ill as Directed
(August 1963)
Competent, respectable practitioner of the time-honored art of medicine, Dr. Harry Brown - failure! Until the day old man Gresham, with his bum ticker, his millions, and his voluptuous young spouse, hired Harry as his doctor. Then it was money, luxury- and love. But what happens to a doctor when someone slips a corpse into his locked apartment? What can a man say when he finds himself a member of an organized crime ring? How can Harry tell his richest patient he's having an affair with the man's wife? It's enough to give a man a heart attack. But which man? The perfect weaponKurt Gresham smiled again. "You were the sucker. You
were the patsy in the middle. The expendable man. And they couldn't wait." |
|
Includes a cast of characters. Written by Henry Kane who normally narrated his adventures in an eccentric style, dubbed "High Kanese". No trace of that style, or of any individuality whatever, can be discerned in Kill As Directed which Nevins described as "a routine time-waster in which a money-hungry young doctor is suckered into performing medical services for an aging, obese narcotics racketeer and sexual services for the gangster’s greedy young wife. The tangle culminates in an ersatz James M. Cain murder plan that for sheer dullness is rivaled only by the book’s prose and characterizations." |
Above: Reprinted in the 1964's September issue of Men's Magazine. Being the kind of magazine it was the title was changed to Everyone Hungered for Karen Gresham and pictures were added accordingly. * |
|
*
Interested readers should know
that the icons/covers
of books, used throughout the
website have extra
descriptions/information not
included in the text on the same
page. Pointing your cursor at
the icon/cover used to reveal
this extra information. To achieve the same effect Firefox users can install an add-on called 'Popup ALT Attribute'. When installed pointing your cursor at an icon/cover results in showing you the details or additional information. |
Copyright © MCMXCIX-MMXXIV Ellery Queen, a website on deduction. All rights reserved. |