Come Die with Me

William Campbell Gault

Sep 2012 · Open Road Media

About this ebook

Brock gets caught in a dangerous triangle between a jockey, a mobster, and L.A.’s finest blonde Gloria Malone is a big woman with a little husband, and a problem only Brock Callahan can solve. Her jockey beau, Tip, has fallen in with a half-reformed gangster, and Gloria fears trouble for the pint-sized horseman. But as Brock quickly finds, L.A.’s criminals have more to fear from Tip than he does from them. The short man has a long mean streak, a girl on the side, and a couple of illegitimate children to boot. Even his horses don’t like him. Brock isn’t surprised when someone decides to end the little gremlin’s racing career once and for all—with a carving knife. The world of horse racing is buried under a layer of grime that’s thicker than the Santa Anita racetrack’s mud after a thunderstorm. To penetrate it, Brock will have to take the whip into his own hand and do whatever it takes to stay on the horse.

Come Die With Me is the 4th book in the Brock Callahan Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

About the author

DIVWilliam Campbell Gault (1910–1995) was a critically acclaimed pulp novelist. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he took seven years to graduate from high school. Though he was part of a juvenile gang, he wrote poetry in his spare time, signing it with a girl’s name lest one of his friends find it. He sold his first story in 1936, and built a great career writing for pulps like Paris Nights, Scarlet Adventures, and the infamous Black Mask. In 1939, Gault quit his job and started writing fulltime./divDIV /divWhen the success of his pulps began to fade in the 1950s, Gault turned to longer fiction, winning an Edgar Award for his first mystery, Don’t Cry for Me (1952), which he wrote in twenty-eight days. He created private detectives Brock Callahan and Joe Puma, and also wrote juvenile sports books like Cut-Rate Quarterback (1977) and Wild Willie, Wide Receiver (1974). His final novel was Dead Pigeon (1992), a Brock Callahan mystery.