Jacket design by Gavin L. O'Keefe
See All of the Ramble House Titles
A JIMMY STARR OMNIBUS
Three Novels by Jimmy Starr
THE CORPSE CAME C.O.D.
THREE SHORT BIERS
HEADS YOU LOSE
Jimmy Starr wrote three novels about Hollywood and its odd denizens back in the 40s and ever since then they've languished in library limbo. So Ramble House rounded them up and presents them in one huge, 446-page brick just as they were introduced to our parents (or grandparents). You can tell they're from the 40s by the vast amounts of booze the characters drink, and the benzedrine tablets they pass around like chiclets. Those were the days.
The star of the three potboilers is newspaperman Joe Medford. In THE CORPSE CAME C.O.D. he tackles the classic "body-in-the-trunk" murder and in THREE SHORT BIERS he encounters the ghastly crime of midgeticide. Three of the little murders, in fact. They will prepare you for the third thriller, HEADS YOU LOSE, which challenges the works of Harry Stephen Keeler in the popular "cut-off-the-head-then-sew-it-back-on" oeuvre. As one wag once put it: "It's like Craig Rice meets The Thin Man meets The Front Page."
There's an Afterword by editor Fender Tucker wherein he tells why this book is perhaps Ramble House's most-edited book.
Spend a lazy summer vacation with this book and you'll wonder how such enjoyable writing was forgotten for so long.
446 pages.
Available Editions
$20 Trade Paperback
$35 Hardcover with dust jacket
THE PERSONAL TOUCH E-mail fender@ramblehouse.com and give me your complete mailing address. If my painkillers have kicked in I'll probably give you a discount. Free shipping to US. I take PayPal or a check.