No Good from a Corpse — Leigh Brackett

Laurel Dane was no angel. She'd changed men as often as she'd changed her hair color, and there was plenty in her past she'd like to forget. But no one deserved to be beaten to death, and private eye Ed Clive didn't believe that her boyfriend had killed her. Pursuing her own lonely trail, he found out just how easily jealousy and twisted rage could turn a human being into a monster of violence.

Originally published in 1944, this is Leigh Brackett's unputdownable pulp fiction debut novel.