The John Franklin Bardin Omnibus

The Deadly Percheron (the first novel in this trilogy) is a somewhat fantastic and whimsical noir crime novel. The author kept the action going and there were enough twist and turns to keep me reading, if only to mollify my confusion. The main character, a psychiatrist named George Mathews, is led into a series of adventures that almost cost him his life, yet I was never worried that he would not succeed in figuring his way out of the confusion into which he had entered. A satisfying entertainment (as Graham Greene would say); entertaining yet also invigorating with enough puzzles and conundrums to give your mind a workout.

Terrific psychological detection novels, with nasty twists.