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الاستماع والقراءة

Stephen Marlowe

To find his ex-wife’s killer, Drum takes on the Communist Party

Deirdre Hartsell loved life too much to shoot herself in her pretty head. She’d been a high-society party girl since her days at college, and her two greatest passions were keeping up appearances and having a roaring good time. Women like that don’t kill themselves, and Deirdre’s father wants to prove that his girl didn’t die by her own hand. To get the truth, he hires Washington DC’s sharpest private detective, Chester Drum. After all, Drum knew Deirdre better than anyone—he was married to her. But in a town built on lies, Deirdre lived with more than her fair share of secrets, and the first thing Drum learns is that his late ex-wife was a prominent member of the Communist Party, supporting the local cell with endless donations from her fat checkbook. Did leftist sympathies get Deirdre killed? The truth lies in Venezuela—and Chester Drum has gone farther than that for answers before.

MysteriousPress.com/Open Road

The Chester Drum Mysteries

The Second Longest Night

Drum confronts a senator to save the life of a drunken old friend
When Chester Drum knew him, Jack Morley was a Washington player, just a few promotions away from becoming Secretary of State. A bad divorce and a nervous breakdown later, Morley has hit rock bottom, and works in Paris for the Army ghoul squad, confirming the deaths of World War II soldiers long ago reported missing in action. Morley is content to spend the rest of his life wallowing in the bottom of a Pernod bottle, until word gets out that he is blackmailing a US senator—an accusation that could cost him his life. Though disgusted by his old friend’s drunkenness, Drum agrees to make Morley’s case to the senator. Blackmailer or no, Morley has stumbled onto a conspiracy that dates back to the end of the war. If Drum can’t get to the bottom of it, Morley won’t be the only one to die.

Drumbeat – Dominique

A PI heads from DC to Saudi Arabia to save the life of a client targeted by a hit man. 

Nothing will stop the beautiful Fawzia Totah and her lover, US Army colonel Lyman Tyler, from boarding a plane for the Middle East to make their pilgrimage to Mecca. So Fawzia hires Washington PI Chester Drum to serve as bodyguard until she’s safely out of the country.

But Lyman’s wealthy mother, Davisa, doesn’t want Fawzia to go anywhere safely. The violently bigoted, socially connected woman comes from old Virginia money, and she’s not about to let this former dancer from Jordan risk her precious Southern reputation. Not only is her son prepared to convert to Islam for the woman he loves, he’s also already married. When Davisa hires a hit man to track down Fawzia and take her out, Drum has no choice but to follow. However, Davisa’s motives aren’t as simple as they first seem—and the road to Mecca has a sudden turn no one will see coming.

This is a twisting, fast-paced mystery in the vintage series that “combined elements of the hard-boiled detective story and the international espionage thriller” by a recipient of the Private Eye Writers of America’s lifetime achievement award (The New York Times).

Mecca for Murder is the 2nd book in the Chester Drum Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

Mecca for Murder

A drive-by killing puts Drum on the scent of a Washington sex scandal

When Chester Drum first took a crack at detective work, PI Gil Sprayregan offered to split a case with him, giving the rookie half the fee and more credit than he deserved. Years later, Drum is established and Gil is at the tail end of a long, slow fall, drinking heavily and considering blackmail to make ends meet. When he gets in over his head, Sprayregan’s wife begs Drum to help. But her husband has already taken the first step on the road to oblivion. Drum takes a dinghy out to Sprayregan’s Chesapeake hideout. When they return, a car full of gangsters kills Sprayregan and puts Drum in the hospital. Drum doesn’t mourn the man who gave him his first break, but to the new widow, he owes a debt. No matter how well connected they are, he will break the men who gunned down Gil Sprayregan.

Killers Are My Meat

A kidnapped intellectual and a dead partner take Drum to South America

When Andy Dineen tires of the FBI, he jumps ship for Langley and joins the CIA to fight the Cold War in Berlin. After years in the spy game, he grows sick of the paperwork, and is considering his options when an old friend, private detective Chester Drum, offers him a job. Drum is surprised when his old academy classmate takes him up on it, and shocked when it gets Dineen killed. Dineen’s first and last case is a stint as a bodyguard for a South American intellectual who’s writing an exposé of his nation’s savage dictator. When the strongman’s thugs kidnap the author and bludgeon Dineen, Drum rushes to the hospital just in time to watch his friend die. Avenging Dineen will mean a trip to South America, and infiltrating a palace whose secret police are not half as dangerous as the despot’s daughter.

Murder Is My Dish

A missing politician sucks Drum into the three-ring circus of Cold War Germany

On the eve of becoming a vice-presidential candidate, Fred Severing vanishes in Germany, where he made his name twelve years earlier during the madness that followed World War II. To find the American, his party hires globe-trotting private detective Chester Drum, and it isn’t long before Drum’s investigation lands him in the Rhine River along with an elderly war criminal. Drum is meeting with Wilhelm Rust, a mid-level ex-Nazi, when Communist spies storm their boat. Drum jumps into the river, taking Rust with him, and inadvertently saves the ex-Nazi’s life. His investigation may be all wet, but Drum isn’t one to quit. Finding Severing will mean lying to West Germans, East Germans, and Nazis, and perfecting the triple-cross that is the favorite pastime of European Cold Warriors.

Trouble Is My Name

To recover his license, Drum must unlock the mystery of a professor’s suicide

Duncan Hadley Lord seems too happy to kill himself. But then, he has no reason to sleep around, either. For three months the history professor has carried on an affair with a call girl, and for the last few weeks Chester Drum and his partner, rookie PI Jerry Trowbridge, have watched him do it. When Lord steps onto a fourth-story window ledge on Homecoming night, Drum gets through the police cordon just in time to watch the professor fall to earth. An embittered local sheriff, convinced that Drum and his partner were blackmailing the professor, has their license revoked. To salvage his business, Drum must find the real reason for Lord’s suicide. He has tangled with politicians, thieves, and spies, but no detective can truly know treachery until he steps into the hallowed halls of a college campus.

Violence Is My Business

Crossing the Atlantic on NATO’s behalf, Drum tangles with mobsters, blackmail, and murder

As the H. M. S. Queen Victoria pulls out of New York Harbor, danger encircles Chester Drum. He’s sailing for Europe on the largest luxury liner ever built, but it’s not big enough to hold the secrets on board—or the men who keep them. And by the time the liner reaches Southampton, she will be missing a few passengers. Drum can only hope he isn’t among those who don’t make it to shore. Hired by a NATO functionary as a bodyguard, the private investigator quickly learns his real assignment: protecting his client from a Chicago mobster with dreams of blackmail. Keeping the mafia at bay is tricky enough, but when a State Department colleague ends up in the line of fire, Drum sets his mind on getting even. After all, there is no better spot for vengeance than the icy waters of the open sea.

Terror Is My Trade

When Drum picks up a hitchhiker, trouble follows her into the car

A monsoon is hammering Washington, DC, when Chester Drum spots Anita Sparrow on the roadside in the middle of the night. Sixteen, frail, and soaking wet, she is trying to find help for her brother, Donny, a photographer with cerebral palsy who was beaten nearly to death a mile up the road. Drum takes Donny to the hospital and drives Anita home, where he finds her house ransacked, her brother’s darkroom destroyed. It seems Donny took a picture of something he wasn’t supposed to see, and powerful men will kill to ensure the negative is never developed. 

On top of it all, Drum soon learns that the Sparrows have ties to some of the biggest names inside the Beltway, and Anita is not as innocent as she appears. Her family story simmers with pornography, corruption, and murder—not polite topics for dinner table conversation, but ones that make Chester Drum feel right at home.

Homicide Is My Game

Drum guards a killer against an assassin with diplomatic immunity

Everybody knows George Brandvik killed Jorgen Kolding. As soon as the jury acquits him, Brandvik sells his story to View magazine, confessing to the crime in exchange for a payday. Once the magazine hits newsstands, the death threats start rolling in—semi-literate garbage which nevertheless must be taken seriously. A reporter from View hires private detective Chester Drum to protect Brandvik, and an hour hasn’t gone by before Drum saves the killer’s life, disarming a Swedish blonde before she can plug Brandvik in the gut. She is the dead man’s daughter, and her diplomatic immunity means she will be deported, not prosecuted. But before she leaves, her bloodlust must be sated. That afternoon, the reporter and his driver are killed by a car bomb, and Drum sees the Swedish girl fleeing the scene. Soon Brandvik is dead too, gunned down in his bathroom. Drum books tickets to Iceland, to learn if this waifish blonde is really as deadly as she seems.

Danger Is My Line

With a body in his office and a pocketful of secrets, Drum heads to Moscow
Eugenie is seventeen, with long legs, blond hair, and an appetite for misery. Daughter of a corrupt millionaire, she has bounced around Europe’s finest boarding schools, and Chester Drum knows she’s trouble the moment he sees her tearing her blouse to implicate Ilya Alluliev, a Russian diplomat, in rape. The man came to give her a message, an envelope that quickly finds its way to Drum’s safe. Inside is an unsigned note claiming that a Russian Nobel Prize–winning poet is in grave danger. As soon as he reads it, Drum joins the poet on the Kremlin’s hit list. The next day, Drum goes to his office and finds Alluliev on the floor, shot dead. The police cannot help him; Drum will find answers only behind the Iron Curtain. At the height of the Cold War, Drum will risk his life for the sake of a fire-eyed teen with a heart made of ice.

Death Is My Comrade

In Rome for the Olympics, Drum witnesses an assassination

When he was in college, Kyle Ryder picked up athletic records effortlessly. Now he picks up girls. An Olympic-quality javelin thrower, he has recently fallen for a Czechoslovakian Amazon named Hilda, whose weapon of choice is the discus. On the eve of the Rome summer Olympics, Kyle’s father hires private detective Chester Drum to follow his son. He doesn’t mind the girl—it’s her Soviet handlers who make him nervous. The Olympic torch hasn’t even been lit when their love affair takes its first casualty. Their Italian go-between, Signor Mozzoni, is crossing the street when a Citroën runs him down. With their protector dead, Kyle and his girlfriend vanish. If Drum doesn’t find the missing athletes quickly, the Soviet trainers will give them a workout from which they’ll never recover.

Peril Is My Pay

Caught in the middle of an Arab civil war, Drum looks for a missing surgeon

Chester Drum knows it’s over for Qasr Tabuk when he sees the city’s prostitutes taking flight. He came to this war-torn Arab country in search of an American surgeon, Turner Capeheart, who disappeared when the rebels took up arms. His search turned up nothing, and now that the working girls are leaving, he decides to do the same. Death is coming to Qasr Tabuk, and though Drum may evade it for now, it will haunt him as long as he remains in this blighted desert land. On the road out of town, he offers a lift to a girl whose car has broken down. She is Samia Falcon, daughter of the rebel leader, and she knows where Dr. Capeheart is hiding. An army stands between them and the rebels, but Chester Drum doesn’t mind being outnumbered.

Manhunt Is My Mission

Drum looks for a missing American in a sea of degenerate expats

An American has vanished in Spain, and it’s his father, not his wife, who wants him found. When Chester Drum arrives in Iberia, legs aching from the three-thousand-mile flight, he finds Andrea Hartshorn not panicked, not mourning, but hosting the party of the year. World-weary expatriates mill about the villa, guzzling her liquor and dancing, without a thought for their missing countryman. Andrea is far from sober, but finally Drum gets her to open up. Of course she wants her husband back. But more than that, she wants her daughter. Robbie was last seen going south to Fuengirola, to confront a crippled bullfighter named Ruy Fuentes, who had been courting the Hartshorns’ toreador-mad daughter. Drum sets out to find the missing Hartshorns, and learns that in Spain, a bull’s horn is not the only romantic way to die.

Jeopardy Is My Job

A world-class criminal consultant asks Drum to keep him out of prison

Axel Spade’s Geneva office is tidier than one would expect from a man who’s wanted in twenty-six countries. A consulting criminal who sells advice on smuggling, fraud, and currency manipulation, Spade operates in style by staying on the good side of the American and Swiss authorities. But when his future son-in-law disappears after defrauding American servicemen of three million dollars, Spade becomes a target of Interpol, the CIA, and every GI with an empty wallet and a gun. He flies Washington PI Chester Drum to Switzerland to find the lost loot. But the sight of Spade’s hired goons manhandling a ruined American soldier sours Drum on helping the crook. When the destitute GI is found stabbed to death in his hotel room, Drum resolves to bring the killers to justice, no matter how stylish they might be. And of course, he won’t mind if he finds three million bucks along the way.

Francesca

An old flame’s fiancé is missing, and only Drum can save him from the Soviets

Chester Drum will never love another woman the way he loves Marianne. After years of on-and-off romance, he tells her that his work as a private detective is too dangerous for him to ever marry, so she ends the affair and moves to West Berlin, to report on the Cold War from its front lines. There she falls in love with Quentin Hammond, ace foreign correspondent, and Drum is happy for her until her new man disappears behind the Iron Curtain. She telegraphs for help, and Drum is on the next plane. Hammond was close to winning the scoop of the century, by cooperating with an exiled East German dissident to tunnel beneath the Berlin Wall and free thousands of people from the other side. Before they could complete their audacious scheme, though, the Stasi kidnapped them. Only Drum has the skills to go behind the wall and return with the man who’s stolen the woman he loves.

Drumbeat – Berlin

Drum confronts a senator to save the life of a drunken old friend When Chester Drum knew him, Jack Morley was a Washington player, just a few promotions away from becoming Secretary of State. A bad divorce and a nervous breakdown later, Morley has hit rock bottom, and works in Paris for the Army ghoul squad, confirming the deaths of World War II soldiers long ago reported missing in action.

Morley is content to spend the rest of his life wallowing in the bottom of a Pernod bottle, until word gets out that he is blackmailing a US senator—an accusation that could cost him his life. Though disgusted by his old friend’s drunkenness, Drum agrees to make Morley’s case to the senator. Blackmailer or no, Morley has stumbled onto a conspiracy that dates back to the end of the war. If Drum can’t get to the bottom of it, Morley won’t be the only one to die.

In Spain for a wedding, Drum must rescue the kidnapped bride

Although a fugitive from twenty-six world governments, Axel Spade has minimal trouble crossing the border into Spain. Though briefly arrested, the guards let him go when they learn the identity of his future father-in-law: Colonel Santiago Sotomayor, whose name can open the lock of any Spanish dungeon. And so Spade and his best man, Washington PI Chester Drum, cross the frontier. Sotomayor is not thrilled to see his daughter become the sixth Mrs. Spade, but he has given his begrudging consent. 

The wedding party comes off like any jet-set gathering, complete with one of the fiancée’s ex-lovers making threats against Spade’s life. But one key piece never arrives: the bride. She has been kidnapped, and to get her back, Drum and Spade will pit their wits against the toughest thugs and slipperiest bureaucrats that Fascist Spain has to offer.

Drumbeat – Madrid

Protecting an actor takes Drum into the seedy underworld of psychedelia

Terminal illness and regret go hand-in-hand. Two months ago, Amos Littlejohn was in the prime of life, and had plenty of energy to be enraged when his pregnant daughter was abandoned by her husband, matinee idol Ahmed Shiraz. Now stricken with leukemia, Littlejohn is near death, and beginning to regret taking out a contract on the actor’s life. He hires international private eye Chester Drum to call off the hit and protect Shiraz until his life is safe. On his first night on the job, Drum’s partner takes a shotgun blast meant for the actor. Wanting nothing more than to wring Shiraz’s neck, Drum follows him to Europe, where he must contend with assassins, beatniks, and the powerful effects of an experimental drug called LSD.

Drumbeat – Erica

A sadistic KGB colonel hires Drum to locate a dead man

Axel Spade would not have liked the way he died. An international fugitive, Spade would have preferred being gored by a bull or gunned down by Interpol to dying quietly in his bed. But a weak heart claimed him in his sleep, and so Chester Drum, Washington PI and the closest thing Spade had to a friend, scatters his ashes in the Atlantic. Drum’s old flame, Marianne Baker, is by his side, but she leaves before grief has a chance to reignite their faded passion. That night, Drum is awoken by a KGB operative who has kidnapped Marianne. Axel Spade is alive, the agent insists, and he wants Drum to find him. To save Marianne, Drum will do the impossible, and bring Axel Spade back from the dead.

The Chester Drum Mysteries - سلسلة الكتب

The Chester Drum Mysteries - سلسلة الكتب

The Chester Drum Mysteries كتب بالترتيب

الاستماع والقراءة