Larry Kent, PI

Fred Wallis came to Davidson, California, with a big, crooked plan in mind. Then, he just...disappeared. Fred’s brother hired Larry Kent to go west and find out what had become of him - a job Larry was glad to accept, since Fred had been a childhood friend of his. But the minute he started asking around, he became a target. Someone wanted Fred’s secret plan to remain just that. But who was behind the attempts on Larry’s life?

When Larry Kent said good-bye to Eve Delmar, she was alive. The next morning she turned up dead - shot to death. But who wanted to kill her, and why? The chief suspect was her estranged husband...but he was a friend of Larry’s, and when he denied murder, Larry believed him.  

It started with the name "Emanuel Kadaver" and a New York address, both of which were written on one side of a 500 dollar bill. Intrigued, Larry Kent went along to discover just what his mysterious benefactor wanted. Next thing he knew, he was stranded 1500 miles from home with two whole days missing from his memory.

It was a game of cat and mouse right from the start. Mallory Queen, a former State Department man who’d gone freelance, had a plan. He wanted to trade Willis Browning, a CIA-held double-agent, to the Russians in return for a spy named Vordak, who possessed a vast amount of information relating to Russia’s space program. The CIA would never willingly release its prisoner, of course, but because Vordak was the bigger prize, Queen decided to snatch Browning away from them. So he enlisted private eye Larry Kent - a former CIA man himself - to mastermind the kidnap...

Eleanor Gesualdi was a friend, that’s all. At least that’s what Larry Kent kept telling himself. But when he received a long-distance call from Eleanor, and learned that someone was trying to kill her, he realized his feelings went a whole lot deeper than that. Then Eleanor just vanished...and Larry spared no effort in trying to find her...or what had become of her. The trail led to a husband with a secret, a Mob connection, a hard-nosed cop who became a faithful ally...and one violent death after another...

Reena Avery was caught up in the skin game. That’s why her husband killed her. Or so it seemed. But when Larry Kent looked Phil Avery in the eye, he was as sure as he could be that the man was innocent. From that moment on, he set out to find the real killer. But the real killer was always one step ahead of him, and every time Larry found a witness...the witness turned up dead!  

Larry Kent was on his way back to New York, fresh from a fishing vacation in the Gulf. When he stopped off in the city of Faro, his plan was to get a drink and something to eat and then move on. But the bartender at the Green Light made the mistake of serving him a Mickey Finn and then robbing him. Larry woke up in a deserted alleyway with a pounding headache...and inadvertently became the star witness in the cold-blooded murder of a prominent businessman.

It began when Larry Kent’s old boss at the CIA asked him to come back for one more assignment – to a kill a double-agent who also happened to be one of his closest friends. Larry couldn’t go through with it…and it was just as well that he didn’t, because nothing was as it appeared to be. An enemy of the United States had perfected a terrifying mind-manipulation drug – and after that, it became Larry’s job to find out just who that enemy was. The trail took him first to Mexico City, then on to Australia, where he met up with an old love....

The most difficult killer to catch is the one who doesn’t realize he’s a killer! That was Larry Kent’s dilemma when he signed on to protect beautiful actress Valerie Nash. Whoever he was, the mystery murderer was two distinct personalities in one…and the dark side of him was slowly but surely gaining dominance. 

The cops said Robert Lawson’s death was suicide. Larry Kent believed it was murder - and set out to prove it. Along the way he found himself threatened by a casino boss, a beautiful feminist, an irate cop, and a sleazy loan shark. But nothing - and no amount of bodies - was going to stop him from uncovering Lawson’s killer and the reason he had to die...nothing.  

Eddie McEvoy wanted Larry Kent to take on a murder case even though he had no official, payng client. As far as Larry was concerned, it was none of his business. But then police Lieutenant Bruce Comstock warned him off, and that’s when Larry had a change of heart. He didn’t take kindly to being threatened by anyone, much less a corrupt cop who was on the take. So he started delving ever deeper into the murder of the man who called himself Stan White...and realized there was much more to his death than met the eye.

A scientist in Switzerland had perfected a synthetic fuel that was cheaper and cleaner than oil, and everyone wanted to get their hands on it. Some wanted to make it available to the world. Others wanted to make sure the formula never saw the light of day again. The key to finding it lay with private eye Larry Kent, who was pressed back into service by his old masters at the CIA. 

Two cops had gone missing, and their boss wanted to know what had happened to them. But he wasn’t sure just who he could trust down at headquarters, so he gave the job to Larry Kent, the only man he felt he could rely on. Larry soon found himself up to his shoulder holster in trouble. Whatever the missing cops had been investigating, it was big. That’s why the dapper little chili-eating hustler Pete Grills wanted him dead. And why the seductive Ester Newell tried to recruit him rather than fight him.