So it's come to this. Brock "the Rock" Callahan, former gridiron star turned private eye—peeping in bedroom windows. It's a dirty job, and not the kind Brock would normally take on. If he had a choice. But an old teammate asked him for a favor: following a stray wife. And what begins as a dirty job, gets worse, much worse. Brock becomes a hunted man—and the prime suspect in a savage murder.

Brock finds a case that's too juicy to refuseBrock Callahan was still playing for the Los Angeles Rams when Alan Arthur Baker first conned him. Masquerading as an investment banker, Baker talked the hapless jock out of $5,000, returning it only when Brock threatened to snap his back in half. Years later, Brock is a retired private detective living in the splendor of the Los Angeles suburbs, and Baker needs help tailing his wife, a high-priced call girl who may be in danger. The old grifter is as crooked as they come, but too charming for Brock to say no.Brock puts protégé Corey Raleigh on the case, but can't help keeping an eye on the investigation. When the boy detective runs into trouble, Brock throws himself into the middle of a mystery involving a retired palooka, a brutal heiress, and the famous estate of one of the richest men California has ever known.

Brock gets caught in a dangerous triangle between a jockey, a mobster, and L.A.'s finest blondeGloria Malone is a big woman with a little husband, and a problem only Brock Callahan can solve. Her jockey beau, Tip, has fallen in with a half-reformed gangster, and Gloria fears trouble for the pint-sized horseman. But as Brock quickly finds, L.A.'s criminals have more to fear from Tip than he does from them. The short man has a long mean streak, a girl on the side, and a couple of illegitimate children to boot. Even his horses don't like him. Brock isn't surprised when someone decides to end the little gremlin's racing career once and for all—with a carving knife.The world of horse racing is buried under a layer of grime that's thicker than the Santa Anita racetrack's mud after a thunderstorm. To penetrate it, Brock will have to take the whip into his own hand and do whatever it takes to stay on the horse.

Don't Mention Murder It was a vulgar word in the swank millionaire town of San Valdesto. But knocking off a few citizens here and there seemed more than a grave social error to a tough-minded detective like Joe Puma. It made him sore when he discovered the natives would rather protect a well-bred killer than put up with a low-brow private eye. So he taught them a lesson and his red-blooded tactics set the town's blue blood to boiling. The Wayward Widow . . . another mad whirl on a murder-go round with that damsel-chasing knight in amour—Joe Puma.

While tangling with radicals, Brock stumbles on a colleague's corpseBrock Callahan, ex-private investigator, is still not used to wealth and retirement. In fact he is struggling through a game of golf when the clubhouse calls with the curious news that his wife is in jail, pulled in at an anti-nuclear protest. Callahan hires Joe Puma, private detective and onetime peer, to post bail for the budding radical. A few days later, Puma is dead, and Brock begins to wonder where the student movement's shadowy roots lie.The agitators want to stop the proposed Mirage Point reactor, which sits at the intersection of mob money, corrupt utilities, and the violent rage of the radical fringe. And as Callahan knows all too well, California doesn't run on nuclear energy; the state is powered by the dirtiest fuel there is—old-fashioned, murderous greed.[Reviews]"[Gault] writes with passion, beauty, and with an ineffable sadness which has previously been found only in Raymond...

Ex-bookie Tom Spears, framed for the murder of his wife, breaks out of prison and heads for Mexico and freedom. En route, he learns that the lawyer (and friend) who defended him has been murdered. He also discovers that his beloved wife had been unfaithful, that his lawyer friend had been one of her lovers, and that his defense had been deliberately botched. Resolving to unravel the mystery, Spears becomes entangled with his former associates and finds himself caught up in the crossfire between rival gambling syndicates.

The femme was fatal She was rich, red-haired and ready for anything. Her name was Fidelia and she was a tempting bit of woman even without the three million dollars she was to inherit. Only wherever she went—and she went everywhere—murder seemed to follow. That's how I came into the picture. My name is Joe Puma. I'm a private investigator. She hired me to scare off the wolves. I'm big for my age, handy with my fists and a fool for trouble—especially when it looks at me the way Fidelia did. It wasn't any picnic, though. Three million bucks wrapped in a prize package like Fidelia was powerful bait. Deadly, in fact. But some guys were just too greedy. They wouldn't give up even if it killed them—or me.

Get home early tonight. I have a key I stole last time I was there. Don't keep me waiting. The note was lying on the front seat of my car. It was on an engraved card—scented. Deborah Huntington's. I got mad. Who did she think she was anyway? I didn't bother to answer. I knew damn well who she was. She was rich, spoiled and beautiful—and I was bewitched, bothered and bewildered, and jus the thought of her next to me had me p to my private eyebrows in a sweat of excitement. But she was also a suspect for murder. And I was being paid to find the killer. My good sense kept telling me not to go home early or otherwise. So who needs good sense? You can't take it with you. NIGHT LADY—a smooth, hard blend of hot and cold running maidens, murderers and mayhem starring Joe Puma., William Campbell Gault's greatest gift to private-eye lovers everywhere.

She was sitting at the bar, and I could tell she was the kind of woman a married man shouldn't look at—even once.But I thought I was safe enough—until the third martini. Then all of a sudden my wife and kids seemed very far away. When I woke up the next morning, I had a large hangover, the scent of the girl's perfume in my nose, and a murder rap around my neck. And I couldn't remember anything that had happened ... except the girl.

To hit Brock where it hurts the most, a vengeful stranger targets the people he lovesIt starts with the dead cat. Ex-private investigator Brock Callahan finds the Siamese by his mailbox, its throat cut, and assumes it is a message from some crook he put away long ago. Soon a letter arrives—"The cat was first. Who is second?"—and Brock knows the threat is no joke. He hires his protégé, the ambitious young detective Corey Raleigh, to help him guard his wife and housekeeper, but Corey has troubles of his own. The kid detective is about to get an inside look at the workings of criminal justice.The cops find Corey not far from Brock's house—half-conscious with a gun in his hand and a dead man at his feet. It's an obvious frame-up, but to clear Corey's name Brock will have to find the real killer, and lock him away before his wife meets the same fate as the unfortunate Siamese.