Sinners and Shrouds, first published in 1955 as an Inner Sanctum Mystery, is a fast-paced, action-packed novel by master crime-writer Jonathan Latimer (1906-1983). The story centers on newspaper reporter Sam Clay, who becomes his own story when he wakes up next to a corpse and with no memory of the woman's identity and of what took place the previous night. Clay knows that he is being framed for the murder but has to prove this—both to himself and to the police.

The job was supposed to be simple, but in this shady midwestern town, nothing is as it seemsHard-living private detective Karl Craven didn't ask for trouble when he arrived in Paulton, Missouri—but trouble found him anyway. First it was his partner, Oke Johnson, shot in the head by a silenced rifle. Then it was the femme fatale Ginger Bolton, who took him for a wild ride his first night in town. But it's Penelope Grayson—the sultry blonde whose uncle hired Craven to...

A reporter becomes his own story when he wakes up next to a corpseSam Clay wakes with a dry mouth, a hammering headache, and only the faintest memory of what he did the night before. He remembers dancing, jazz, taxi rides, and a brandy-fueled ride on a roller coaster, but he has no idea how he got home, and he is lost as to the identity of the straw-haired beauty beside him. He is just about to introduce himself when he notices the blood on the sheets, the wounds o...

In sun-soaked Florida, Crane pursues a kidnapper in between drinksIt does not take much to lure Bill Crane to Florida in the wintertime. The weather would be temptation enough, but the fact that there is money to be made and gin to be drunk makes a trip to Key Largo irresistible. His ever-soused companion, Doc Williams, at his side, Crane sets out south to find out who has been threatening millionaire playboy Penn Essex with blackmail notes, first on his pillow, the...

A vanished corpse leads a hard-drinking PI on a madcap chaseMore than forty corpses fill the cold Chicago basement, but no crime has been committed here. After all, there are supposed to be bodies in the city morgue. Tonight, one is attracting particular attention: a beautiful young woman whose apparent suicide captured the imagination of every newspaper editor in town. Learning how and why she died is too great a task for any cub reporter. Only Detective Bill Crane...

'From the way her buttocks looked under the black silk dress, I knew she'd be good in bed'So begins the most hardboiled of Latimer's novels, whose notoriety meant that it was only published in unexpurgated form in the States in 1982, 40 years after its original publication.In this classic noir novel, St Louis private eye Karl Craven, who likes his steak rare, his liquor hard and his women fallen, arrives at the small town of Paulton to protect his wealthy client's daughter ...

One reviewer referred to the well-loved third novel in Latimer's Bill Crane series as 'rough, rowdy and rum-soaked'. And true to form, just as in his previous investigations, Crane drinks his way through his current case, that of a young suicide whose body disappears just as Crane arrives on the scene.But is there any connection between this body, and the disappearance of a young woman from a wealthy New York family? In order to retrieve the missing body, and find the murderer, Cra...

With six days remaining until he goes to the electric chair for the murder of his wife, wealthy broker Robert Westland needs help, fast. He insists that he has been framed, and Bill Crane, a private detective with a method and manner all his own, must prove his client's innocence.In a mixture of the humorous and the macabre, Crane's investigation, set against an evocative Depression-era backdrop, turns up more than a few queer characters - including a tight-lipped valet and a dypso...

Private eye Bill Crane is back, in his fifth and final case, working and drinking as usual with his old sidekick, Doc Williams, and a new member of the gang, Ann Fortune, who is posing as his girlfriend - and disapproves of his carousing.The trio has been sent to a Chicago suburb to investigate a murder and death threats made to the family of an industrial magnate. Alternately impeded and abetted by the many attractive women of the family, Crane cracks the case in his own inimitabl...

In his first case, William Crane goes undercover in a private sanatorium to solve a theft, and makes no secret of the fact that he believes himself to be a great detective, even presenting himself as Edgar Allan Poe's C. Auguste Dupin.Indeed, he manages to dazzle the picaresque staff with his feats of deductive reasoning while consuming alcohol, including martinis and absinthe, in such copious quantities the plot almost feels like filler for a cocktail menu. It comes as some surpri...

In Hollywood, a screenwriter gets involved in an impossible murderIn a steamy tropical jungle, a sinister American woman pushes the natives too far and gets exactly what she deserves: a rusty knife buried deep in her back. At least, that is the way the movie is supposed to end. But when the loathsome starlet Caresse Garnet learns her character is about to be killed off, she refuses to die, forcing the studio to rewrite the ending the night before the scenes are to b...

On a mad mission in the African jungle, a photographer loses his wayLew Cable is an impulsive man, lazy and violent, especially when he has been drinking. He is a rotten choice to lead a scientific expedition, but his wife's money convinces the exploration committee that he is the man for the job. Jay Nichols sees right through Cable's bravado, but for the chance to photograph African gorillas in their natural habitat, he is more than willing to sacrifice his pride....