Crime Noir

Bob Engels is the last person anyone would accuse of being father material. With a monkey on his back the size of a Texas fifth, his days are spent jobless and on the hunt for a quick buck to fuel his next bender. That need had now driven him here, to this moment, pondering his life choices and staring at an ad from a bulletin board at the local Walmart... Blue-eyed men between the ages of 18-35 to begat a child for a good, god-loving family. Full discretion. Complete anonymity. $1000 The only problem is, the "god-loving family" in question are the Knutson's, a tight-knit clan of criminals ...

A small boy and a young girl make a contract to kill. A school girl and her young brother arrive at private detective Jack Hamma's office. They scatter coins over Jacks desk, the contents of their piggy bank, and ask Jack to shoot dead two men. They want to save a forest and take revenge for the murder of their parents. Murder, revenge and retribution combine with Jacks wry humor to make this a great read. ‘The same fast paced action we've come to expect from a Jack Hamma story.’ ‘Flows well as we travel with Jack across the world, from the wilds of Yorkshire to the depths of the ...

When entrepreneur Flosi arrives home for dinner one night, he discovers that his house has been ransacked, and his wife Gudrun missing. A letter on the kitchen table confirms that she has been kidnapped. If Flosi doesn't agree to pay an enormous ransom, Gudrun will be killed. Forbidden from contacting the police, he gets in touch with Áróra, who specialises in finding hidden assets, and she, alongside her detective friend Daniel, try to get to the bottom of the case without anyone catching on.

In Patricia Highsmith's debut novel, we encounter Guy Haines and Charles Anthony Bruno, passengers on the same train. But while Guy is a successful architect in the midst of a divorce, Bruno turns out to be a sadistic psychopath who manipulates Guy into swapping murders with him. As Bruno carries out his twisted plan, Guy is trapped in Highsmith's perilous world - where, under the right circumstances, anybody is capable of murder.

Easter weekend is approaching, and snow is gently falling in Siglufjörður, the northernmost town in Iceland. Ari Thór Arason is now a police inspector, but he’s separated from his girlfriend, who lives in Sweden with their three-year-old son. A family reunion is planned for the holiday, but a violent blizzard is threatening and there is an unsettling chill in the air. Three days before Easter, a 19-year-old local girl falls to her death from the balcony of a house on the main street. A perplexing entry in her diary suggests that this may not be an accident.

Paul Madvig was a cheerfully corrupt ward-heeler who aspired to something better: the daughter of Senator Ralph Bancroft Henry, the heiress to a dynasty of political purebreds. Did he want her badly enough to commit murder? And if Madvig was innocent, which of his dozens of enemies was doing an awfully good job of framing him? Dashiell Hammett’s tour de force of detective fiction combines an airtight plot, authentically venal characters, and writing of telegraphic crispness. A one-time detective and a master of deft understatement, Hammett invented the noir crime novel.

Albinus, a respectable, middle-aged man and aspiring filmmaker, abandons his wife for a lover half his age: Margot, who wants to become a movie star. When Albinus introduces her to Rex, an American movie producer, disaster ensues. What emerges is an elegantly sardonic and irresistibly ironic novel of desire, deceit, and deception, a curious romance set in the film world of Berlin in the 1930s.

Henry Cimoli and Spenser have been friends for years, yet the old boxing trainer has never asked the private eye for a favor. Until now. A developer is trying to buy up Henry's condo on Revere Beach - with a push from local thugs. Soon, Spenser and his apprentice, Zebulon Sixkill, are on the trail of a mysterious woman, a megalomaniacal Las Vegas kingpin, and a shady plan to turn a chunk of land north of Boston into a sprawling casino. As alliances shift and twisted dreams surface, the Boston political machine looks to end Spenser's investigation one way or another.

A homecoming should be a happy event. Not an opportunity for betrayal. For Inspector Thomas Sullivan, a man who trusts few people, returning home only to find those he calls friends have kept dark secrets from him, accused him of multiple murders, and are plotting against him is an act of betrayal. Worst of all, one of those people is his partner and girlfriend, Sarah. Sully's universe has been turned upside down in this tale of betrayal, murder, and political intrigue in Capital City on the frozen world of Beta Prime. On the run, alone, and with a price on his head, can Sully survive long ...

Murder isn’t uncommon in a big city, but when young women start turning up dead next to mysterious symbols painted in their blood, the police turn to Alex Lockerby to find the killer. Unfortunately, the bloody symbols aren’t any form of magic Alex knows, leaving him precious little to work with and a nagging feeling that he’d better stop this madman before he finishes whatever spell he’s attempting.

Mafia hit-man-turned-rabbi Sal Cupertine is ready to get out of the life. But it's not going to be easy. His once-brilliant plan to pass himself off as Rabbi David Cohen is unraveling. Enemies on both sides of the law are hot on his trail. His wife and son are unreachable in witness protection and are probably in danger. In order to find his family, get out of the desert alive, and salvage his long-sought-after happy ending, Sal is going to have to confront some very bad people from his past.

In the glorious sunshine of Oxford, on a day when everyone should be celebrating, tragedy strikes when a university student is found floating in the river, dead. Probationary WPC Trudy Loveday finds herself paired with coroner Clement Ryder to investigate and it soon becomes clear that this case is not going to be easy. The witnesses all refuse to give a straight answer, each new lead sends them in a new direction and tales of other missing youngsters add further mystery to the investigation.

Hogarth is called to the scene of a suspicious death. A young woman’s body is found in the garden pond behind a project designed to get young lives back on track. But something went badly wrong the night Natalie Brigforth lost her life… because while the angel of Brookmyre House is gone forever, a killer still roams free. Natalie Brigforth was loved by all. She did the hard work of fixing broken lives while her rehab bosses took the glory – and an easy ride. Hogarth and his team learn that Natalie was liked by the residents – but not by all. One wanted her for his lover. Did ...

John Shannon is on the run, facing life in prison or death by lethal injection. Then, a bizarre text message draws him to a meeting in the dark of night. A foreigner who calls himself the Identity Man offers Shannon an incredible chance to start again: a new face, a new home, a new beginning. Soon Shannon is living a life he never dreamed possible. In a ruined city that is trying to rebuild, he finds work as a carpenter and a wood carver. He falls in love. But then all hell breaks loose....

New York Rainby Harper Stanwick, Sr. is a mystery novel set in 1920s New York City. The story follows Dennis Lament, a young man who seeks solitude and freedom but finds himself drawn into a web of intrigue and danger. Dennis Lament boards the S.S. Faraway with a firm resolve to avoid all human connections. His journey to New York, however, takes an unexpected turn when he receives a mysterious note from a supposed cousin, Amy Lament Riley. Desperate and in serious trouble, Amy begs for his help. Driven by curiosity and a sense of duty, Dennis decides to investigate. Upon arriving in New ...

Los Angeles, 1958. Killings, beatings, bribes, shakedowns - it's standard procedure for Lieutenant Dave Klein, LAPD. He's a slumlord, a bagman, an enforcer, a power in his own small corner of hell. Then the Feds announce a full-out investigation into local police corruption, and everything goes haywire. Klein's been hung out as bait, "a bad cop to draw the heat", and the heat's coming from all sides.

Brand-new stories by: Tom Abrahams, Robert Boswell, Sarah Cortez, Anton DiSclafani, Stephanie Jaye Evans, Wanjiku Wa Ngugi, Adrienne Perry, Pia Pico, Reyes Ramirez, Icess Fernandez Rojas, Sehba Sarwar, Leslie Contreras Schwartz, Larry Watts, and Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton.

For some, Barcelona is a European enchantress of nouveau architecture, fusion tapas, and fine cava. To others, it’s a Gothic labyrinth of tiny streets to lose oneself in; hashish-clouded after-hours bars to forget the time; dimly lit plazas with global bohemians squatting, prostitutes tempting. But come morning, its cold cobblestones and misty beachfronts have even darker stories to tell.

Things are going along okay with Dennis' gig at the Tishomingo Lodge & Casino in Tunica, Mississippi, "the Casino Capital of the South", until the day he looks down from the high-dive platform and witnesses a mob hit, Dixie style.

It's not the dead that seem strange to Quirke. It's the living. One night, after a few drinks at an office party, Quirke shuffles down into the morgue where he works and finds his brother-in-law, Malachy, altering a file he has no business even reading. Odd enough in itself to find Malachy there, but the next morning, when the haze has lifted, it looks an awful lot like his brother-in-law, the esteemed doctor, was in fact tampering with a corpse—and concealing the cause of death.