Dinny Powell, the narrator/protagonist of Lorenz Heller’s novel THREE MUST DIE!, is a former journalist who’s living a quiet life as the publisher of a shopping guide in the small city of Rocky Hill, New Jersey. One peaceful Sunday afternoon, he’s out fishing in a creek with a couple of buddies of his, one a lawyer and the other a banker, when they hear a terrible car crash nearby and hurry to investigate. When they arrive on the scene, they find that the richest man in the county has been killed in the wreck, and the man’s lawyer is wandering around in a daze. A few minutes later, the members of a teenage motorcycle gang show up, too, and Dinny gets in a little scrap with one of them.
The wreck turns out to cause serious problems for Dinny, because a briefcase belonging to the rich guy’s lawyer should have been in the car but is missing, and in that briefcase is the brand-new will made by the tycoon. The cops think Dinny has the will, everybody affected by it thinks Dinny has the will, and so does a mysterious blackmailer who’s willing to kill to get what he wants.
THREE MUST DIE! is an excellent medium-boiled mystery that was published as a paperback original by Graphic Books in 1956 under the pseudonym Dan Gregory, the only time Heller used that name. The cover art is by Roy Lance. There are enough twists in the plot to keep things interesting, but Heller’s strong suit was his characters, and they’re all well-rounded and compelling, especially Dinny. His on-again, off-again romance with the girl who works on the shopping paper with him and wants to become a famous reporter is really well-handled. As a mystery, the clues are all there and I figured out who the killer was before I got to the end, but that didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the very suspenseful climax.
THREE MUST DIE! has just been reprinted by Stark House in a very nice double volume with another of Heller’s novels, NIGHT NEVER ENDS. It’s available in e-book and paperback, and I give it a high recommendation. Lorenz Heller is just a thoroughly entertaining writer of crime and mystery fiction.
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