Framed in Guilt / My Flesh is Sweet - by Day Keene (Paperback)

About the Book

Two hardboiled mystery classics from 1949 and 1951, the first one set in post-WWII Los Angeles and involving a murder the suspect doesn't remember committing; the second an intriguing mystery set in Mexico and a Midwest carny town.

Book Synopsis

FRAMED IN GUILT

It didn't look good for Bob Stanton. The dead woman had been killed in his car--shot through the chest--and he didn't have an alibi. Several people were there at the club when Grace Turner had called him that evening. She had asked to meet him. But he hadn't kept the meeting. Or had he? After his drinking binge of the night before, he didn't really remember. But Inspector Treech is convinced that Stanton is guilty and is out to prove it. The murdered girl was English; Stanton had served in London during World War II. And new information suggests that he had been married to Grace's best friend, Eve. Now on the eve of his Hollywood marriage to movie star Joy Parnell, Grace could have ruined his plans. It all made sense--except that Stanton had never heard of Eve!

MY FLESH IS SWEET

Ad Connors is a down-on-his-luck pulp writer living in Mexico. But the day he witnesses Eleana Hayes run into General Estaban's car changes everything. It's not bad enough that Connors thinks he's killed the general defending Eleana's honor. It gets worse when he tries to help her find the Mexican lawyer who's been sending her money from her fugitive father--only to find his murdered body instead. Connors is in over his head fast, but there's something about Eleana that convinces him that she needs his help. Once he and Eleana escape back to America, the real mystery of just what she was really doing down in Mexico begins to haunt Connors--that and the fact that he's about to be extradited for murder! Is Eleana a damsel in distress, or is Connors just a pawn in her game?

Review Quotes

"Keene's primary virtue as a writer was a strong sense of pace and narrative drive; he knew how to tell a story that gripped the reader immediately and held him to the end." -Bill Pronzini "Wry wit and sly humour characterized his best work." -Kevin Burton Smith "Framed in Guilt [is] his first novel and in some ways his best Woolrich "alcoholic dread" book and a damned interesting portrait of LA right after the war." -Ed Gorman