Stark House Press' double novel, Cry Blood/ Killer in Silk, reprises two of Dixon's sixteen novels, both Originally published by Fawcett Gold Medal in 1956. Stark House's cover clearly reprints the cover of Cry Blood. While both paperback originals are decidedly crime novels, they both generously illustrate Dixon's fascination with characters and how people react to shocking circumstances.Cry Blood is the first of the two novels and offers the reader a story about an innocent man - or at least that's what we the readers believe as we view the events through the lens of Gary Malone's eyes. Unlike many other novels with the theme of an innocent guy getting blamed, Dixon doesn't give us a loner or a stranger. Rather, Malone is a prominent member of the community, a married man, a businessman, with friends up and down the community of Bayside - a thinly disguised fictional version of the Village of Carmel. Malone was even part if the search party combing the hills for any sign of Diane Halloran, the day after she disappeared on her way home from school. But now with the poor girl's gym shoes being found in Malone's basement and his alibi looking shaky, every head turns away from Malone. He's no longer welcome in businesses. Mobs want to lynch him. Even his own wife doesn't believe him. It's a nightmare scenario for any normal law-abiding person. How do you prove your innocence when all the evidence points to you? And what happens when the machinery of society from the press to law enforcement to your friends and neighbors all turn against you? What happens when you are truly all alone and feel like a stranger in a strange land?The second selection in this double set is Killer in Silk and it may not be the type of action-packed story you are looking for, but it's a powerful character story about broken people. Chief among them is a novelist and alcoholic Morgan O'Keefe, picked up as a drunken bum, and told he may have one last chance, a woman in Pacific Heights, the genteel estates section of San Francisco, takes in an occasional drunk and helps them back on their feet. Irene though is doing this to assuage her guilt that for ten years has trapped her in a golden cage. Much of the story is the odd relationship between Morgan and Irene and his unease with these wealthy debutantes, particularly when her crowd discover a real writer is staying with her. Dixon really develops these characters, fleshing them out, giving them complexities you wouldn't ordinarily find in one of these paperbacks.