When a famous art-loving millionaire disappeared from a Bohemian party in the artist quarters of Montparnasse, a number of colorful Parisians began to devote themselves to suspicious actions of one kind or another. Homer Evans, irresponsible playboy artist and Bohemian, combines his talents for quick thinking and kiss-stealing in a wild chase for the murderers through the streets of Paris. Following hot behind is Miriam Leonard, a belle from Montana whose shapely hand is quite as effective with the revolver as with a loving caress And then there is Hjalmar Jansen, strapping Norwegian artist...

Homer Evans has a wacky group of friends who lead you all over Paris, up and down the Seine, through cafes filled with celebrities, taxidermist shops, subway stations, the musty dens of Egyptologists and the wards of a fantastic madhouse. There is violence aplenty and corpses are in the most unexpected places. The New York Herald Tribune Books says, "This, as you might guess, is the funniest mystery on tap-that is, the funniest by far, for all other comic thrillers seem pale and wan beside Mr. Paul's robustious works." You can't fail to get plenty of gusty guffaws and spine-tickling chills as...

Homer Evans is back. You remember Homer. The ever-calm, William Powell-ish sleuth of "The Mysterious Mickey Finn," and "Hugger Mugger in the Louvre" Homer and his incomparable girl friend, Miriam, the gun-totin', sharp-shooting gal from Montana. You'll find them at work and play again in Elliot Paul's Mayhem in B-Flat which has to do with the theft of a priceless Guarnerius violin, a huge dog, rival gangs, murders, tarantulas, dancing girls and loving ladies. Elliot Paul gives you plenty of laughs-and a bumper crop of homicide in this story that takes you from concert hall to cabaret to...

The fourth in the series of Homer Evans mystery adventures takes the reader for the ride of his life all the way from Paris to the badlands of Montana. In the wide open spaces where the last survivors of be Blackfeet and Shoshone Indians still keep their tribal ways in the lower stretches of the Yellowstone, where sheepherders and cattlemen fight to the death on the lone prairie, where behind every clump of sagebrush a dead-eye marksman lurks, there go all the veterans of the bloody campaigns in The Mysterious Mickey Finn, Hugger-Mugger in the Louvre and Mayhem in B-Flat. Guided by...

The early Homer Evans mysteries were light-hearted frolics with crazy antics and cartoonish characters. One reviewer noted that The Mysterious Mickey Finn "has the delirious irresponsibility of a Wodehouse plot" (Charles Poore, New York Times), and another stated, "I astonished and delighted myself by reading it. . . . it] is like no mystery story I know. It may not please the orthodox mystery fans; it is, in its way a satire on orthodox mysteries. . . . I have seldom read a book which gave me so intensely the impression that the author had a grand good time writing it. The hilarity is...

"'The Black Gardenia' is quite a book. Elliot Paul undoubtedly had a wonderful time writing it, and in addition to the usual mystery has made it a vehicle for a lot of good English and a lot of interesting information about mysterious Javanese plants, customs, and poisons. "And, we might as well say right now, you as a reader will be thoroughly] mixed up as to who dunit until very near the last page. "Suffice it to say that three persons die of very perplexing causes before the suave Homer Evans, detective extraordinary, and his partner, Finke Maguire, are able to bring the murderer to...