May sees us returning to an old favorite of ours, Clifton Adams, author of the crime classics Death’s Sweet Song, Whom Gods Destroy and Never Say No to a Killer; and the hard-hitting western, The Desperado. This month we’re reprinting Adams’ other two crime novels, The Very Wicked and The Long Vendetta.

The Very Wicked is the story of an obsessed vice cop. Creel sees evil everywhere—in the pawings and grapplings and couplings that permeate the street. And particularly in the expensive women whose only goal is to laugh and degrade, to smother him in their uncleanness. To make a fool of him. Creel finally can’t stand it anymore and tries to clean up the streets, starting with Lila. And it works for awhile. She stops seeing men and tries the secretarial world. But it doesn’t work for long. That life drives Lila crazy. And one night she picks up a john—when Creel finds out, he decides this time to take matters into his own hands. Lila is only the beginning…

The Long Vendetta is another novel about human obsession, this time dealing with revenge. The first indication that Buck Coyle has that his life is in danger is when a driver tries to run him over and puts him in the hospital. He figures it was an accident, but Lt. Garnett thinks otherwise. He’s convinced that someone is trying to kill Coyle, and that the next time he won’t be so lucky. Years before, Coyle had been a tank sergeant in the army, and had accidentally killed a woman and child when he mistook their cottage for a German hideout. Now everyone in his crew are dead—murdered—and he’s the only one left. It doesn’t take long for Coyle to realize that someone is out to get him, with a vendetta that stretches back 15 years, but who is this mysterious killer? And how can he stop him?

Eric Compton provides a new introduction which looks at Adam’s entire career, most notably his westerns output, which we hope to reprint more of. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy these two thrillers. As Ed Gorman wrote about Clifton Adams in a blog from 2014: “In between tales of sheriffs and outlaws, Adams penned five crime novels … These works stand out not only as some of his best, most harrowing books, but also as examples of some of the edgiest, innovative, and most gut-wrenchingly honest and terrifying crime fiction of their day.”