The Clue of the Forgotten Murder / Erle Stanley Gardner

When a very respectable man, a candidate for city council on a reform list, gets picked up drunk and gets involved with a hitchhiker, of course there are headlines. The Blade prints them in big black letters. That leads to a libel suit and a secret investigation by a Blade reporter. At least it was supposed to be secret. But apparently the wrong person(s) got wind of it, because the reporter soon became a corpse in an empty car park. Sidney Griff, the criminologist, teams up with the Blade’s publisher to track down missing girls, forged cheques and finally a long-forgotten murder.