Thirteen sordid and salacious tales of hustlers, lovers and losers, killers and thrillers carousing in a charade of lust, love, luck, and murder...where shifty, shady types clamor to survive, when no way out seems to be the only way out... Praise for BUSTED VALENTINES: "You read stuff like this and the top of your head comes off. This is pure dark, stark, powerful poetry." —Les Edgerton, author of The Bitch, The Rapist and The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping "It's top shelf writing with a bloodshot eye for the gutter." —Charles Benoit, Edgar-nominated author of Relative Danger and You "De Blase wields a big heart and a bigger knife for twisting." —Jack Getze, Spinetingler Magazine

In the grand tradition of the great pulps of the '50s comes PINE BOX FOR A PIN-UP. Frankie Valentine just wanted to take girlie pictures. But a jealous woman, a call girl on the make, a dirty cop, and a cross-dressing judge bent on keeping his secret, plunge Valentine into a world of murder, badger games gone wrong, blackmail, burlesque, and violence... Also includes GRIFT 'N' GRIND a Frankie Valentine short story.

It's 1960 and Frankie Valentine is doing just fine. The transplanted New York photographer is living it up in the Hollywood sunshine surrounded by beautiful women more than willing to dispose of their clothes and pose. He has no reason to go back east. That is, until the body of a childhood friend, who had disappeared in 1950, turns up. Valentine flies back home to lend his expertise as a crime scene photographer and help out a friend who's in a jam. Instead he finds a compromised crime scene, a hidden stash of cash, and trouble. A Junkie stripper and her mother — a woman who ushered Valentine into manhood — a mob boss racked with jealousy and homicidal rage and assorted low-lifes all roll out the unwelcome mat. It's all blood, money, sex and lies...sealed with a Cougar's Kiss. Praise for A COUGAR'S KISS "A fifties pulp-noir that has ex-crimescene turned girlie photographer, Frankie Valentine leaving Hollywood for a return to Rochester to ferret out...