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Abdul Raj was one of those legendary sultans straight from 'The Arabian Nights', armed with a bevy of beautiful wives, loaded down with priceless gems - and one of the richest men alive- until he was discovered to be very, very dead - in the worst way. All the exotic characters gathered in the opulent hotel suite were eyeing each other most suspiciously - ant they all looked equally guilty, but only one among the fairytale entourage of luscious wives, paunchy ambassadors and turbaned sycophants had violently dispatched the Sultan to paradise and made off with a certain priceless ruby... and it was up to Captain Tim Corrigan. The eye-patched detective with the knack for murderous situations plunges into the wildest, farthest-out caper of his career. His assignment leads him to a splendid but terrified harem of veiled beauties, a millionaire sultan with a roving eye, a gang of turbaned mystery men with a lust for violence. Corrigan's job: protect a priceless ruby as red as the color of murder.

 

"That detective with the patch over his eye, Tim Corrigan, really finds himself in a tough spot when a Sultan is murdered and a fabulous jewel stolen. Excitement and a good plot." -- Gary E. Heath St.Albans Messenger 

 
Why So Dead? - cover pocket book edition, Popular Library N° 60-2122, 1966Why So Dead? - cover pocket book edition, Popular Library N° 445-02591-060, 1966 (different logo)Why So Dead? - cover pocket book edition, NEL, 1966-67Why So Dead? - cover audiobook Blackstone Audio, Inc., read by Traber Burns, July 1. 2015Why So Dead? - cover MysteriousPress.com/Open Road, September 29, 2015
 
Beginning with Why So Dead? Richard Deming wrote all four of the remaining Corrigan titles.
 
During a reception at a posh Manhattan hotel, an oil-rich sultan is blown apart by a bomb at the precise moment that his most valuable ruby is stolen from a display case in the same room.

The storytelling is perfunctory and the characters from stock but it’s a minimally acceptable time-killer, described by Anthony Boucher (September 11, 1966) as “pretty flat in writing and plotting, but offer[ing] more color than previous Corrigan cases. . . .”
 
Ghost-written by Richard Deming, this story was published in Man's Magazine in November 1966 as "The Killer Who Made 22 Widows"
Above: This story was published in Man's Magazine in November 1966 as The Killer Who Made 22 Widows.
 


Warum so tot? - cover German edition Ullstein Krimi Nr.1989Occhio al sultano, Corrigan! - cover Italian edition Il Giallo Mondadori Nr 1172 - 1971Το ρουμπίνι του Αβδούλ Ρατζ - cover Greek edition, Viper, 1974Το ρουμπίνι του Αβδούλ Ρατζ - Cover Greek Edition,  2007 Ελευθεροτυπία

Why so dead? Translations: 
German: Warum so tot? 
Greek: Το ρουμπίνι του Αβδούλ Ρατζ 
Italian: Occhio al sultano, Corrigan! 

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