The Men From The Boys by Ed Lacy

Starts out with a bang: As if I wasn't feeling bad enough it had to be one of those muggy New York City summer nights when your breath comes out melting. With my room on the ground floor and facing nothing, I lay in bed and sweated up the joint. The summer hadn't been too rough till the last few days, about the time my belly went on the rocks, when it became a Turkish bath. I stared up at the flaky ceiling and wished the 52 Grover Street Corporation would install air conditioning. Almost wished I was the house dick at a better hotel. No, I didn't wish that—I had a sweet deal at the Grover. With my police pension, the pocket money the hotel insisted was a salary, and my various side rackets, I was pulling down over two hundred dollars a week in this flea bag— all of it tax free. Turning over to reach a cool part of the sheet, this warm, queasy feeling bubbled through my gut. I belched and snapping on the table light took a mint. All I had on was shorts, but they were damp and as I started to change them, there was a knock on the door. When I said, “Yeah?” Barbara opened the door, fanning her face with a folded morning paper. She never slopped around in a kimono or just a slip. Barbara was always neat in a dress and underthings, and shoes, not slippers. Which was one reason I let her work the hotel steadily. Her simple face might have been cute—ten years ago. Now it held that washed-out look that comes with the wear and tear. But her legs were still cute, long and slim. She closed the door and leaned against it. “My—what a lump of man.”

The False Faces by Louis Joseph Vance

On the muddy verge of a shallow little pool the man lay prone and still, as still as those poor dead whose broken bodies rested all about him, where they had fallen, months or days, hours or weeks ago, in those grim contests which the quick were wont insensately to wage for a few charnel yards of that debatable ground.

Nobody by Louis Joseph Vance

A thrilling mystery by Louis Joseph Vance.
Louis Joseph Vance (September 19, 1879–December 16, 1933) was an American novelist, born in Washington, D. C., and educated in the preparatory department of the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. He wrote short stories and verse after 1901, then composed many popular novels. His character Michael Lanyard, also known as The Lone Wolf, was featured in eight books and 24 films between 1914 and 1949 and also appeared in radio and television series.
Vance was married in 1898 and had a son born in 1899, but he was separated from his wife when he was found dead in 1933. He was in a burnt armchair inside his New York apartment. He had been intoxicated at the time of death, and a cigarette had ignited some benzene (used for cleaning his clothes or for his broken jaw) that he had on his body. He had recently returned from the West Indies, where he had gathered material for a new book. The death was ruled accidental. 

The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle

This, the second Sherlock Holmes mystery, begins with Holmes himself in a cocaine-induced haze, interrupted by the arrival of a distressed and beautiful young lady. Each year following the strange disappearance of her father, Miss Morstan has received a rare and lustrous pearl. Now, on the day she is summoned to meet her anonymous benefactor, she comes to consult with Holmes and Watson.

The Golden Silence by A. M. Williamson and C. N. Williamson

Set in Algeria a hundred years ago, the story is full of the wonder and mystery of the desert. The action is dramatic and the descriptions are done with rare power. The story will bring a new type of Williamson novel to all those who love tales of mystery, romance, and adventure.

A Plot for Murder by Frederic Brown

  It's set in New York City in pre-television times. Our hero (using the term very loosely) is Bill Tracy, a former hard-drinking newspaperman who's now a hard-drinking writer for a popular radio soap opera named "Millie's Millions." It's in the tradition of the silent-screen series "The Perils of Pauline" and every episode sees Millie facing new dangers and troubles and (to the huge relief of her fans) surviving by the skin of her teeth. It pays well, but cranking out five inane episodes a week is boring, soul-destroying work.

Eleven Possible Cases by Anna Katharine Green

Eleven mystery and detective stories about crime and lust. Anna Katharine Green has been called the mother of the detective novel. These are her shorter works, eleven of them. Enjoy!