The Deadly Pick-Up

“The Deadly Pick-Up” by Milton K. Ozaki: Gorgon Banner has just arrived in Chicago from Wisconsin, and is driving around to familiarize himself with the city when he notices a beautiful blonde trying to hail a taxi. He pulls to offer her a ride and she gets in, ripping her dress as she does. But she just lives around the corner so he tells her he’ll while she runs in and changes. She leaves a package in the seat and rushes up to her apartment. Thirty minutes later, Gordon goes up to see what’s taking her so long and finds her dead on the bed. Strangled. He’s sapped behind the ear, and when he awakes there’s another girl with him. She’s Sarah Livingston of the Livingston private detective agency, and the girl is her sister, Lila. They discover the package contains $60,000.00 in 100 dollar bills. The case gets more complicated when the body disappears, and Gordon discovers two rival mobs are after the drug trade, and there was supposed to be $200.000.00 in the package, one hundred grand for each mob boss, and people are going to die if they don’t come up with the missing money. Plus, the police are already looking at Gordon as a suspect in Lila’s murder. This was the first book I ever read by Milton Ozaki, and it was fast paced, with many twists. I wasn’t expecting the ending, at least not who the killer was.