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.