The surprise party by Erle Stanley Gardner
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The surprise party by Erle Stanley Gardner is a crime fiction short story written in the late 1920s. It follows a lone-wolf gangster known as the High Collar Kid who senses a setup and must outwit an underworld “surprise party.” The piece centers on deception, a honey trap, and a razor-edged battle of nerves on a rain-lashed night. The High Collar Kid spots trouble as he leaves his rooming house, then roars
out of town in a storm, where he encounters a striking young woman walking alone. After he coaxes her into his car, she pulls a gun and forces him to drive—just as a trailing car with Pete Pelton and Smile Dugan closes in to take him for a “ride.” The Kid quietly lifts a rain-damp letter from the woman’s purse, learns her name and hotel, and later bluffs the gunmen that he has already dropped the letter in town where a constable saw, tying them to the plot. Rattled, they pause to “ditch” the girl; in the scuffle the Kid shields her, snatches her hidden gun, shoots Pete, and holds Dugan at bay. He speeds off with the woman and the incriminating note, having turned their trap against them with quick eyes, smooth talk, and a faster draw. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Gardner, Erle Stanley, 1889-1970 |
|---|---|
| Title | The surprise party |
| Original Publication | New York, NY: Clues, Incorporated, 1929. |
| Series Title | Produced from the December 25, 1929 issue of Clues magazine. |
| Credits | Prepared by volunteers at BookCove (bookcove.net) |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature |
| Subject | Short stories |
| Subject | Criminals -- Fiction |
| Subject | Thrillers (Fiction) |
| Category | Text |
| eBook-No. | 78409 |
| Release Date | Apr 10, 2026 |
| Copyright | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 554 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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