Richard Martin Stern0.0 The Bright Road to Fear, first published in 1958, received the Edgar Award for best first novel for author Richard Martin Stern. The book describes an ambitious Italian crime syndicate and a young American who becomes involved in their shady dealings. Richard Stern would go on to write many suspense novels, notably The Tower (1973), which was made into a major motion picture. Stern died in 2001 at the age of 86.
Stanley Ellin3.9 Murray Kirk runs his private investigation agency like the business it is: he isn't interested in justice or crusades, just the profit and loss account. When he's asked to act for a young policeman accused of bribery, because he knows something about police corruption in New York City, he isn't too keen. He just can't see the profit - until he meets the man's fiancee. And then Kirk's motives become uncomfortably confused, and he finds himself descending swiftly into a grey world of bookmakers, gangsters, grafters and corrupt politicians, a world where setting up an honest cop is all in a day's work...
