Best of
Hard-Boiled

2012

The Black Box -- Free Preview: The First 6 Chapters (A Harry Bosch Novel)


Michael Connelly - 2012
    riots. Harry originally investigated the murder, but it was then handed off to the Riot Crimes Task Force and never solved.Now Bosch's ballistics match indicates that her death was not random violence, but something more personal, and connected to a deeper intrigue. Like an investigator combing through the wreckage after a plane crash, Bosch searches for the "black box," the one piece of evidence that will pull the case together.Riveting and relentlessly paced, THE BLACK BOX leads Harry Bosch, "one of the greats of crime fiction" (New York Daily News), into one of his most fraught and perilous cases.

Black Jack Justice


Gregg Taylor - 2012
    I am not skittish by nature, but I know the sound of a hammer being cocked when I hear it. This one was a large calibre automatic, which meant it wasn't a cop. I turned my head as slowly and non-threateningly as I could. It was my friend with the square jaw, and his friend the .45. "Hi," he said.It was a simple enough case, but don't they always start out that way? When a pair of His and Hers private detectives get involved, the sparks start to fly and the blood begins to spill in earnest. With every shot that's fired, the hole digs a little deeper, and the list of people our sparring shamuses can trust gets shorter and shorter.Fans of Decoder Ring Theatre's long-running full-cast audio series Black Jack Justice will delight in the very first meeting between Jack Justice and Trixie Dixon, girl detective. New readers will appreciate the fast tempo, the noir banter and the classic hard-boiled feel of Black Jack Justice!

Elmore Leonard Classic 3-Book Collection: Get Shorty, Tishomingo Blues, Killshot


Elmore Leonard - 2012
    Marshal Raylan Givens, the captivating hero of the hit FX series Justified. Now three of Leonard’s best novels—Get Shorty, Tishomingo Blues, and Killshot—are together in one classic ebook collection.

A Mysterious Something in the Light: The Life of Raymond Chandler


Tom Williams - 2012
    Now, drawing on new interviews, previously unpublished letters, and archives, Tom Williams casts a new light on this mysterious writer, a man troubled by loneliness and desertion. It was only during middle age, after his alcoholism wrecked a lucrative career as an oilman, that Chandler seriously turned to crime fiction. And his legacy—the lonely, ambiguous world of Philip Marlowe—endures, compelling generations of crime writers. In this long-awaited biography, Tom Williams shadows one of the true literary giants of the twentieth century and considers how crime writing was raised to the level of art.

Speak to Me of Death: The Selected Short Fiction of Cornell Woolrich, Volume 1


Cornell Woolrich - 2012
    The first volume contains many stories that are seeing their first reprinting in book form in several years. Film noir expert Thomas Renzi has supplied an outstanding introduction to this volume, which includes many of Woolrich's best-known tales, including "Rear Window," "Marihuana," and over a dozen others. With a stunning cover by famed artist Matt Mahurin.

Night's Black Agents


Dennis O'Donnell - 2012
    It's all so straightforward at first. But then good things of day begin to droop and drouse, while night's black agents to their prey do rouse...

Dangerous Conceits


Dennis O'Donnell - 2012
    O'Donnell has been a lifelong fan of American crime writers like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane. 'Dangerous Conceits' updates the private eye novel to contemporary West Lothian and, in the person of Jack Black, provides aficionados of the genre with a new take on the legendary gumshoes of the 30s and 40s.Jack Black is single - again - a smoker and a lover of Shakespeare. He hardly drinks at all any more. He lives alone with his cat, Black Jack, listens to the blues and does humdrum private investigator work to keep the wolf from the door. That is, until the summer Grace McGuire turns up at his little office above the Chinese takeaway in Bathgate.It’s scorching. Jack is going through a dry spell. Then Grace arrives ...'I pegged her as in her early forties. She had collar-length brown hair and big puppy-dog eyes. Her nose was long, but then so was Nefertiti’s, they say. Or maybe that was Cleopatra. I can’t comment. Personally, I’ve never gone in for those ancient Egyptian babes. I know that my description makes her sound like a borzoi but, just take my word for it, the features all worked. Later, when she used it, she had one of those rare smiles that’s been described by lesser writers as ‘radiant’. Smiling, she had all the allure of the three Sirens together, the time each of them had a big magnet in one hand, a strong light in the other, and a decoy duck on her head. Her smile had all the strangeness and charm of a sub-atomic particle. An Ideal Tooth Exhibition. She also had a fine set of curves that were pleasantly wrapped in a tan V-neck top and a pair of fawn slacks. But it was her legs that were the piece de resistance, as Marcel Marceau would say - fine, shapely things that went all the way up to her tush and back down again. State of the art legs. With pins like that, you’d keep a spare pair in the cupboard under the stairs in case of accidents. She deserved one of those throaty gurgles that Roy Orbison does in Pretty Woman.'In no time Jack is up to his ears in an investigation that involves him in evangelical religion, sexual promiscuity and murder. Dangerous conceits, indeed. Jack is a modern private eye with more than a touch of the great side-of-the-mouth ‘noir’ detectives of the 30s and 40s he so admires. This is fast, funny and unputdownable.

The Subtle Art of Brutality


Ryan Sayles - 2012
    Again. But this time people are trying to kill her. Trying to burn down everything she has touched or left behind. The girl’s surrogate father feels responsible and to assuage his guilt he hires Richard Dean Buckner, former Saint Ansgar homicide detective turned private eye to ferret her out.Buckner was doing fine as a bare-knuckles detective for the PD until he was rendered “unserviceable” by a hit attempt. Early retirement doesn’t sit well with that type of man, half predator and half savior. He takes the case and all Buckner is going to need is guts, instinct and his .44 magnum to finish the job.Because in Saint Ansgar, what doesn’t kill you only makes you wish it did.

The Posthumous Man


Jake Hinkson - 2012
    Then the ER doctors revived him. It’s infatuation at first sight when he meets his nurse, Felicia Vogan, a strange young woman with a weakness for sad sacks and losers. After she helps Elliot escape from the hospital, she takes him back to her place. He’s happy to go with her, even when she leads him straight to a gang planning a million dollar heist. Does Felicia just want Elliot to protect her from the outfit’s psychotic leader, Stan the Man? Or is Elliot being set up to take the hard fall? One thing’s for sure: if he’s going to survive this long night of deceit and murder, Elliot will have to finally face himself and his own dark past.

The Thoughts of Love


Dennis O'Donnell - 2012
    When Jack Black's mother dies, he meets his ex-wife at the funeral. Penny is being stalked by a psychotic ex-lover. Jack himself falls for his mother's nurse. Then, reconciled with the local police force after a misunderstanding to do with his last case, he works with them on a bizarre murder with Masonic overtones. A lawyer gives Jack a letter written by his mother before she died and what this tells him blows him away. Meanwhile, Penny's psycho ex has escaped from an asylum and is extremely dangerous. And then a second murder takes place in Manchester, with some of the trappings of the first, but also with references to a terrible previous crime. What is going on? Love, madness and death - can Jack deal with these? And stay in love, sane and alive?