Kendell Foster Crossen

M.E. Chaber

Insurance companies don’t like it when someone puts a match to a house they’ve insured to the hilt, and in the process burns to death a couple who carry double-indemnity policies. Investigator Milo March sets out to discover who torched the Santa Monica beach house with its owners inside, and who paid them. Did the philandering husband hire a notorious gangster to do the dirty work, and trick a Skid Row bum to stand in for himself as the victim? Three other suspects are an elegant blonde, a steamy redhead, and a shapely young Japanese woman, any of whom Milo might bed or bust—or both—in the course of this fast-paced, action-packed whodunit.

Softly in the Night

Milo March #11

When Milo March heads for an island in the sun to recover the stolen copy of a heavily insured manuscript, it’s like a one-way ticket to hell: his destination is a brutal Caribbean dictatorship called the “Monican Republic.” The manuscript, a scandalous exposé of the government, is in the hands of the dictator himself, who seized it before it could be published. The author is a Monican professor who has been kidnapped on American soil and forced back to his homeland to face the wrath of the dictator. And two other men—one a U.S. citizen—have died under suspicious circumstances in connection with the kidnapping. Milo’s assignment is just to get the valuable manuscript back for the insurance company. But he also wants to investigate whether the deaths of two men were murders engineered by the regime. He also wonders what had happened to the large sum that the professor withdrew from a charitable fund for Monican refugees the same day he vanished. It would be great to deliver the regime’s chief assassin into the hands of the New York police. Not to mention that Milo has to figure out how to smuggle the manuscript out of the presidential palace. Oh, and what happened to the professor? There was no problem getting into the Monican Republic; it’s getting out with all of this that might cause some trouble for Milo. And then there’s the small difficulty of two Latina beauties who may have been set up to trap him… From the moment Milo lands in Torcido’s island, he is marked for murder. The finger man is an international playboy, and the executioner is a sinister mystery man called El Nariz—“The Nose.” The bait is a dark-haired Latin beauty with her own brand of Caribbean allure. It could be a lovely way to die… if only the sadistic Monican police chief doesn’t finish Milo off before he can fully enjoy the perks of the job.

The Gallows Garden

Milo March #7

Once again, private eye Milo March, a Major in the Army reserves, is recalled by the CIA for a special mission. At a time when relations between the U.S. and Soviet Russia are somewhat relaxed, the Russians have asked a Syndicate-owned American company to send an expert to teach them how to build coin vending machines and plan where to install them. The CIA easily makes a deal with the Syndicate, and Milo is assigned to go undercover in the guise of this expert. Since both the Syndicate and the Soviets know who Milo March is, his identity must be kept secret. The CIA provides Milo with I.D. papers and a history covering his entire life as a gangster named Peter Miloff. After a crash course in vending machines, he is off to Moscow. Never mind that the Russians have his fingerprints on file. He will spend much of his time opening doors with his palm and closing them with his elbow. Milo’s mission is twofold. First there’s an American agent who disappeared into a Russian prison somewhere, and Milo has to figure out where he is. The other assignment is to finish that agent’s job: find out whether a master Soviet spy who was believed killed during the war is actually still alive and running a special espionage bureau. And so our hero arrives in Moscow armed with several 007 gadgets and a gun, without which he would feel naked. He has also been offered the assistance of four double agents, two Russian nationals and two Yugoslavs. Just as Milo is deciding that he cannot expect much from these little helpers—apart from the company of the two who are lovely young women—a warning comes from Washington that one of the four agents is a traitor. But which one? The Russians are good at playing the cat-and-mouse game, and now Milo had become the mouse….

Wild Midnight Falls

Milo March #17

Milo March is sipping a martini at the pool of the Far Eastern Hotel, a lovely British blonde on his left and a Chinese beauty on his right, both in bikinis. What more could a man require? But then he is rudely interrupted by a call from Intercontinental Insurance in New York. They have a serious case that only he, their best investigator, can tackle. As usual, many millions of dollars are at stake. A large, well-organized ring is transporting stolen goods from the U.S. to Red China via Hong Kong. Milo doesn’t doubt that organized crime is responsible, and he is determined to put and end to the whole operation—not only the stealing, but the dealing with an enemy country. Milo persists with plodding but dangerous work, then suddenly, when he gets warm around the edges, he springs into action. Assuming a secret identity as a tough loner named “John Milo,” he hangs out at a couple of bars frequented by con men. The V.O. and martinis keep flowing as he waits to make a connection to the smuggling ring. Through an unpleasant police informer described as a “sick bulldog,” Milo makes a deal with a couple of men peddling stolen liquor, as this may lead him to the Syndicate men responsible for the smuggling. It does, but it also lands him in jail, charged with conspiracy to receive stolen property, possession of stolen property, and three counts of burglary—another day in the life of John Milo. Out on bail, Milo continues his quest and manages to land a job as a bagman for a Mafia don. Before closing the case, Milo will spar with some tough customers. A weasel-faced punk will stick a gun in Milo’s back, and someone will get badly injured. Milo will get lucky in Vegas and even luckier with the sensational woman known as the Dragon Lady of Hong Kong. And at the end, Milo will get a promised $20,000 bonus whether he solves the case or not. The latter outcome is highly unlikely…

A Man in the Middle

Milo March #16

An exquisite necklace of Chinese jade is stolen from wealthy New York couple, and the insurance company wants investigator Milo March to get it back so they won’t have to pay out the claim. But the case soon expands from simple theft to international intrigue as Milo’s only clue leads him to Hong Kong in search of a well-organized gang and its criminal mastermind.

Jade for a Lady

Milo March #10

Milo March heads for the historic mining boomtowns of Nevada, but he’s planning to dig at people, not rocks. The case involves three men who bought an old gold mine outside Reno. Though it had been abandoned for a century, the mine has miraculously started producing again. Armed with a glowing assay report, the owners persuaded the insurance company to issue a large policy against the mine’s running out of gold before they have taken two million dollars in gold from it. You guessed it—a few months later the owners claim the mine has run dry, and they want their payout. The insurance company screams at once for its top investigator, Milo March. Milo first has to solve a riddle: How do you get gold out of a mine that has no gold in it? The easy explanation is the old con job known as salting, but that only involves a sprinkling of gold around a mine to deceive buyers. This mine had a helluva lot more gold than that. So the answer to the riddle must be that you bring gold into the mine, then take it out again. Now this raises another question: Where did they get a ton of gold bricks to put into the mine? One of the owners of the mine belongs to a crime family that Milo has tangled with before. The Syndicate must be using the mine as a front for something else. Milo can’t imagine its being a front for anything except gold. That sounds silly. But the case is anything but silly, turning deadly as Milo gradually unravels its complexities. Though it’s a case for the FBI, Milo wraps it up in his own way, determined to set things right for an innocent victim whose friendship has come to mean a lot to him.

Born to Be Hanged

Milo March #21

Death to the Brides was completed in 1975 but never released during the author’s lifetime, owing to the publisher’s objection to its politically charged content. So this is the only unpublished Milo March manuscript left by Ken Crossen—now in print for the first time. The book is distinctive in another way. It is the only Crossen book in which characters from two different series interact. Colonel Kim Locke, featured in three other spy novels by Crossen, lends Milo a miniature-breed military dog for an Intelligence mission. Milo has never worked with a canine before, but man and dog quickly take to each other, and the dog will soon prove himself a valuable friend in a world gone mad. The American war against the Viet Cong is supposedly over now, and the only U.S. personnel in the South are advisors and attachés. Milo arrives under cover as the new military attaché, assigned to rescue an Intelligence man held captive in the highlands of the North. He decides to present himself to the Communists as an American officer who has come to plead for the release of the prisoner on the humanitarian grounds that he is a civilian and a personal friend who was captured while on an errand of peace. But how to reach Hanoi safely? An informant sends him to Madame Lê, a beautiful young Chinese Vietnamese woman who is a restaurateur and an officer of the Viet Cong. She is willing to guide Milo on an arduous walk through the jungle. Mindful of the possibility that Madame Lê or her comrades may lure him into the hands of the Viet Cong, to be thrown into the same cell with the American he came to rescue, Milo is taken by surprise when the real danger comes from a completely unexpected quarter. Milo, who never make plans in advance—except the plan to stay alive one more day—embarks on one of the craziest stunts of his espionage career. And the little dog holds the key.

Death to the Brides

Milo March #22

Milo March is on a new case for Intercontinental Insurance, and it’s a real puzzler this time. Actually, Milo was just settling into a hedonistic vacation in Los Angeles when Intercontinental called him from New York and convinced him, with the promise of a large bonus, to try to solve a series of jewel robberies in Beverly Hills. Since Intercontinental carries the bulk of the policies on the jewels, they are desperate for Milo to get the loot back—and to see the thieves put away, as a cautionary lesson to other would-be lawbreakers. The police have identified their prime suspect: Johnny Rinaldi, a gangster with a cross-country criminal record. But just as Milo takes on the case, the cops are busy arresting Johnny’s beautiful girlfriend, Lita, for the murder—she’s been found standing over his body with a revolver in her hand. Yet Milo won’t believe Lita did it. He had just been on a date with her the same night! He also doesn’t believe Renaldi is the chief culprit. The thefts must have been committed by a gang of seven or eight people, and Johnny didn’t seem smart enough to be the mastermind. In each case a home was broken into at the exact time the owners had taken their gems out of a bank vault. Somebody was tipping off the thieves. Milo has a good idea of who is involved—for example, the hoods who keep warning him to stay off the case, constantly tailing him, and threatening him with fists and guns. But one problem is how to pin it on them, and the other is: where the hell is the large amount of stolen jewelry, especially the three hundred loose diamonds hidden in a place only known to the dead man? The question is a little like the old gag about looking for a lost dog: “Where would you go if you were a dog?” Milo tries to guess where Renaldi might have hidden the jewelry. There had to be a lot of it, so he couldn’t just dump it in a dresser drawer. And why hadn’t any of it turned up on the market? Surely he wasn’t saving the diamonds to trickle through his fingers, or to run barefoot through a collection of costly baubles. The answer is just on the tip of Milo’s mind, and he’s got to access his intuition or else several millions swill have to be paid out—and Lita could go to the gas chamber.

The Day It Rained Diamonds

Milo March #15

In this action-packed Cold War spy adventure, Milo March—private detective and former OSS officer during World War II—is recruited by Army intelligence to carry out a dangerous mission behind the Iron Curtain. An important British diplomat has defected to East Germany, carrying with him secrets about British and American codes. He can also help the Communists gain access to a physicist working in the British Sector on a top-secret project that involves tampering with energy fields affecting the human brain―a bizarre process that could disastrously alter the nature of warfare. “Operation Berlin” demands that Milo kidnap the diplomat before the Russians make him talk. Disguised as an American Communist delegate to an international Peace Festival in Berlin, Milo dashes into the Soviet Zone just as the news leaks that an American agent is coming to the event. Surrounded by suspicious comrades, he is congratulated on his mastery of Lenin quotes one moment, while the next he is subjected to arrest and a torturous interrogation. Even when he scores a point, he never knows whether he is fooling them or they are fooling him. While treading this unbearable tightrope of tension, he is distracted by two beautiful women: the sexually aggressive blonde Frieda and the soft-eyed, black-haired Greta, who has some secrets of her own. Either or both of these feminine comrades could be on the verge of betraying him. Although the efficient and fearless Milo always insists on working alone, help comes from an unexpected quarter in the nick of time.

M.E. Chaber

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