Top Assignment Author:George Harmon Cox The picture contest was a standard circulation-booster. Run a shot of any crowd with someone's head white-inked, and if the lucky person saw it and came into the newspaper office the same day, he'd get a hundred dollars. — Ethel Kovalik needed the hundred, but she begged Larry Palmer, who intrview her, not to print her address. She was afraid,... more » she said. Afraid of the man whose angry face showed just behind her in the photograph.
When Ethel is found strangled in her shabby room the next day, the newspaper had to find out what had happened. Larry drew the top assignment -- one that began with a long-dead scandal and led to a forger who was brave, a blackmailer who was satisfied, a strong-arm man who was frightened, and three women, each beautiful and each involved with murder.« less