In The Crime Collection by Eugene Pike, the empha-sis is on action and suspense, but also on those complexities of life that interfere with investigations and make the lot of a detective so frustrating.

The investigators at the heart of these four stories –private detectives in the first pair, police officers in the second – are confronted with crimes that unravel to reveal hidden, perhaps inexplicable connections which the detectives, with their own flaws and foibles, are often ill-equipped to deal with.

In the first story, ‘The Gunman in Black’, private detective Benny Holland, dogged by accusations of professional misconduct, investigates the kidnap-ping of a child. In ‘The Case of the Missing Lion’ detective Finney attempts to connect the strange goings-on at Mayfield Hall with an escape from the local zoo. ‘Murder, She Stuttered’ concerns the case of a man strangled in a college toilet, while the final story, ‘Murder in the Shadows’, tells the sad tale of a police constable who discovers that the dead body he finds slumped in a bus terminal is that of his long-lost love…