The Dead Don’t Die and Other Stories by Bruno Fischer

Book Details

From a frame-up for murder, to the jewels at the center of a family curse, Bruno Fischer writes about some very bad people.

Death’s Bright Red Lips (1946) – When a woman tries to throw her arms around you, it’s smart to make sure there isn’t a knife in her hand!
Chapter I The Pick-Up
Chapter II The Dead Woman
Chapter III The Brush Pile
Chapter IV The Cabin
Chapter V The Killer

Cop With Wings (1946) – Sheridan resolved to do his duty as an officer, even if it cost him everything he held dear

The Dead Don’t Die (1949) – When Alvin Robson finds the bones of murdered lovers, he marks himself and his girl for a similar doom!
Chapter I The Burned Note
Chapter II Screams—and Laughter
Chapter III A Ghastly Figure
Chapter IV Wall of the Dead
Chapter V The Bearded Thing

Bruno Fischer (1908-1992) was a prolific pulp writer and 1950’s paperback novelist. Fischer also wrote under the pseudonym of Russell Gray. His writing style has been compared with that of Cornell Woolrich.

Fischer described his “usual manner” of writing as containing “movement and suspense with very little violence” and as being about “ordinary people in extraordinary situations”.

The Dead Don’t Die and Other Stories contains 10 illustrations.

Files:

1. DeadDon'tDie.epub

Also available on Barnes & Noble

Excerpt: Death’s Bright Red Lips

Chapter I

The Pick-Up

IT STARTED off wrong. I mean that girl picking me up at the filling station.

All she wanted was a ride to Center City. The bus which went by every thirty minutes was the simplest and safest way for a lone and attractive girl to travel at night. Or if she had a bias against buses, she could have walked to the traffic light a hundred feet ahead and got a lift in a car containing other women. Or if she was blandly on the make for a man who would spend money, she could have chosen one in a better car than mine. She would have had to look far for a worse.

Why me and my broken-down jalopy which was held together with wire, chewing gum and a prayer?”

“She’d had plenty of time to make up her mind. She’d been standing in the shadow of a tree at the edge of the filling station and must have had a good look at my wreck and at me while the gas tank was being filled. My headlights caught her when I rolled out on the highway. She showed me her thumb, and of course I stopped. Any young fellow would have, and any older man too.

She wore a tan buttonless coat wound tightly about her, and neither the coat nor the poor light detracted from her figure. There was a flowered kerchief over her hair which framed an oval face more beautiful than some I used to pin up on my barracks locker. “Going to Center City?” she said.

I wished suddenly that my jalopy were all glitter and shine to match her looks and that my beard hadn’t grown so much since I’d shaved at dawn and that my best suit were on me instead of in the valise.

“If this junk wagon holds together that far,” I said apologetically.

“May I go with you?”

“I said sure and leaned sideways to open the door. She got in beside me and crossed her legs.

The dash light showed me that they were very nice legs. She was class, no doubt about that. Her voice was low and refined; she used only enough paint on her face to highlight what nature had already given her. None of your cheap pick-ups, that was sure. I couldn’t figure her out.

“You don’t seem to be one of the local boys,” she said.

“No, ma’am. I come all the way from West Amber.”

“You have relatives in Center City?”

“No, ma’am,” I said. “I was discharged from the Army last month, and when I came home I found that my father had died the week before. He’d left a lot of debts for me to clear up. I sold the house and that just about did it. I heard there was a lot of building going on in Center City, so I’m on the way there to try to get a job.”

“You are a construction man?”

IT WAS, I thought, more like a cross-examination than like conversation. Maybe she wanted to be sure of the man she was driving with, though this was a fine time to find out after she’d got in the car and we were on the way.

“I’m a carpenter, ma’am,” I told her somewhat testily. I guess I was sore because I wasn’t the kind of guy a classy dame would want to know better. “Just a plain, ordinary, unemployed carpenter.”

She handed me a bright red smile. “Please don’t keep calling me ma’am. If anything, I’m Miss Louise Boelger. I’d feel more comfortable if you’d call me Louise or Lou.”

It was getting screwier by the minute. Maybe she had a passion for unemployed carpenters who needed a shave and a clean shirt and rattled along in jalopies.

“My name is Harold Mitchell,” I said.

“Hal,” she said, throwing another smile at me. It was one of those slow warm smiles that hit me all the way to my toes.

There wasn’t any more talk for a while. No sound but the assortment of squeaks and rattles and groans by which my jalopy kept telling me that it yearned for the junk heap. She sat with her face turned away from me, looking at the side of the road. So there was nothing in it at all. She had wanted a lift and had made polite conversation and had lost interest in me.

Suddenly she said: “Turn left here.”

We were still five miles out of Center City. There was nothing here. No houses. No sign of civilization. Only a narrow dirt road running through fields.

I stopped the car and looked at her. “I thought you wanted to go to Center City.”

“I live right off this road. It’s just a little way down.” The intimate smile was turned on. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all.”

Excerpt From: Bruno Fischer. “The Dead Don’t Die & Other Stories.”