Willy Berth, and his young associate, Mark Cordial, slightly shady operators, are drawn into the attempt to secure a map worth millions (Albanian oil) by Kronos, and at his death, by Helene, his presumptive, unacknowledged daughter. The search takes them all to the island of Pelos where Willy meets a slow, strange death, and where several dubious characters attempt to appropriate the map- and in the final scuffle- follow it to the bottom of the sea....

A beautiful doll arrives in New York with no money and a suitcase heavier than she is. A kind-hearted magician pays her cab fare - and marries her! Her brief honeymoon is interrupted by murder.Here is one of the most original mysteries you have ever read - a fast-moving chiller by Bill Ballinger, author of Portrait in Smoke, The Body in the Bed, and many other bestsellers."Anyone who fears that the detective story has exhausted itself ... is urged to secure at once The Tooth and the Nail, in which Bill S. Ballinger presents us with a completely new trick."  - New York Times

Against the sinister backdrop of New York’s fringe world—its dank alleys, creepy bars and grime laden cold flats, this fiercely exciting drama of mauled and twisted lives moves to its terror-packed climax!  Wallie Kroll, a quack doctor, lived a cringing, drink-cadging existence, until he discovered there was money in dope. But every knock on his door was terrorizing—was it just another agonized soul willing to pay high for the deadly pain killer Wallie called a “prescription”—or was it the police… or worse…  Carla was one of the victims whose screaming nerves had driven her to Wallie’s door. Her wealthy husband abandoned, her pride and beauty shattered, she flung her tormented body through the menacing streets to the final blinding moment of engulfing horror.  This is a spellbinding novel of five people linked by the city’s strange ties, forced by macabre twists of fate into a nightmare world from which the only escape was death.

A noir masterpiece With its combination of suspense, humor, intrigue and Ballinger's trademark multiple-point narrative, Portrait in Smoke is an exciting thriller about a gorgeous blonde in trouble. Danny April owns of a small time collection agency in Chicago that specializes in finding people who don’t always want to be found. From the moment he finds in his files a photograph marked "Krassy Almauniski, winner of the Stockyard News beauty contest", he’s obsessed and ends up following an old trail that leads to nothing but trouble. "It's a gem that shouldn't be. It ought not to work. At all. Yet somehow, it does." -- Allan Guthrie**

Police Lieut. Emmet Rafferty's newspaperman's friend came back from Europe and phoned Rafferty at the Homicide Bureau. When he asked for Rafferty the voice on the other end said: "Are you kidding?" and hung up. What had happened to Rafferty—the good cop—the man who hated killers—the family man? Rafferty is a story of infatuation, which leads a man of good character to the petty sins of deception and dishonesty, and finally to the act of murder. Rafferty's temptation came from Rose Pauli, a stripteaser. As Rafferty's superior on the force said: "Rose Pauli wasn't beautiful, but maybe she had that something and there was only one person it would work on. And that person was Emmet Rafferty... Anyhow, he was ready and she lit the fuse."