Best of
Noir

2005

Phineas Poe: Kiss Me, Judas / Penny Dreadful / Hell's Half Acre


Will Christopher Baer - 2005
    In trade paperback and priced at $19.00, readers of the Baer will now be able to buy the trilogy in one handy volume. The novels follow antihero Phineas Poe, ex cop and his love for Jude. Together they try to make sense of their past and navigate the internal landscape he calls hell's half acre. The Phineas Poe trilogy includes Kiss Me Judas, Penny Dreadful, Hell's Half Acre

Lost Stories


Dashiell Hammett - 2005
    Even so, many of Hammett’s stories—including some of his best—have been out of the reach of anyone but a handful of scholars and collectors, until now. This essential compendium rescues 21 long-lost Hammett stories, all either never collected in an anthology or unavailable for decades. These stories appear nowhere else, and represent a variety of styles from the famous mysterysmith: his first detective fiction, humorous satires, adventure yarns, a sensitive autobiographical piece, and a Thin Man story told with photos. In addition, all stories have been restored to their original versions, replacing often wholesale cuttings with the original text for the first time. To round out this celebration of Hammett, three-time Edgar Award–winner Joe Gores has written an introduction describing how Hammett influenced literature, movies, television, and Gores’ own life.

Play Dead


Michael A. Arnzen - 2005
    Arnzen in more than a decade -- after 1994's Grave Markings, which won the Bram Stoker and International Horror Critics Guild Awards for Best First Novel -- is a depraved fusion of adrenaline-injected mystery and horror that is as brutal as it is unforgettable. Johnny Frieze is a high-rolling gambler down on his luck; he has lost everything in Vegas -- even his lucky gold tooth. Living in a homeless shelter with a misfit group of failed gamblers, career criminals, and raving lunatics, Johnny stumbles across the ultimate no-limit wager: a card game where the winner gets $1 million in cash and the losers get killed. The game is called Butcher Boy, and before it can begin, the four chosen players must create their own suit of cards by artistically "extinguishing life" and photographing the results. Once the gruesome deck is completed, the game begins in earnest -- but what happens when the enigmatic entrepreneur bankrolling the contest is playing a much larger game, with even more nefarious stakes? Set in a neon-lit metropolis where desperation and moral corruption are commonplace and the difference between life and death is mere luck, this viciously realistic look into the not-so-glamorous world of high-stakes gambling (and the sinister individuals who exist in its shadows) is both utterly repellent and addictively readable. Gambling aficionados as well as horror, mystery, and crime fiction fans are sure to enjoy this action-packed 52-chapter "novel-of-cards." If Play Dead were a poker hand, it would undoubtedly be a royal flush. Paul Goat Allen

Hellblazer: London Streets


Jamie Delano - 2005
    The London streets aren't safe, but Constantine is on the case! Includes Hellblazer chapters writtn by Delano, Azzarello, Gaiman, Ennis and Ellis.

Discovering The Maltese Falcon and Sam Spade: The Evolution of Dashiell Hammett's Masterpiece, Including John Huston's Movie with Humphrey Bogart


Richard Layman - 2005
    In its movie adaptation, it not only birthed American film noir but also ranks as one of the 100 greatest movies of all time, as selected by the American Film Institute. Now this treasury of memorabilia on Sam Spade and his creator, Dashiell Hammett, uncovers a wealth of documents and photos about the book and movie from institutional and private archives, many of which are previously unpublished and are available nowhere else. Providing far more information than any resource before it, the book delves deeply into the tale of the jeweled avian statue, including a full account of Hammett's detective career, a chronology of his life and publications, sources and notes the author used in constructing the book, and never-before-seen documents from the book's film, stage, and radio adaptations. This version has been updated to include additional contents, color photos, and an index. Available now for any audience, it will be a joy for fans of Sam Spade, Hammett, film noir, and the history of cinema and literature.

Seven Soldiers Zatanna Issue 2 of 4


Grant Morrison - 2005
    But they're sidetracked when they meet the old magician Ali Ka-Zoom, the Merlin of the Ghetto, who warns them about the threat of the Sheeda and reveals a prophecy of doom!Description taken from DC Comics' website:http://www.dccomics.com/comics/seven-...

The Adventures of Guy Noir


Garrison Keillor - 2005
    . . . But on the 12th Floor of the Acme Building, one man is still trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions: Guy Noir, Private eye."This all-new collection of Guy Noir episodes follows the intrepid detective as he solves cases no other gumshoe would touch. Garrison Keillor's private eye spoof thrills audiences every week on live public radio broadcasts of a A Prairie Home Companion. Now take Guy Noir home and enjoy an intelligent, unusual—but always funny—spin on the classic detective genre.

The Devil's Right Hand


J.D. Rhoades - 2005
    Destroyed by his experience, Keller now makes his living tracking bailjumpers for H&H, a North Carolina bail bonds company run by a reclusive, beautiful, and horribly scarred woman named Angela. In truth, Keller doesn't work bail enforcement to live, he lives to work: the only thing that breaks through the numbness is the thrill of the hunt, the sound of gunfire, the high that comes with each successful takedown.When H&H is required to track down a lifelong loser for jumping bail on a routine burglary collar, Keller has no idea how gravely events are about to spiral out of his control. He chases his quarry straight into the center of a firestorm involving a pair of local Indians blinded by rage and hell-bent to avenge their father's murder. Along the way they encounter a vicious North Carolina cop with a mean streak and very few moral boundaries. Not to mention the cop's beautiful partner Marie, caught between a newfound desire for the just-on-the-edge-of-the-law Jack Keller and her loyalty to a police department with a serious ethics problem.These people, each hurtling forward on their own individual trajectories of self-destruction, begin to intersect each other's lives in a series of volatile, escalating, and deadly events. Furiously paced and filled with unforgettable, masterfully drawn characters destined to meet in a bloody showdown which most of them will not survive, The Devil's Right Hand is a stylish, razor-edged debut novel that redefines the rules of the Southern thriller.

Batman Begins: The Visual Guide


Scott Beatty - 2005
    Full color.

Film Noir


Eddie Robson - 2005
    Dubbed 'film noir' by French critics in the 1970s, both for their heavy use of shade and black outlook, these films have fascinated critics, students, moviegoers and moviemakers ever since. Film Noir analyses the defining films of the genre, including: . The Maltese Falcon. The Big Sleep. Kiss me Deadly. The Postman Always Rings Twice Plus it profiles iconic actors, such as Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter, and legendary directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick and Orson Welles

Framed in Guilt/My Flesh is Sweet


Day Keene - 2005
    The dead woman had been killed in his car--shot through the chest--and he didn't have an alibi. Several people were there at the club when Grace Turner had called him that evening. She had asked to meet him. But he hadn't kept the meeting. Or had he? After his drinking binge of the night before, he didn't really remember. But Inspector Treech is convinced that Stanton is guilty and is out to prove it. The murdered girl was English; Stanton had served in London during World War II. And new information suggests that he had been married to Grace's best friend, Eve. Now on the eve of his Hollywood marriage to movie star Joy Parnell, Grace could have ruined his plans. It all made sense--except that Stanton had never heard of Eve!MY FLESH IS SWEETAd Connors is a down-on-his-luck pulp writer living in Mexico. But the day he witnesses Eleana Hayes run into General Estaban's car changes everything. It's not bad enough that Connors thinks he's killed the general defending Eleana's honor. It gets worse when he tries to help her find the Mexican lawyer who's been sending her money from her fugitive father--only to find his murdered body instead. Connors is in over his head fast, but there's something about Eleana that convinces him that she needs his help. Once he and Eleana escape back to America, the real mystery of just what she was really doing down in Mexico begins to haunt Connors--that and the fact that he's about to be extradited for murder! Is Eleana a damsel in distress, or is Connors just a pawn in her game?