The reluctant heiress

the long version

When Kent Murdock, ace photographer for the *Courier*, was sent a suitcase for safekeeping by his old friend Arnold Stanton, Murdock thought the favor harmless, even though Stanton, now retired and bedridden, had been a criminal lawyer. Within a matter of hours, Murdock was held up by two hoodlums, Stanton's home safe was knocked over by masked burglars, and a former private investigator was murdered in the apartment of Stanton's nurse. Deeply involved in the mesh were Joyce Stanton, the lawyer's lovely granddaughter; George Appleton, his one-time partner; and Carl Greer, a young thug from the West Coast. Before Murdock could piece together the puzzle, the mysterious suitcase disappeared, another man was killed, and there were some surprising revelations which complicated the motivations of both the innocent and the guilty in this exciting new novel by George Harmon Coxe.