From suburban cocktail parties to music halls to the precarious ledge of a high-rise, Chicago attorney John J. Malone is willing to take on any case—as long as it'll pay his bar tab. In this ten-story collection of murder most offbeat, a wedding anniversary party turns deadly for an unlucky housewife; a client's supposed innocence hangs by a thread after a suicide attempt; a forlorn ballad may contain the key to a mystery; a relatively harmless lady wrestler gets pinned for cracking her husband's skull; an old flame's diary reveals a poisonous past; and a surprising obituary forces Malone to investigate his own suspicious death. The hero of fourteen novels, more than three-dozen short stories, three feature films, a radio show, and a television series, "Malone is an inspired creation . . . [of] deductive brilliance, malaprop speech, diminutive stature, rumpled appearance, fiscal imprudence, and Irish romanticism . . . closer in spirit to John Mortimer's Rumpole of the Bailey than to his contemporary Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason, whose clients are always innocent" (Jon L. Breen, Edgar Award–winning author).