Joe Marco looks more like a jockey than a gangster. He role-plays a law-abiding club owner, but Detective Captain Sam Birge can see beneath the veneer. Marco is careful to cover his tracks, but Birge recognizes the hood’s hidden ventures encourage exactly the sort of crimes that the detective faces every day. This time, it’s the murder of one of the Club Trinidad’s hostesses—stage named Janice Morel. Knifed in her twin-size at the fleabag Marne while comatose from a night inscribed with cheap liquor.

Birge and his partner, Charley Hagen are opposites. Birge is older, wiser, and measured. Hagen is young, ambitious, and overly aggressive. Birge is a likable character, while Hagen is more the stereotypical tough cop who beats out a confession to speed up a conviction. That’s where Harry Chapel comes in, a low-life with baggage; and intimate of Ms. Morel. Initially, Chapel is merely a person of interest, but Hagen’s threatening accusations transform him into suspect number one when he flees the scene immediately following his browbeating.

Noir excellence, rife in character depth and engaging prose, this Edgar-nominated first novel by Krasner (1917–2003), was originally published in 1949. Detective Birge would go on to appear in four additional novels, although one saw print only in Germany.