My Lovely Executioner / Agreement to Kill

My Lovely Executioner: Jimmy Gallivan is only three-and-a-half weeks from his prison release for trying to kill his wife's lover seven years ago. But fellow-inmate Rand has other plans for Gallivan. A break-out is engineered, and now they're hiding out in a sanitarium. But the whole set-up seems suspicious. Rand's boss wants Gallivan to help him with his drug operation. But is that all there is to it? Because it begins to seem like the whole escape was engineered just for him. And what about Jesse? Where does she figure in all of this? Is she the bait--or has she become Gallivan's new jailor? Agreement to Kill: Punching Dixon had gotten Jake Spinner thrown in jail, but now all he wanted was a fresh start back on his farm. Suddenly Dixon is dead and Spinner in on the run, escaping town in the getaway car with Dixon's assassin in the back seat! He knows the cops won't believe his innocence. He knows his only chance is to keep the cold, clubfooted little killer known as Loma with him. Because Loma is his ticket to a new life. His respectable life shattered, Spinner figures that the only ones who'll take him in now are the guys who hired Loma. The choice is easy until he meets Ann.

Peter Rabe was born in Germany as Peter Rabinowitsch in 1921, immigrating to the U.S. with his brother in 1938 to escape the Nazis. He enrolled at Ohio State University and received his Ph.D. in psychology from Western Reserve in Cleveland. Married, he began his writing career by turning in a humorous story about the birth of his first son. Soon after, he began submitting hardboiled stories to Gold Medal where he found an enthusiastic editor and a ready market. After three divorces, health problems and the death of the paperback original, Rabe eventually quit writing and took up teaching psychology at California Polytechnic State University in the late 60's. He died in 1990 at his home in Atascadero, California.