Showing results by narrator "Mark Peckham" in All Categories

Disc jockey Tutter King has it made. Every time he spins a platter on King's Session, gold comes out: TV earnings, returns on his secret holdings in recording companies - the old payola that some bright young men think only their rightful due. Tutter is a gay young man-around-town who has the world dancing to his tune. He is also involved in some hanky-panky with his pretty blond assistant, Lola Arkwright.

Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services is a fixture in San Francisco at the dawn of a new century. While the future is unclear, Sabina and John know one thing for certain: they will protect their clients from flimflammers, thieves, and murderers, and do whatever it takes to run these dregs of society into the arms of the law. Sometimes, that requires a subtle touch. Professor A. Vargas, self-styled medium extraordinaire, and his partner Annabelle, use guile and trickery to swindle bereaved men and women eager to contact the spirits of deceased loved ones. 

Could murder really be hereditary? Davy Fox certainly thinks so. When he was only a boy, his father, Bayard Fox,was convicted of murdering Davy's mother in the small town of Wrightsville. Now that Davy has grown up and returned home from the war, he fears that it is onlya matter of time until he kills his own wife. But could he really do such athing? Desperate to find out the truth, Davy's wife, Linda, calls on Ellery Queen to investigate the twelve-year-old murder of Jessica Fox.

Managers as Mentors is a rapid-fire listen and a provocative guide to helping associates grow and adapt in today’s tumultuous organizations. This new edition has been thoroughly revised and updated. As with previous editions there is a fictional case study of a mentor-protégé relationship running through the book, but this is augmented with six actual case studies of top CEOs who relate key mentoring experiences in their lives. This hands-on guide takes the mystery out of effective mentoring.

In the closing days of 1799, the United States was still a young republic, its uncertain future contested by the two major political parties of the day: the well-moneyed Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, and the populist Republicans, led by Aaron Burr. The two finest lawyers in New York, Burr and Hamilton were bitter rivals both in and out of the courtroom, and as the next election approached - with Manhattan likely to be the swing district on which the presidency would hinge - their animosity reached a fever pitch.

Once upon an evil time, there was a wicked old woman with a mammoth shoe company worth many millions of dollars, a henpecked husband, and six miserable children. Then one day death came visiting the vast Potts mansion - and began claiming its inhabitants one by one. It was then that Ellery Queen was invited to sup on this nightmare brew of diabolical murder and baffling mystery - in a case that made the most horrific crimes in his entire career seem like fairy tales. As he endeavors to solve the case, he tries to make sense of this family that defies rationality.

Madman or murderer? That was the question, and it was Police Inspector Omar Collins who had come up with the answer. All he had to go on was: the victim - Earl Genneman, wealthy president of Genneman Labs; the scene - right in the middle of a busy state park; the murder weapon - a shotgun that was still missing; the witnesses - Myron Retwig, Red Kershaw, Bob Vega, and Buck James, all friends or employees of the deceased; the motive - unknown; the suspects - everyone!

All Hollywood producer Ben Sloane had wanted was to find Sol Dahlman, the mysterious film genius who had made The Wild Nymph - and now Sloane is dead. "Go up to Rockview," the governor tells Mike McCall, "and get me the killer!" But it isn't quite that easy. The Mann Photo Service, long rumored to be a center of the blue-movie industry, is torn by a strike, and nobody is talking to strangers.

Stoner is a private eye in the classic tradition: A loner with a history of failed relationships with women and all-too-successful relationships with bottles of scotch, he's unable to look away from the world's corruption, and unable to avoid trying futilely to do something about it. His latest hopeless cause is Cindy Ann, a teenage hooker. She's not very pretty or bright or engaging. She doesn’t have much to offer at all, in fact, and somehow that makes her disappearance all the more disturbing for Stoner.

Mason Greenleaf - good teacher, good friend, fond lover - vanishes from his Mount Adams home one hot summer afternoon, leaving a haunting mystery behind him. For his fellow teachers, former students, and friends, his disappearance is inexplicable and tragic. For his lover, Cindy Dorn, it is a cruel blow that shakes the very foundations of her world. She calls Harry Stoner for help. Soon after, Greenleaf turns up dead in a sleazy hotel. The police call it a suicide - Stoner believes there's more to the story. As Stoner delves into the apparent suicide, disturbing questions surface about Greenleaf's past, questions about his sexual life.

Old Slater O'Shea, the golden goose, was ruler of a peculiar roost. A gaggle of free-loading O'Sheas were lazing around the mansion, letting Slater foot the bills, while they waited for him to die and leave them his money. But Uncle Slater was in fine health, and someone got tired of waiting. When Slater went upstairs for a little nip before his nap, his bottle of bourbon was labeled "Rest in Peace".

It's August 1969 in the sleepy college town of Holloman,Connecticut, and police Captain Carmine Delmonico is away on vacation. Back at home, first one, then two anonymous male corpses turn up - emaciated and emasculated. After connecting the victims to four other bodies, Sergeant Delia Carstairs and Lieutenant Abe Goldberg realize that Holloman has a psychopathic killer on the loose. Luckily, Carmine decides to come back from vacation early.

When a pleasant afternoon's bicycling through Golden Gate Park with a friend ends with the revelation of threatening letters, followed by a gunshot in a mansion garden, Sabina Carpenter knows this is a case that demands her immediate and undivided attention. The questions her partner John Quincannon has to unravel are not difficult: Wrixton, a wealthy banker, has met his extortionist's first demand, but the order to pay another $5,000 is too much to face. The banker's real problem is something he doesn't want to reveal.

Police captain Bartholdi sometimes indulged himself in a harmless fantasy. His thoughts, he would imagine, were irresponsible imps that wriggled out of his head and scampered around with an abandon that was often embarrassing. A woman had been kidnapped. The woman was dead. Bartholdi was convinced that a murderer was at that moment having a grim laugh at his expense. He knew who the murderer was. He would have bet his pension and his sacred soul that he knew.

Who killed Cox, the robber? Was it Ruth Tully, who visited Crandall Cox on the night of his death and who might have decided to quench a torrid past with a spray of bullets? What about Sandra Jean, the knock-'em-dead beauty who knew more than she was telling about the sudden demise of blackmailer Cox? Or had some past scandal driven lawyer Ollie Hurst and his wife, Norma, to claim the blackmailer's life? Dave Tully didn't know who the killer was, but if he didn't find out fast, the price of failure could be death....

The professor was an eccentric old bird, and his daughter was a delicate flower. So how could Harry Stoner suspect the snake pit of hatred and greed he was walking into that winter day when he agreed to find a missing document for Professor Daryl Lovingwell?

Sheltered but precocious Robbie Segal has run away from home, a small brick house on an unexceptional street. Her desperate mother has asked Harry Stoner to find her. What begins as an ordinary missing-persons case, a case that should be settled without any violence at all, suddenly changes in an impossibly terrifying way.

She was perfect. She smelled of toothpaste, talc, and something sweeter than lilacs. And in that crazy season of autumn, when Cincinnati was ablaze in the blood-red color of fall, Kate Davis made Harry Stoner feel old, and a little in love too. But for Harry Stoner those were only two more reasons that Kate shouldn't have anything more to do with this case. Because what had started with a twisted act of vandalism in the local library had led Kate and Harry, paired together, on a twisting path to a brutal, unsolved murder.

Clients never tell the whole story. Harry Stoner had taken a snowy drive to Cincinnati psychiatrist Phil Pearson’s mansion to hear the tale of daughter Kirsten - emotionally disturbed and missing. But the doctor left out the parts about his first wife’s suicide and his second wife’s bedroom eyes that were already chasing the winter cold from Stoner’s blood. That’s why Stoner suspected the search for Kirsten could take a kinky turn.

Detective Harry Stoner has seen better days. It's the middle of January and business is slower than a crawl. Curled up in his office with a paperback mystery, a little classical music on the radio, and a bottle of Scotch, Harry's ready to cut his losses and hibernate until spring. The only problem is that Harry's been living off Visa credit and Christmas cash, and the money faucet is beginning to run dry. Enter Leon Tubin, an odd little man with worn trousers but a pocketful of cash.