Ed McBain: Puss in Boots (USA 2012)

From the Publisher:
A long shadow looms above her. Then a hand clamps over her mouth and a blade sinks into her back. Blood splatters on the film reel case beside her, and a young life is cut short.

Lawyer Matthew Hope gets a call from Carlton Markham, who's been arrested for his filmmaker wife's murder but says he didn't do it. Witnesses fly forward to proclaim his guilt, but Markham's not giving up that easily on his innocence. And when Matthew digs deeper into the victim's business -- from heavy financial backers to sleazy egomaniacs -- he finds she may not have been the perfect lady she had seemed. The one piece of evidence that could set Markham free and finger the real killer is the victim's film reel. Only it's gone, along with the film's sexy star. Now Matthew needs to infiltrate the seedy side of the film industry in order to find the missing reel and solve the murder.

From master storyteller Ed McBain, Puss in Boots is another Matthew Hope Mystery classic, the tale of a woman who aimed too high and the many men who fell for it all.

Ed McBain: Puss in Boots. A Matthew Hope Mystery. Thomas & Mercer / Amazon Publ., ISBN: 9781612181967 (October, 2012), 264 p., $13.95.

Ed McBain: Puss in Boots (USA 1994)

From the Publisher:
DRESSED TO KILL
Someone killed Prudence Ann Markham in a parking lot in Calusa, Florida. To the police, that someone was Prudence's self-absorbed filmmaker husband. Matthew Hope disagreed. Working with his investigators to prove Carlton Markham's innocence, Hope soon realized that the film Prudence was making in secret was the key to her murder -- and that film was missing. Suddenly everyone in South Florida wanted Prudence's reel of celluloid, from a wealthy Miami theater owner to a couple of porn-film hustlers. It seems careful, serious Prudence Ann Markham had been making a movie that was as profitable as it was dirty. And, as Matthew Hope would soon find out, Prudence was only the first to die for her sins...

Ed McBain: Puss in Boots. A Matthew Hope Mystery. Warner, ISBN: 0446601357 (May, 1994), 215 p., $5.99.

Ed McBain: Puss in Boots (UK 1989)

From the Publisher:
A CAPTIVE PRINCESS...
Prudence Ann Markham - yesterday a bright young film director - today a mutilated corpse. Her husband swears he was at the movies. But that's what he said when his first wife was stabbed to death...

The DA office has already cast him as the murderer and for all his claims of innocence he's acting the part to perfection. He's heading for the electric chair, and even defence attorney Matthew Hope can't see any happy ending ahead.

But as Markham goes on digging his own grave Hope begins to wonder if there isn't more to this case than meets the eye. What was the mysterious project Prudence was working on? The film is missing - and so is the lead actress...

Matthew's quest takes him into a sleazy world of greed, exploitation and perverted lust - in search of a twisted fairy tale, a beautiful woman emprisoned by a monster...

Ed McBain: Puss in Boots. A Matthew Hope Mystery. Sphere, ISBN: 0747400911 (January, 1989), 248 p., £2.99.

Ed McBain: Puss in Boots (USA 1988)

From the Publisher:
Prudence Ann Markham was as careful as her name. Before heading out to her car in the deserted parking lot she packed up the film she'd been editing, checked the studio gear, set the alarm, and locked the outer door. It was 10:40 P.M. -- but Prudence Ann never made it to 10:45.

Carlton Barnaby Markham didn't know what his wife had been working on at the time of her death. All he knew was that the film was missing...and that he was in Calusa County Jail, charged with her murder.

For Matthew Hope, the months since he'd decided to switch to criminal law had not been encouraging. He'd lost his first case and refused his second. When Carlton Mark- ham says he is innocent, Hope takes the case. But as he digs into the evidence, it becomes clear that it will take more than claims of innocence to spring his client...

Ed McBain: Puss in Boots. A Matthew Hope Mystery. Mysterious Press, ISBN: 0445406216 (August, 1988), 215 p., $3.95.

Ed McBain: Puss in Boots (USA 1987)

From the Publisher:
Prudence Ann Markham was as careful as her name. After she packed up the film she'd been editing, she checked the studio gear, hit the three- digit code on the alarm pad, snapped off the lights, and locked the outer door. Then she headed across the deserted parking lot to her car. It was 10:40 on the night of November 20. Prudence Ann never made it to 10:45 -- though her blood continued to flow, reddening the white gravel of the parki for long moments after she died.

Carlton Barnaby Markham didn't know what his wife had been working on at the time of her murder. All Carlton knew was that the film was missing -- and that he was residing in the Calusa County Jail, charged with first-degree murder.

For Matthew Hope, the months since he'd decided to switch to criminal law had hardly been a vote of confidence. He'd lost his first case, refused his second. So when Carlton Markham said he was innocent, Hope took the case. But as he dug deeper into the evidence the cops had amassed, it soon became clear that it would take more than claims of innocence to spring his client.

The seventh Matthew Hope novel, this ranks with the best of Ed McBain' 87th Precinct police procedurals: cunningly plotted, richly peopled, tensely told -- and, like Prudence Ann last film, probably X-rated, which only adds to its power and suspense. Here is detective fiction in the hands of a Grand Master, which is what the Mystery Writers of America called Ed McBain in 1986.

Ed McBain: Puss in Boots. A Matthew Hope Mystery. Henry Holt & Co., ISBN: 0805003711 (July, 1987), 248 p., $15.95.