Case Pending (Library of Congress Crime Classics)

Another murder, another unanswered question. And Detective Mendoza hates to leave things undone.

Hers was the kind of casual homicide that occurred every week in a city like Los Angeles in the sixties. Beaten, robbed, and left in an abandoned lot, Elena Ramirez's death was like many others… in fact, nearly identical to a murder that happened six months earlier―a case that Detective Luis Mendoza was never able to solve.

The detective isn't a fan of puzzles but knows one when he sees it. He puts two and two together―these vicious murders must have been committed by the same deranged individual―and leads the charge into a case that is astounding in its complexity. Along with the begrudging help of Detective-Sergeant Hackett, Mendoza must separate the many twisted threads of this crime―from murder to black-market adoption and extortion.

Considered the "queen of the police procedural," Dell Shannon offers a glimpse into the world of police-work before the aid of forensics or technology. An Edgar Award finalist in 1961, Case Pending introduces the Mexican American Detective Mendoza, a dynamic character who will stop at nothing to find answers, working in a Los Angeles that had not forgotten the 1943 "zoot suit" riots targeting young Chicanos.

BARBARA “ELIZABETH” LININGTON (1921-1988) was an American novelist and mystery writer. She was one of the first women to write in the style of a police procedural. Linington wrote fiction under the pen names Anne Blaisdell, Lesley Egan, Egan O'Neill, and Dell Shannon as well as her own name. Her first mystery novel, Case Pending, was published in 1960, under the pseudonym Dell Shannon.

LESLIE S. KLINGER is the two-time Edgar® winning editor of New Annotated Sherlock Holmes and Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s. He has also edited two anthologies of classic mysteries and, with Laurie R. King, five anthologies of stories inspired by the Sherlock Holmes Canon. Klinger is the series editor of Library of Congress Crime Classics, a partnership of the Library of Congress and Poisoned Pen Press/Sourcebooks. He is a former Chapter President of the SoCal Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America and lives in Malibu, California.