The Complete Cases of Bookie Barnes — Robert Reeves

A truck driver employed by Murdock Motor Freight, Bookie Barnes is a tough working class hero. Though not a detective per se, he is a rough customer described as tall, heavy-chested, with a build you see only in physical culture ads, and, though barely twenty-six, he'd been on the trucks for three years. He is emblematic of the type of crime fighters found in pulp fiction in that he represents the typical readership of pulp fiction: an average working-class audience. Written by one of the greats of the detective pulps, Robert Reeves-who was tragically killed in World War II-this book collects all of his Bookie Barnes stories: Murder in High Gear, Over a Barrel, and Murder Without Death, as well as his lone, non-series character story, Dance Macabre.