Noir Mystery Thriller

In A Suspension of Mercy, a masterpiece of noir fantasy, Highsmith revels in eliciting the unsettling psychological forces that lurk beneath the surface of everyday contemporary life.

In The Lady in the Lake, hard-boiled crime-fiction master Raymond Chandler brings us the story of a couple of missing wives - one a rich man's and one a poor man's - who have become the objects of Philip Marlowe's investigation. One of them may have gotten a Mexican divorce and married a gigolo, and the other may be dead. Marlowe's not sure he cares about either one, but he's not paid to care.

Ezekiel "Easy" Porterhouse Rawlins is an unlicensed private investigator turned hard-boiled detective always willing to do what it takes to get things done in the racially charged, dark underbelly of Los Angeles. But when Easy is approached by a shell-shocked Vietnam War veteran - a young White man who claims to have gotten into a fight protecting a White woman from a Black man - he knows he shouldn't take the case.

Spenser's out to make war, not love, as he goes after Boston's entire X-rated industry. Pretty teenager April Kyle has disappeared into the city's darkest underworld, and to rescue her, Spencer pits muscle and wit against bullets and bullies.

No one is who they seem Private Investigator Wyatt Thomas takes a seductive journey through the dark, glittering streets of New Orleans, where passion and danger collide. Wyatt is no stranger to the Crescent City’s secrets, but when a mysterious voodoo mambo draws him into the heart of the French Quarter’s underworld, he finds himself entangled in a web of deceit, lust, and murder. As the nights grow hotter, so do the stakes, and Wyatt must navigate the twisted desires of the city’s most dangerous inhabitants. But in the world of the Night People, no one is who they seem—and Wyatt ...

When crime-fighting attorney Albert Patterson is gunned down in a Phenix City, Alabama, alley in the spring of 1954, the entire town seems to pause for just a moment—and when it starts up again, there is something different about it. A small group of men meet and decide they have had enough, but what that means and where it will take them is something they could not have foreseen.

The year is 1929, and newlyweds George and Serena Pemberton arrive in the North Carolina mountains to create a timber empire, vowing to let no one stand in their way, especially those newly rallying around Teddy Roosevelt's nascent environmental movement.

Although badly scarred and down to his last kidney after the previous caper, Happy Doll is back in business. When a beguiling young woman turns up at his door, it’s Doll’s past that comes knocking. Mary DeAngelo is searching for her estranged mother, Ines Candle—a singular and troubled woman Doll once loved. The last he’d seen her she’d been near-death: arms slit like envelopes. Now, years later, Mary claims Ines is alive and recently made contact—only to disappear once again. Although his psychoanalyst would discourage it, Doll takes the case, desperate to see Ines again.

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....

Los Angeles, August 4, 1962. The city broils through a midsummer heat wave. Marilyn Monroe ODs. A B-movie starlet is kidnapped. The overhyped LAPD overreacts. Chief Bill Parker’s looking for some getback. The Monroe deal looks like a moneymaker. He calls in Freddy Otash. The freewheeling Freddy O: tainted ex-cop, defrocked private eye, dope fiend, and freelance extortionist. A man who lives by the maxim “Opportunity is love.” Freddy gets to work. He dimly perceives Marilyn Monroe’s death and the kidnapped starlet to be a poisonous riddle that only he has the guts and the brains to untangle

Michael Hudson spends the long days in prison devouring books given to him by the prison's librarian, a young woman named Anna who develops a soft spot for her best student. Anna keeps passing Michael books until one day he disappears, suddenly released after a private detective manipulated a witness in Michael's trial. Outside, Michael encounters a Washington, DC, that has changed a lot during his time locked up. But what hasn't changed is the hard choice between the temptation of crime and doing what's right.

He slowly eased back on the throttle and brought the boat to a stop on the desolate river. They zipped the large canvas bag shut and then hoisted the body over the side of the boat and watched as it slipped beneath the dark surface. Looking to the west, they could see fiery storm clouds were brewing - an eery sign of the fire storm of brutal killings and ruthless revenge to come. Detective Mac McRyan returns home to Minnesota to find the dead body of a retired police detective in the scraggly trees along the rough shores of an island in the Mississippi River.

It’s 1975, and the comic book industry is struggling, but Carmen Valdez doesn’t care. She’s an assistant at Triumph Comics, which doesn’t have the creative zeal of Marvel nor the buttoned-up efficiency of DC, but it doesn’t matter. Carmen is tantalizingly close to fulfilling her dream of writing a superhero book. That dream is nearly a reality when one of the Triumph writers enlists her help to create a new character, which they call “The Lethal Lynx”, Triumph's first female hero.

What drives someone to murder? Logan McRae's personal history is hardly squeaky clean, but now that he works for Professional Standards he's policing his fellow officers. When Detective Inspector Bell turns up dead in the drivers seat of a crashed car, it's a shock to everyone. Because Bell died two years ago. They buried him. Or they thought they did. As an investigation is launched into Bell's stabbing, Logan digs into his past. Where has he been all this time? Why did he disappear? And what's so important that he felt the need to come back from the dead?

Carleton Myatt meets Coral Musker, a naïve English chorus girl, aboard the Orient Express as it heads across Europe to Constantinople. As their relationship develops, they find themselves caught up in the fates of the other passengers and drawn into a web of espionage, murder and lies.

This collection by crime fiction master Raymond Chandler features four long stories in which private eye Philip Marlowe is hired to protect a rich old guy from a gold digger, runs afoul of crooked politicos, gets a line on some stolen jewels with a reward attached, and stumbles across a murder victim who may have been an extortionist.

Rudolf Sebestyen is missing, and Marianne Smalls is involved in an illicit affair with the shady Jonas Schmitt. Both cases converge when Dora Urban, Rudolf's beautiful and mysterious half-sister, and Lamont Smalls, Marianne's suspicious husband, hire Jack Mitchell, a hard-drinking, chain-smoking private investigator. Dora wants Jack to uncover what happened to her brother, while Lamont seeks proof of his wife's infidelity. But Dora is a vampire, in a city teeming with creatures of the night. As Jack dives deeper, he discovers that both cases are linked to vepratoga.

Juniper Song knows secrets - how to keep them and how to search them out. As a girl, noir fiction was her favorite escape, and Philip Marlowe has always been her literary idol. So when her friend, Luke, asks her to investigate a possible affair between his father and a young employee, Juniper (or "Song" as her friends call her) finds an opportunity to play detective.

Billy Edgewater is a harbinger of doom. Estranged from his family, discharged from the navy and touched by a rising desperation, he sets out hitchhiking home to East Tennessee, where his father is slowly dying. On the road, separately, are Sudy and Bradshaw, brother and sister, and a one-armed con man named Roosterfish. All, in one way or another, have their pasts and futures embroiled with D. L. Harkness, a predator in all the ways there are.

A string of mutilated bodies sees Detective Chief Inspector Whitney Walker back in action. But when she discovers the victims have all been grooming young girls, she fears a vigilante is on the loose. And while she understands the motive, no one is above the law. Once again, she turns to forensic psychologist, Dr Georgina Cavendish, to unravel the cryptic clues. But will they be able to save the next victim from a gruesome death?