out of control. The basis for Jean-Luc Godard’s film Band of Outsiders, Fools’ Gold is a sharply told tale distinguished by its nuanced portrait of a sheltered young woman who becomes a reluctant accomplice and fugitive. This classic novel is one of eight works included in The Library of America's two-volume edition Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & 50s, edited by Sarah Weinman.

A Library of America eBook Classic

“Are you trying to tell me you don’t want the job, Mr. Sader?”: It started as a missing persons case and grew more puzzling with the discovery of another strangely coincidental disappearance. Private eye Jim Sader finds himself deep in a multilayered intrigue revolving around oil and real estate and the sleazy underpinnings of Long Beach, California, in the 1950s. Many consider this Dolores Hitchens’ best novel.

Sleep with Strangers

Widows Won't Wait (Nets to Catch the Wind)

This crime novel from the authors of The Man Who Followed Women features two Los Angeles railroad detectives and explosive suspense. Tommy Collins has escaped from a midwestern prison, using dynamite to blast his way out—and killing a nurse in the process. The explosion was felt over a thousand miles away, where Tommy’s sister lives in fear in Los Angeles. She has squirreled her mother and younger sister away, afraid Tommy will come after them for turning him in to the cops. Aftershocks also shake the LA office of railroad detectives Chuck Reeves and veteran John Farrel when some remote railway yards become the targets of mysterious detonations. Connections are made, and the detectives quickly realize Tommy holds a violent grudge against the railroad for firing him from his job. And with nothing to lose, his rampage is getting worse the closer he gets to his desperate family . . . “Almost unbearable suspense . . . Holds the reader to the last punctuation mark.” —Greensboro News & Record

Dolores Hitchens

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