Noir fiction Books

Pulp fiction.Usually when these words are uttered today, people immediately think of the Quentin Tarantino movie, which, my God, is already twenty years old. To my recollection, though, the movie did little if anything to remind people of, or help bring...

I sat there, waiting in this dull Bronx back yard, the gun in my right pocket, safety off. It was simple... wait till he was on top of me, one shot in the heart... then run across the lot to the car. Sid had an ordinary looking heap; nobody would notice...

She was an expensive call girl and spending a night with her came high. But he never figured on a price as high as murder.The photograph did justice to her generous statistics. Any private eye would enjoy tracking her down, and Hal Darling was no...

It was the figure of a girl, her arms thrust out to ward off the ripper... her body distorted, rigid with terror... her mouth open in a silent, eternal scream.Originally published in 1949.

The wheels were beginning to turn. From all parts of the country quiet, tough men slipped into the small southern coastal town and took up the final vigil.There was the arsonist, the safe blower, the boy-faced killer-there was a regiment of crack,...

Doan, a chubby, wisecracking private eye, and Carstairs, a Great Dane so huge he ought to be considered a new species, follow a trail of mayhem and confusion from Hollywood to the Mojave Desert town of Heliotrope, a place so thoroughly offensive that...

First published by Doubleday in 1932 in the depth of the Great Depression, an era whose seamy side it depicts, and only recently rediscovered, Fast One by Paul Cain explodes into real life with the story of one of the toughest characters ever to emerge...

Doan, a chubby private eye with a fondness for weak women and strong drink, and Carstairs, his enormous Great Dane sidekick, have been hired by 54-year-old but still glamorous beauty maven Heloise of Hollywood to make sure that no young lovely tries to...

Alley Girl is a hard book, cold and cruel, peopled with toughs and alcoholics, a nymphomaniac and an unfaithful wife, a savage cop and a young pervert. It is also a fine novel, written with rare and stark simplicity by the talented Jonathan Craig.

This is the story of three men under pressure-a bank teller, a salesman, and a handyman. They are neither psychopaths not professional criminals, yet together they plan to carry out the most immoral of crimes.You will detest what they do, but you will...

A Johnny Killain NovelThe mob got the word when Killain hit town-lock up your women and load your guns!Carl Thompson reached in a pocket with his free hand and tossed a glittering object across the room. Johnny caught it and looked down at part of a gold...

It was my first day in Paris but the feeling was still with me: like I was getting ready to explode, as if my guts were a lit fuse racing up to my brain.Being cooped up gets me that way, although I was camped in a big room in this swank hotel. Twelve...

Homicide Johnny West has been called in to solve the murder of Harry Waters whose newspaper columns have ruined many men. But the web of violence grows, and murder follows murder, until Johnny and his co-worker, Penny Lane, find out they are next in line.

Bill Lennox read the telegram, then traded it back to the blonde. A very nice blonde with long willowy legs and purple eyes."Tell him to go to hell!""I can't, Bill. I promised-"That's how it started. Before it finished, Bill found himself accused of...

Jim Work, a twenty-five year old just out of Korea, arrives on the California coast to attend college on the G.I. Bill, but lands himself in a minor traffic accident that leads to major trouble. Of the two people in the other vehicle, he becomes fast...

She was blonde and sleek and her smile was catlike. Our glances locked. Her name was Shannon Quinn. I had seen her once at a country-club dance with Murdoch. Rumor had it that she was a thousand-dollar whore Murdoch had imported from Las Vegas. First...

He Knew He Was Right describes the failure of a marriage caused by the unreasonable jealousy of a husband exacerbated by the stubbornness of a willful wife. As is common with Trollope's works, there are also several substantial subplots. Trollope makes...

Originally banned in the UK, this is the story of Miss Callaghan. Not of any particular Miss Callaghan, but of the hundreds of Miss Callaghans who disappear from their homes suddenly and mysteriously and are seen no more by those who knew and loved them...

This collection includes: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens • The Christmas Babe by Margaret E. Sangster • A Western Christmas by Mrs. W.H. Corning • Joe's Search for Santa Claus by Irving Bacheller • Angela's Christmas by Julia Schayer • The First...

It happened in Hotel Duarte, a bullet length from the Great White Way, where life begins at eight-forty-and often ends by midnight with a couple of murders.For instance, the murder of a dumb welterweight who took his dive-and got paid off in lead.He was...

He stands before the court. The crime: Murder in the First Degree. The victime: his wife. They said he killed her. They didn't say why.

HELP ME FOR GODS SAKELater the doctors would use these words to decipher the riddle of a perverted killer. Right now, the lipstick scrawl signaled the start of New York's greatest manhunt.

How can an elderly lady, discovered lying dead in a hammock by her great-niece and companion, be sitting up and calmly giving an interview with reporters only minutes later? That is the perplexing question that comes to the ears of debonair sleuth...

Boston Blackie isn't afraid of stepping over onto the wrong side of the law. A former jewel thief and safe cracker, a hardened criminal having served time in a California prison, he knows a lot about crime.He's an "enemy to those who make him an enemy,...

She traded hope of heaven for a paradise on earth.She was a sprite, a witch, a perpetual temptation to every man, a soul searing torment to herself, and rough was the road she traveled.First published in February 1952.

He pulled her close to him and kissed her gently. "I don't think so," he said. It was no longer important that Erica had been Ivan's mistress. He wanted her more than he had ever wanted any woman before.He let his hands slip lightly over her smoothly...

A hard-boiled mystery story featuring Stuart Bailey, tougher than a ten-minute egg. Violence, blackmail and a beautiful dame who suddenly turned up very, very dead.The book was the basis of the film entitled "I Love Trouble" with James Carter and Janet...

The knife was as familiar to his hand and as innocuous as a pencil, in spite of its razor edge. And yet earlier in the day he had closed his hand on the sharp edge and noticed with surprise that the steel had sliced painfully, if not seriously, into his...

A collection of six classic tales featuring hard-boiled ex-cop Donny Donahue, who now works for the Interstate Detective Agency. These stories ran in Black Mask magazine between 1931 and 1932. This collection was originally published in 1950.

It was a few minutes before eleven when I unlocked our door. The dumb lamp we had in the two-by-four "foyer" was on. The lamp looked like a drippy flower and cost fifty-seven bucks strictly because it was imported from Denmark. If all their lamps are...

Once a happy family man, Kealan now spends his days walking aimlessly and crashing in his friend's spare room. It never seems to matter how much he walks, because his shadow is always there. When he meets younger Valerie, an inquisitive and sensitive...

The Big Fix by Ed LacyAuthor of the 1958 Edgar Award-winning novel Room to Swing!On the night Irish Tommy Cork's murder was planned, nothing very much out of the ordinary happened. Tommy was in the ring, taking a pasting-as usual. Back to the ropes,...

It is the early 1980s, a time when air travel was uncomplicated, when people still smoked in offices, restaurants and bars. Caribbean Ice, set on St. Ursula, a British Caribbean island very near to the American and British Virgin Islands, is the second...

Set in the early 1980s, a time when air travel was uncomplicated, when people still smoked in offices, restaurants and bars, October Fury is the final novel in the St. Ursula trilogy, featuring Frank James, poet and private detective. St. Ursula is a...

It is the early 1980s, a time when air travel was uncomplicated, when people still smoked in offices, restaurants and bars. February Heat, set on St. Ursula, a British Caribbean island very near to the American and British Virgin Islands, is the first...

As Anna Delinny, a central character in A Place in Paradise says, "There are places of power on the earth. Some of great import to the entire world, others of local interest. Talk to someone who has been to Delphi. Ask what kinds of feelings the place...

It Happened on St. John is a love letter to one of the world’s loveliest and most unique communities in one of the world’s loveliest and most unique places. Known locally as Love City, St. John is the smallest and most undeveloped of the...

Mike Lantry, the tough, hard-bitten chief of World Wide Investigations, is on his way back to New York after a restful vacation when he gives a ride to a lone girl on an Indiana highway. Lantry's up to his neck in from that moment on, coming into contact...

World-Wide Investigations on Madison Avenue, New York, is the world's largest detective agency. Headed by Mike Lantry, the agency will take any case, anywhere, at any time--including some strange dealings in even stranger parts of the world. But...

"I could leave.Right now.There was something else out there.Something.I had to find it.It's time to take the first step.I wasn't meant to live like this..."Jesse Wilson is on a journey. A journey to change everything she knows. On her path she will meet...

"The steam creeps slowly out of the vents from manhole covers as night consumes the landscape of Tavarus Cove, Delaware. The night does it's best to cover the dirty deeds done dirt cheap by its favorite child, those angels with filthy souls taking to...

Two best friends. One deadly secret.Something dark and brooding stalks the mysterious Bosque nature reserve. Bird watchers fall prey to the menace and thefts of rare falcons are on the rise. But it is the body of a murdered girl discovered on the banks...

A detective with a dark side goes up against vicious serial killers in this thrilling action-packed mystery for fans of Gregg Olsen, Teresa Driscoll, and Kendra Elliot. An idyllic family. A detective with a past. And the sadistic kidnapper hell-bent on...

"Well, what can I say about Private Dick Melvin C. James? Like the man shouldn't be in the business at all. Mismatch of job a person if ever there was one. Me, I'm dedicated and love my job but James? What an attitude. No respect for the law. Too much...

A headless corpse stuffed in an unoccupied University Hospital room does not advertise good medical care for the institution. The Courier Gazette assigns Jack Sheet to write the story. Soon a series of torsos with alternating heads start appearing with...