A truck driver employed by Murdock Motor Freight, Bookie Barnes is a tough working class hero. Though not a detective per se, he is a rough customer described as "tall, heavy-chested, with a build you see only in physical culture ads, and, though barely twenty-six, he'd been on the trucks for three years." He is emblematic of the type of crime fighters found in pulp fiction in that he represents the typical readership of pulp fiction: an average working-class audience.

Written by one of the greats of the detective pulps, Robert Reeves-who was tragically killed in World War II-this book collects all of his Bookie Barnes stories: "Murder in High Gear," "Over a Barrel," and "Murder Without Death," as well as his lone, non-series character story, "Dance Macabre."