Harry Stephen: 50 books

The trial of the man apprehended with a crimson hatbox containing a skull continues with the shenanigans of the Moffit brothers, Silas and Saul, trying to thwart the efforts of Elsa Colby, the young defense lawyer who must win her first case -- or it will be her last! Elsa finds herself visiting...

From 1935 comes this thrilling novel about five odd people who happen to buy tiny jade figurines of a non-smiling Buddha. Only Harry Stephen Keeler could have come up with this plot!

The worst flood in decades has isolated an island in the middle of Big River and there’s no telling when the dam upriver is going to give. On the island are four men and three lifejackets. The sheriff’s got the rifle and knows one of the other three men is a brutal and ruthless killer. Each man...

Young Y. Cheung is in a pickle! In order to receive a $100,000 inheritance from his grand­father’s estate, he must get his name mentioned in 1000 U.S. newspapers, “in an honorable fashion” before midnight of the day before the estate is settled. On top of that, his family doesn’t consider...

John Jones's Dollar by Harry Stephen Keeler.

If only Japan could lay her hands on the Thirteenth Coin of Confuscius, which was floating around somewhere in the United States, she could thwart a certain Chinese ambition. The Japanese Secret Service in New York had a clue and immediately a Japanese Secret Service Agent boarded the Chicago Flyer...

After a thousand pages and more sidetrips through the backwoods of Chicago than you can imagine, the story of the man standing on the corner with the crimson hatbox is completed. Finally we find out why the defendant, when asked by the archbishop what was in the box, replied "Wah Lee's skull. I cracked...

What kind of book would be printed on orange leaves? It could only be the one book that contains all of the wisdom of the ancient Chinese, as told in hundreds of aphorisms —The Way Out. Featured in a half dozen webwork mysteries by Harry Stephen Keeler, The Way Out is the only thing keeping one-handed...

“Beans to YOU, sonnyboy, as per my will!” So read the wishes of rich old Balhatchet Barkstone, uncle of young Boyce. Why would he deny Boyce his proper inheritance by leaving him a paltry 16 beans instead of millions of dollars? Could it have been a big mistake? Or an imagined insult? Only...

Margaret Annister is slated to die in Nevada City’s gas chamber but she’s not too worried. She’s been given a drug by the police matron that takes away all cares and concerns. Also, she knows that her good friend Yerxa Indergaard is due to appeal directly to the Governor in her behalf. Throw...

The condemned man asked for three things before he climbed the thirteen steps to the gallows: a glass eye, a champagne cork and a wooden parrakeet. Can any mystery writer—other than Chicago paper blackener Harry Stephen Keeler—have proposed such a scenario? And then written a huge meganovel filled with celestials and tong lore to explain why the condemned man should make such a request?

Farrel Ivins may be standing on the gallows with his neck in a noose, but he's not worried. He's taken a drug that makes it impossible to contemplate his future, and besides, he hasn't given his "final" speech yet. He knows that when the governor hears about the odd goings-on in Oxford Circus,...

At the time of its publication, 1932, this was the longest mystery ever written. Would you believe, 313,000 words -- many of them in a strange Hispano-German dialect. It's a simple story about world war in 1942 between an alliance between Germany, Japan, and Mexico against the US and the rest of the...

Three men in Sing Sing - all writers - awaiting execution for the same crime. The body of the victim held only two bullets - one of the men is innocent. How can they find out before morning which one of them is to sign the pardon blank? Sing Sing Nights is a startling example of Mr. Keeler's uncanny...