The Long Escape

2nd edition/1st printing – 1948 – Dell Mapback – Dell #405

Al Colby, Book #1

Globetrotting detective Al Colby makes his debut in this dazzling mystery from the author of To Catch a Thief.

Al Colby, an American expatriate working as a private investigator in Mexico City, is contacted by an old acquaintance in Los Angeles who hands him a cold case involving a missing person. Robert Parker’s mysterious disappearance is tying up a family fortune and is enraging his abandoned wife who can’t tap the family coffers without proof of death. The case sounded routine enough, right up his alley, but the trail for the missing Mr. Parker leads Colby down a rabbit hole winding through a number of South American countries, each one a dead end. Running out of funds and clean shirts, Colby is ready to throw in the towel, but the stakes are too high and his client fuels the search with additional cash.

The deeper Colby digs the more entangled he becomes in a decades old mystery of misplaced loyalties, family secrets, and riches in nitrate ore. In between tequila shots and beautiful women, Al Colby has a case that drags him in deeper with each step. But can he piece it all together before the quicksand swallows him whole?

This is a Dell Mapback, the first line of books published by Dell. It features a colorful map of the area in which the story’s crime takes place.

Fundraising Item: 30% of proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to Friends of Detroit Animal Care and Control, an organization that partners with Detroit Animal Care and Control to promote responsible pet ownership; coordinate adoption events; and provide medical care and supplies for the animals in their care.