Thu 5 Mar 2026
Archived Mystery Review: EDWARD RONNS – Murder Money.
Posted by Steve under Uncategorized[8] Comments
EDWARD RONNS – Murder Money. Phoenix Press, hardcover, 1938. Stark House Press, softcover, 2-in-1 edition with Death in a Lighthouse, 2025, under author’s real name Edward S. Aarons.
After a long and continuing career writing for the pulps, this is the author’s first published novel. It is also the first appearance of bespectacled Leo Storm, amateur dabbler in mysteries. (And also his last, in all likelihood.) The scene is Maine, and at stake are two sets of $250,00 in currency, plus an equal value in diamonds.
This is the best Phoenix Press mystery I’ve ever read. which (given the relative ineptitude of the line) I hope is not an unfair statement. After the first couple of chapters (dreadful), it’s actually pretty good. Ronns (Edward S. Aarons) must have been reading his Hammett, because the ending is a smash-up corker.
March 5th, 2026 at 9:01 pm
It is possible that DEATH IN A LIGHTHOUSE, also published in 1938, was his first novel. I have not yet investigated thoroughly enough to be sure about that this evening, one way or another.
March 6th, 2026 at 9:18 am
I’m more familiar with Edward S. Aarons’s 42 Sam Durell spy novels.
March 6th, 2026 at 12:28 pm
If Aarons/Ronns is known very much at all today, it is for the Sam Durell books, and then it helps if you’re over a certain age. Or in other words, they’re pretty well forgotten by younger readers, and they shouldn’t be.
March 7th, 2026 at 8:22 pm
According to the copyright registrations, Death in a Lighthouse was published on Jan 2, 1938 and Murder Money was published on June 1st.
March 7th, 2026 at 11:19 pm
Thanks, Ken, I was almost sure I had it wrong back when I wrote this review, and sure enough, I did. This was Ronns second book, not his first.
March 8th, 2026 at 3:22 am
Sad to say that unlike Matt Helm, Earl Drake, Chet Drumm, Joe Gall, Morocco Jones, and Hart Muldoon, the Durrell books don’t even have an ebook presence, a gap in the Gold Medal reprints that seems hard to imagine.
Girl on the Run, a non Durrell title is my favorite Ronns/Aarons title, though I’ve read more of his pulp output than early novels.
March 8th, 2026 at 10:24 am
Publishers have tried to do e-books of the Sam Durell novels. The estate wants too much money to make it feasible.
March 8th, 2026 at 1:25 pm
In a way that sounds more promising than it probably is. At one time — and for a long time — it was not even known who had the rights to the Sam Durell books. That’s some progress, at least.