Crime Does Not Pay #97

Chip Gardner, a private eye, answers a late-night call that draws him to a Queens mansion where a banker has been shot dead—and someone's still taking pot shots at him. With the phone line cut and the police closing in, Gardner must piece together the case while dodging both a murderous pair who knows too much and the law that hasn't quite figured out his innocence. Racing against time to locate the banker's daughter before she becomes the next target, Gardner finds himself caught in a deadly game where one wrong move could seal his fate.

A drunk driver who hit a man at 3 a.m. thinks he's home free—until a blackmailer named Yates shows up with photographic evidence and demands payment. Desperate to silence his only witness, the driver sets out to murder Yates, but one fateful encounter in a hotel hallway spawns a chain reaction of escalating violence that quickly spirals beyond his control. In this classic crime tale, the hunter becomes the hunted as the very act of trying to eliminate witnesses creates more of them.

A young man's violent temper and street-fighting reputation finally catch up with him when he's convicted of murder and sentenced to the electric chair. As Tony awaits execution, he grapples with his past—from a troubled childhood of brawls and family disappointment to his entanglement with a criminal boss—and faces an impossible choice that will define how he meets his fate.

In Dixville, a small town dominated by the powerful J. R. Dix, tensions run high when the local baseball team takes the field with an umpire who has made enemies out of several players—men whose lives Dix has already ruined through his ruthless business dealings. As the game unfolds and Dix's questionable calls mount, the animosity toward him grows thick enough to cut with a knife, and before the final out is recorded, someone will take the cry of "Kill the Umpire!" to heart. Fred Guardineer's artwork brings this classic crime puzzle to life, challenging readers to spot the culprit among the roster of wronged men with motive and opportunity.