Eton Books E116 The Marijuana Mob - James Hadley Chase

The basics: It's by the British thriller writer James Hadley Chase and is a retitled edition of his novel Figure It Out For Yourself, published by Eton Books as E116 in 1952, with cover art by Victor Olson. The lurid "Marijuana Mob" title was a marketing move typical of American reprint houses of the era. The back cover sold it as a thrilling tale of kidnapping, murder, drug dealing and politics.  its in Very Good Condition it displays well.

The story: It's a Vic Malloy private-eye novel. Lee Dedrick, husband of the fourth-richest woman in the world, vanishes and is believed kidnapped, pulling Malloy of Universal Services into a tangle of murder, glamorous women and violence. A $500,000 ransom is paid but Dedrick never comes back; a gambler named Nick Perelli is framed and arrested, and Malloy, with his associates Paula Bensinger and Jack Kerman, sets out to clear him and find the real kidnappers. Despite the title, the drug angle is only one thread in a fairly standard hardboiled kidnapping plot.