The Fall Guy

The Fall Guy, first published in 1945, is a fast-paced noir murder mystery featuring Chicago P.I. Rush Henry. Joe Barry was the pen name of Joe Barry Lake (1909-1961), author of ten detective novels and a number of television shows.

From the dust jacket: The door had scarcely closed on the mysterious young man who had sought protection from Rush Henry because he feared for his life when wealthy Paul Germaine, Sr., brought one of the strangest requests of Rush’s hectic career as a private investigator. Rush was to keep Chicago mobsters away from Germaine’s brilliant young daughter, Leslie, whose interest in criminal psychology had made her determined to find out, first-hand, what made a gangster tick. Five minutest later Rush found the mysterious young man stabbed to death in the alley outside his office. The dead man was Germaine’s son, Paul Germaine, Jr. Then a tall, cadaverous man in ministerial black informed Rush that he had seen the murderer run from the alley and instantly Rush knew that a strange mob had moved in. The tall man was Otho Brin, first of several San Francisco gangsters Rush was so soon to encounter. Was Brin playing a lone hand, or was he connected with suave, cultured Bernard Jago and his lovely daughter, Myrna? Was the San Francisco gang bucking the Chicago mob? Which had been responsible for young Germaine’s murder? And what was daring young Leslie Germaine’s connection with her brother’s death? A swift, baffling Crime Fiction of underworlds at war—and of the fall guy caught between.