After 46 years-two months-and-twentyone-days writing and drawing Dick Tracy Chester Gould retired at the age of 77. In these historic final strips, Gould pits his dynamic detective against the latest in a long line of grotesque villains--Pucker Puss, the hitman who literally spits death at his opponents. Tracy, meanwhile, takes his law and order campaign to television, while his past catches up to him when a criminal he helped convict twenty years ago puts the detective on his to kill list. To round out this volume, the squadroom is kept busy with two members of B.O. Plenty's extended family who are anything but law-abiding--Perfume Plenty and her larcenous cousin Dade. All this and more in the ultimate volume of Chester Gould's Dick Tracy, collecting strips from March 15, 1976 to December 25, 1977.

The series is ripe to introduce to crime prose readers who haven't previously ventured into comics.