Invitation to Violence / A Party to Murder

INVITATION TO VIOLENCE

Gerald Hanna, an insurance adjuster, is conservative by nature. But his drive home from the weekly card game changes all that when he finds himself in the middle of a jewel heist shootout. Forced to take one of the criminals with him, he soon finds that he's driving away with a dead man in his car ... and a bag full of jewels. So Hanna removes the body and takes the bag of jewels home with him. Now he finds himself playing a game of cat and mouse with the cops, who find out his car matches one seen leaving the crime scene, and the leader of the gang, who wants the jewels. And then there's his suspicious fiance, who just wants Hanna.

A PARTY TO MURDER

It's the night of the Markey Christmas party. After the party, Patricia Andrews' nude body is found on a hotel room bed with a single bullet hole in it. Detective Goodwin interviews everyone who attended the party. Could the murderer have been her husband Clayton Andrews, an older man who had been forced to accept a number of younger lovers in his wife's bed? Or Joel Siddel, Andrews' best friend, and Pat's latest lover? Or Johnny Creamer, desperately in love with her and jealous of her other lovers? Or Hubert Pringle, a man with a bad gambling habit who has been embezzling from the office for years? Or could it have been Harold Markey himself, head of Markey Publishing Company and the biggest bastard in the business-and another one of Pat's former lovers? All Goodwin knows is that Siddel has gone missing, Creamer seems to want to confess to anything and everything, and Andrews himself is gradually becoming unwound. And they all had a reason to kill Pat.