The Occult Cases of Police Commissioner Ethredge and Detective-Lieutenant Peters, Vol. 1!
A compulsively readable and innovative terror novel from the golden age of the legendary Weird Tales, the supreme shudder pulp of all time.
All the New York newspapers blare the headlines when the city's leading jeweler is found dead in his office and his vault looted of all its best jewelry and most valuable gems—but there are no signs of forced entry or tampering with the locks. Because of the eminence of the victim, Police Commissioner Ethredge is immediately called to the crime scene, accompanied by his able assistant, Detective-Lieutenant Peters. After a brief examination, the coroner states that the jeweler has died of massive, sudden blood loss...although there is no blood at the scene, nor any needle marks or stab wounds on the body to explain it.
Ethredge is baffled, but when they are alone on the ride back to police headquarters, Detective-Lieutenant Peters, who is widely read, offers a possible theory that would explain the crime—but it is so outré and horrifying in its implications that Commissioner Ethredge dismisses it out of hand. But that night when he and his fiancée, the brilliant Mary Roberts, attend a society party, Ethredge begins to change his mind when he meets Count Woerz, a powerful hypnotist and prognosticator, and master of the super-smooth veiled threat.
Commissioner Ethredge and Detective-Lieutenant Peters' investigations of Woerz, assisted by Mary Roberts, lead to chilling discoveries...and finally a desperate chase by aeroplane and a final murderous confrontation aboard a yacht far out to sea.
As a special bonus this rare reprinting of Loot of the Vampire, horrormeister Thorp McClusky's classic two-part serial from Weird Tales, is accompanied by its sequel, The Woman in Room 607, the second Commissioner Ethredge and Detective-Lieutenant Peters occult adventure.