Best of
Noir

2012

Criminal: The Deluxe Edition, Vol. 2


Ed Brubaker - 2012
    Collecting BAD NIGHT, THE SINNERS and THE LAST OF THE INNOCENT - along with short stories, behind-the-scenes pieces, art and articles, all previously uncollected. COLLECTING: CRIMINAL (2008) 4-7, CRIMINAL: THE SINNERS 1-5, CRIMINAL: THE LAST OF THE INNOCENT 1-4

The Kings of Cool


Don Winslow - 2012
    Among the most celebrated thrillers in recent memory—and now a major motion picture directed by Academy Award–winning filmmaker Oliver Stone—Savages was picked as a best book of the year by Stephen King in Entertainment Weekly, Janet Maslin in The New York Times, and Sarah Weinman in the Los Angeles Times. Now, in this high-octane prequel, Winslow reaches back in time to tell the story of how Ben, Chon, and O became the people they are. Spanning from 1960s Southern California to the recent past, The Kings of Cool is a breathtakingly original saga of family in all its forms—fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, friends and lovers. As the trio at the center of the book does battle with a cabal of drug dealers and crooked cops, they come to learn that their future is inextricably linked with their parents’ history. A series of breakneck twists and turns puts the two generations on a collision course, culminating in a stunning showdown that will force Ben, Chon, and O to choose between their real families and their loyalty to one another. Fast-paced, provocative, and wickedly funny, The Kings of Cool is a spellbinding love story for our times from a master novelist at the height of his powers. It is filled with Winslow’s trademark talents—complex characters, sharp dialogue, blistering social commentary—that have earned him an obsessive following. The result is a book that will echo in your mind and heart long after you’ve turned the last page.

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!

The Hard Bounce


Todd Robinson - 2012
    Gabriel's Home for Boys. There, he picked up a few key survival skills; a wee bit of an anger management problem; and his best friend for life, Junior. Now adults, Boo and Junior have a combined weight of 470 pounds (mostly Boo's), about ten grand in tattoos (mostly Junior's), and a talent for wisecracking banter. Together, they provide security for The Cellar, a Boston nightclub where the bartender Audrey doles out hugs and scoldings for her favorite misfits, and the night porter, Luke, expects them to watch their language. At last Boo has found a family.But when Boo and Junior are hired to find Cassandra, a well-to-do runaway slumming among the authority-shy street kids, Boo sees in the girl his own long-lost younger sister. And as the case deepens with evidence that Cassie is being sexually exploited, Boo's blind desire for justice begins to push his surrogate family's loyalty to the breaking point. Cassie's life depends on Boo's determination to see the case through, but that same determination just might finally drive him and Junior apart. What's looking like an easy payday is turning into a hard bounce--for everyone.

Where Furnaces Burn


Joel Lane - 2012
    so he can return to waking life. Pale-faced thieves gather by a disused railway to watch a puppet theatre of love and violence. Why do local youths keep starting fires in the ash woods around a disused mine in the Black Country? A series of inexplicable deaths lead the police to uncover a secret cult of machine worship. When a migrant worker disappears, the key suspect is a boy driven mad by memories that are not his own. Among the derelict factories and warehouses at the heart of the city, an archaic god seeks out his willing victims. Blurring the occult detective story with urban noir fiction, Where Furnaces Burn offers a glimpse of the myths and terrors buried within the industrial landscape.26 tales of the weird and frightening.

Cold Quiet Country


Clayton Lindemuth - 2012
    A farmer has been stabbed clean through the neck with a pitchfork. Two sets of tracks lead from the barn, and the dead man’s frantic wife exclaims her daughter is missing. Convinced it was Gale G’Wain, the orphan who worked at the farm, Bittersmith follows the vanishing footprints into the storm.Three miles away, Gale G’Wain is alone and close to dead. He’s holed up in an empty farmhouse, half-dressed and nearly dead after falling through lake ice. Innocent, but unlikely to ever stand trial in a town as corrupt as Bittersmith, he loads his gun and prepares to defend himself against the dead man’s bloodthirsty sons and the Sheriff’s Department.Set in small town Wyoming in the 70s and unfolding in a single day, Clayton Lindemuth's debut novel, Cold Quiet Country, explores small-town corruption and the lengths some people will go to exact revenge.

Ishmael Toffee


Roger Smith - 2012
    His knife put him behind bars and kept him there for twenty years as a prison gang assassin until he lost his taste for blood. Paroled, he finds himself with no money and no family. And no knife in his hand. He gets a job as a gardener at the luxurious home of a prominent lawyer and makes an unexpected friend--Cindy, the lawyer's six-year-old daughter. When Ishmael discovers that Cindy is being raped by her father he must choose: abandon the girl and walk away, or do what he does best . . . A gut-wrenching novella of violence and redemption from the award-winning author of DUST DEVILS, WAKE UP DEAD and MIXED BLOOD.BONUS CONTENT: FALLING, a previously unpublished short story.

American Death Songs


Jordan Harper - 2012
    Harper burns through prison-tatted flesh to expose his characters’ hardened, scarred but still beating hearts. And he does it with a virtuoso prose style that brews pulp panache and literary flare into pure nitroglycerin. “A harrowing, hallowing ode to those whose options boil down to a bullet, a bank or a strange stretch of highway. American Letters has found in Harper an agent worthy to take the crime fiction tradition into the 21st century.” – Hardboiled Wonderland

The Devil Doesn't Want Me


Eric Beetner - 2012
    His task: kill Mitch the Snitch. Mitch is living in witness protection and has eluded Lars for almost two decades. But changes are afoot in the family back east, and a young gun named Trent has been sent to replace the aging gun for hire.With his old boss gone, Lars realizes he has lost the desire to kill his long-time target. When things come to a head with Trent, Lars must go on the run with Mitch's teenage daughter Shaine, trying to stay one step ahead of angry and vengeful mobsters as well as his own dark past.With Trent, FBI agents, and even more hired muscle on their trail, Lars and his new sidekick must stay one step ahead of their pursuers by any means necessary, creating a cross country trail of wreckage and mayhem from Albuquerque to L.A.

Grudge Punk


John McNee - 2012
    A severed hand is on a desperate mission to ruin somebody's evening. While a mob war reaches its bloody climax, the Mayor is up to his neck in dead prostitutes.And Clockwork Joe? He just wants to be a real boy.Bizarro Press proudly presents the latest in dieselpunk-bizarro-horror-noir. This......is GrudgePunk

One Day In The Life of Jason Dean


Ian Ayris - 2012
    I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist. So it is for Jason Dean a hitman, enforcer if you like, lying in the gutter looking up at the stars. In defiance of his brutal upbringing and bullying father, Jason has learned to appreciate fine literature and classical music. At his father's insistence he learns to box from a young age and thus has ensured that he is able to contend with the brutal world he now inhabits. A story that pulls no punches as we journey with Jason through a typical day, experiencing his highs and his lows. A tale with violence and heart, of normal folk living desperate lives. The second in our Knuckle Cracking Novella series. Near to the Knuckle are proud to bring you One Day in the Life of Jason Dean by Ian Ayris, author of the critically acclaimed Abide with Me published by Caffeine Nights.

Mr Blank


Justin Robinson - 2012
    me.And now someone's trying to kill me.When everyone has a motive, everyone is a suspect, and I don't even know who all the players are. It's a race against time to figure out who wants me dead, and why, and how to prevent all the underground conspiracies, aliens, cryptids, and things that go bump in the night from throwing the world into chaos while I'm at it.Just another normal day at the office, really.

White Heat


Paul D. Marks - 2012
    Duke Rogers finds himself in a racially charged situation. The case might have to wait... The immediate problem: getting out of South Central Los Angeles in one piece during the 1992 Rodney King riots and that's just the beginning of his problems.Private investigator Duke Rogers finds an old "friend" for a client. The client's "friend," an up and coming black actress, ends up dead. Duke knows his client did it. Now, feeling guilty, he wants to find the client/killer. He starts his mission by going to the dead actress' family in South Central L.A. - and while there the Rodney King riots ignite. And while he tries to track down the killer he must also deal with the racism of his partner, Jack, and from the dead woman's brother, Warren. He must also confront his own possible latent racism - even as he's in an interracial relationship with the murder victim's dead woman's sister.

City of the Lost


Stephen Blackmoore - 2012
    Returning as a zombie after being bumped off by a rival crime boss, Joe Sunday tries to locate a talisman that can grant immortality before every other thug in Los Angeles can find it.

Hazard Yet Forward


Matt DuvallKristin Dearborn - 2012
    All proceeds from this project will benefit Donna Munro, a 2004 graduate of the program. Munro, a teacher living in St. Louis, Missouri, was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. Genres represented in the book range from horror to romance to mystery – and everything in between. Some of the notable writers in the anthology are World Fantasy Award winner Nalo Hopkinson, Bram Stoker winners Michael A. Arnzen and Michael Knost, Bram Stoker nominee Lawrence C. Connolly, ALA/YALSA Best Book for Young Adults winner Jessica Warman, Rita finalist Dana Marton, Spur award winner Meg Mims, Asimov's Reader's Award winner Timons Esaias and WV Arts and Humanities literary fellowships winner, Geoffrey Cameron Fuller.

Shadow Man: A Biography of Lewis Miles Archer


Gabriel Blackwell - 2012
    Behind the shadows thrown by "Miles Archer," his fictional detective, was a very real detective—his partner in San Francisco, Lewis Miles Archer, a private detective so private that, when he went missing in February of 1929, no one even thought to look for him. Shadow Man is the biography of the silhouette Hammett, as well as Raymond Chandler and even Ross Macdonald, eventually filled in, a man who was always there.Until he wasn't.____“Shadow Man is a stylish, metaphysical romp through a noir labyrinth. It manages to do for the hardboiled classics what Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead did for Hamlet.”—Jedediah Berry, author of The Manual of Detection“Shadow Man's project is to unnerve biography's careless assumptions about selfhood and historical knowledge. The real detective work involved in in this bright, complex, comic, melancholy critifiction about the epistemological static at the nexus of art and the rest reveals itself in the intriguing chess game the reader is asked to play on every page with the puckish meta-author.”—Lance Olsen, author of Calendar of Regrets“Borges warns us of ‘the contamination of reality by dream,’ and with that in mind, Gabriel Blackwell’s infectious book drives us out of our minds, defying quarantine, plum crazy on Plum Island. The narrative genetics of this nonfiction fiction is masterfully mosaic. Rules are all busted and bested. Shadow Man is sicker than sick but in a good way, in the best way.”—Michael Martone, author of Michael Martone and Four for a Quarter“In Shadow Man, Gabriel Blackwell stakes his claim as conductor and curator extraordinaire of shadows textual, characterological, and historical. Raising the language of noir to the nth power, and serving up a plot that might lead Ray Chandler to hang a white flag on his carriage return, Shadow Man rewards its reader richly in style, substance, and insubstance. Brace yourself to shadow Blackwell as he charts the fraught, frayed boundaries between fact and fiction, but also to lose yourself delightedly in the murky, twisting alleyways of this book.”—Tim Horvath, author of Understories and Distinguished Professor of Umbrology at the New Hampshire Institute of Art

Pins


Jessica McHugh - 2012
    Luckily, strip clubs are always looking for new blood. Eva "Birdie" Finch is fed up with the slim pickings in local employment, and the gentleman's club/bowling alley called PINS seems to be the only option left. But learning how to strip for strangers isn't Birdie's only obstacle, especially when fellow dancers start turning up dead. From Jessica McHugh, author of the steampunk adventure "The Sky: The World" and the bestselling psychological thriller "Rabbits in the Garden", PINS is a post-modern coming of age thriller certain to titillate as much as terrify with a candid look at a dancer trying to find herslef on a blood-drenched stage.

Butterfly Potion


Trent Zelazny - 2012
    His wallet and cell phone missing, he walks back to the last place he remembers being before he blacked out—the bar. Fueled by alcohol and a touch of companionship, Perry is determined to find out who rolled him, but standing in his way is an accident that happened six months earlier and the struggle his life has become since. In his search for the material things taken from him, he risks walking right past something far more precious: A new beginning. This new novella by Zelazny is dark, gripping, emotional noir at its best!

Weird Noir


K.A. LaityChristopher Irvin - 2012
    But there’s a new twist where urban decay meets the eldritch borders of another world: WEIRD NOIR.Featuring thugs who sprout claws and fangs, gangsters with tentacles and the occasional succubus siren. The ambience is pure noir but the charactersaren’t just your average molls and mugs—the vamps might just be vamps. It’s Patricia Highsmith meets Shirley Jackson or Dashiell Hammett filteredthrough H. P. Lovecraft. Mad, bad and truly dangerous to know, butirresistible all the same.

Butch Fatale, Dyke Dick - Double D Double Cross


Christa Faust - 2012
    A little lost femme, a heartbroken butch and fat roll of bills. But when the beautiful corpses start stacking up, Butch realizes she’s got enemies in high places and the Armenian mob measuring her for a plot in the Glendale Cemetery.

Bull Head


John Vigna - 2012
    After the death of his wife and children, a logger tries to survive the Thanksgiving weekend on his own. A delinquent teen's life is changed forever by a work-camp placement with a violent older boy. A truck driver seeks sanctuary from his abusive wife in a fantasy world of strip clubs and personal ads.Bristling with restlessness and brutality, these linked stories set in the Pacific Northwest catapult readers into the gritty lives of social outcasts lost in purgatories of their own making. John Vigna tempers raw and at times cruel rural masculinity with graceful prose and breathtaking tenderness to illuminate the plight of men living in small towns and backwoods who belong neither to history nor the future. A startling homage to the great Southern Gothic tradition, Bull Head is a dazzling debut that heralds a powerful and exciting new literary voice.John Vigna is an alumnus of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His fiction and non fiction have appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines. John lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with his wife, writer Nancy Lee.

Fatale, Vol. 1: Death Chases Me


Ed Brubaker - 2012
    In present day, a man meets a woman who he becomes instantly obsessed with, and in the 1950s, this same woman destroys the lives of all those who cross her path, on a quest for... what?Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' best-selling series will leave you craving more!Collecting: Fatale 1-5

Miss Darkness: The Great Short Crime Fiction of Fredric Brown


Fredric Brown - 2012
    Included in this generous collection are some hard to find gems, such as The Case of the Dancing Sandwiches, The Jabberwocky Murders and The Pickled Punks. Brown’s reputation has not diminished over the years; in fact, his following has grown since his death in 1972. First editions of his books fetch hundreds of dollars, and even the vintage paperbacks go for handsome sums. This is because his strong narrative voice and character driven stories read as fresh today as the time they were written. Better known for his crime novels (his first novel, The Fabulous Clipjoint, garnered an Edgar award) his short stories and novellas were in many ways superior. It is only that they are so difficult to track down that they are underappreciated. Time will eventually place Brown in the pantheon of revered American crime writers shared by Chandler, Hammett, Goodis and Cain. The publication of MISS DARKNESS marks the 40th year of Fredric Brown’s passing and at last pays ample tribute to his treasured short fiction.

Undead on Arrival


Justin Robinson - 2012
    Unfortunately for the scumbag who killed him, Novak will keep on cracking skulls and breaking bones until he finds the piece of trash that set him up, or is turned into a walking sack of rotten meat. With Undead On Arrival, Justin Robinson gives us a hard boiled zombie tale, and one of the most brutally compellingly examinations of the living dead you’ll ever read.No Cure. No Hope. No Mercy.

Finn's Golem


Gregg Taylor - 2012
    It was a good face. Tired, I guess. Fortyish, but firm. Some grey around the temples, but nothing that you noticed right away. Good jaw line. Could use a shave, but wasn't likely to get one. A man, taken for all in all. I had only one objection to the face in the mirror. I couldn't remember ever seeing it before in my life." When private detective Drake Finn wakes up in the remains of his office with an impact wound on his head and a gaping hole where his memory used to be, it's pretty clear that he's up to his neck in his own special brand of trouble. A beautiful client that he's never met, a shady confederate he seem to have already sold her out to, and the forces that govern law, order and all that officially exists hovering in the wings, ready to erase him at a wrong move. And if that weren't enough, the smoking plasma cannon in his hand suggests he's probably carrying a murder weapon. Good times. Equal parts noir detective story and speculative fiction thriller, Finn's Golem is a fast-paced one-two punch from the author of Black Jack Justice and the Tales of the Red Panda adventure series.

Incognito: The Classified Edition


Ed Brubaker - 2012
    Incognito! Collecting both Incognito and its sequel Incognito: Bad Influences along with many behind-the-scenes extras, previously unseen illustrations and even a few articles, this is the edition you want on your bookshelf!Collecting: Incognito 1-6, Incognito: Bad Influences 1-5

Roachkiller and Other Stories


Richie Narvaez - 2012
    Narvaez, a board member of the Mystery Writers of America, New York Chapter, and exciting new voice in noir . . .“If there is any justice in the world, [R. Narvaez] should become a giant on the literary noir scene within the next couple of years.” —Anthony Neil Smith, author of Yellow Medicine, on the story “Roachkiller”"'Roachkiller" is an accomplished debut from an author in full and firm control of his voice. Narvaez is definitely a name to watch."—Eva Dolan, Crime FactoryA pregnant single mother who becomes a numbers runner in 1970s Brooklyn; an ex-con fighting against insurmountable odds not to kill again; a middle-aged tax lawyer who’s discovered the secret to happiness—at any cost: these are just a few of the hard-luck characters you’ll meet in Roachkiller and Other Stories, the debut collection of short stories from exciting noir writer R. Narvaez. Included are 10 hard-boiled tales, many with a dash of dark humor. Get-rich schemes gone violently awry. A slacker detective far out of his depth. A reformed criminal who can’t get past his killer instincts. The action moves from Brooklyn to Puerto Rico, from the ’70s to the near future, from deadly divorces to homicidal hipsters. Narvaez travels down the dimly lit side streets of noir you’ve never seen before.ContentsIn the Kitchen with Johnny Albino JuracánRoachkillerGhostDSanta’s Little HelperUnsynchronicityIbarra Goes DownWatching the IguanasRough Night in TorontoZinger“Juracán” is also available as an ebook single under the title “Hurricane”!“Plenty of good surprises [in this book]: R. Narvaez in ‘Juracán’ tells a story set in Puerto Rico among the legends of the Tainos, stolen artifacts, double- and triple-crosses, uneasy justice.”—Manuel Ramos, author of King of the Chicanos, on the collection Indian Country Noir“Hilarious and memorable.”—Kirkus Reviews, on the story “Hating Holly Hernandez” in the collection You Don’t Have a Clue"Hardboiled prose, noir sensibility, and all very effective. Check it out."—Bill Crider, author of the Sheriff Dan Rhodes seriesAuthor BioNuyorican writer R. Narvaez was born and raised in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. His fiction has been published in Mississippi Review, Murdaland, Street Magazine, Thrilling Detective, Indian Country Noir, Long Island Noir, Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery, and You Don’t Have a Clue: Latino Mystery Stories for Teens. His short story "Roachkiller" was selected as a Distinguished Mystery Story in Best American Mystery Stories 2008, edited by George Pelecanos. He blogs at Nuyorican Obituary.

City of Heretics


Heath Lowrance - 2012
    Before Crowe can enjoy his revenge he has to track down a brutal murderer cutting a swath through the city—ultimately leading Crowe to confront a bizarre secret society of serial killers masquerading as a Christian splinter-group.

Herniated Roots


Richard Thomas - 2012
    Herniated Roots is filled with desperate characters that could be someone you know in these hard times: sexy pool hustlers, husband and wife teams, spurned lovers. In these stories you'll read about a payoff with counterfeit bills and things that may or may not be happening. Thomas' fiction will grab you hard and leave you wanting more.TABLE OF CONTENTS:UnzippedYour Enemies Will Devour YouA Bird in the HandReleasedHerniated RootsSeeing RedGatewaySay Yes to PleasureTerrapin StationDaybreakThree MistakesDescentThe Jenny StoreTinkering With the MoonKiss OffDyer

Without a Heartbeat


Stuart Meczes - 2012
    Until now. The year is 1872. A darker, more unforgiving Alliance is working in the shadows, struggling to keep order on the streets of London. Meanwhile in Ireland, a young girl is about to take up a position as scullery maid in the sinister Oakley Manor. It is a decision that will alter her life forever and send her on a path of destruction and death. A path that leads right to the Alliance.

Shotgun Honey Presents: Both Barrels


Ron Earl PhillipsPeter Farris - 2012
    Featuring stories from: Patti Abbot, Peter Farris, Trey R. Barker, Hector Acosta, Cameron Ashley, Ray Banks, Frank Bill, Nigel Bird, Jen Conley, Paul D. Brazill, Thomas Pluck, Garnett Elliott, Matthew C. Funk, Chris F. Holm, Glenn Gray, Naomi Johnson, Nik Korpon, Kieran Shea, Julia Madeleine, Joe Myers, Andrew Nette, Mike Oliveri, Dan O'Shea, Tom Pitts, Keith Rawson, Holley West, Frank Wheeler Jr., Jim Wilsky and Steve Weddle.

Redheads Die Quickly and Other Stories


Gil Brewer - 2012
    Cain. He spent most of his life in the Tampa Bay area, where he also set most of his fiction. Like his characters, he was a victim of his own weaknesses, dying as a result of the alcoholism that plagued his whole adult life. Brewer published prolifically under various pseudonyms and in a variety of niche genres including mystery, romance, and pornography. Over the course of his career, he published more than 100 short stories and 50 novels, including A Taste for Sin, Satan Is a Woman, and The Girl from Hateville. He is known for his everyday characters--often underdogs, frequently downtrodden, and desperate to get ahead in life--who ultimately succumb to their own weaknesses and desires. Brewer revolutionized the availability of reading-as-entertainment for the American people by helping to exploit a new market: the paperback original. Many of his novels, including the bestselling 13 French Street, have recently been reissued for a new audience. However, Redheads Die Quickly and Other Stories is the first collection of his short fiction. Because his work was published in a large number of pulp magazines, and because he regularly didn't publish stories under his own name, Brewer's fans--and fans of hard-boiled noir fiction in general--have often been frustrated in their efforts to find the work of this mid-century American crime writer. David Rachels has sifted through the Brewer papers at the University of Wyoming, thumbed thousands of publications, and tracked down rare pulp magazines on eBay, to create the first-ever authoritative list of Brewer's short stories, with the best featured in a single volume.

Nerve Zero


Justin Robinson - 2012
    Few in Hinden, clouded jewel of a fallen empire, will even look him in the eye.Drawn into crime and mystery by Ausiel Montoya, an old itch, Ramirez tells himself he's floating through Hinden's steel nest of assassins, pscyhos and cultists because of what the money she promised can buy him - years off his indenture.But as he delves deeper into the heart of his wretched homeworld he finds the secret she's carrying is as big as the secret at core of Hinden. And just as dangerous.

Salton Sea


George McCormick - 2012
    "These are stories of the American West, a 21st century West where everyone works a shit job; whose denizens know all too well that the dreams they've dreamt of that place are just that, dreams; where the natural world has all but disappeared--often because we refuse to look up and see it. Like the inland sea that gives this collection its name, whose algae blooms 'cumulous, bloody forms just under the surface, ' there is beauty in their ruin."--Bayard Godsave"George McCormick's writing as clear and direct as a fast-moving river, but the lives of his characters never run straight. As his narrator tells us, 'In the West what we love most are lies. What we love are images of a stampede, of animals running; of what we think are the right stories of stealing away.' Don't let these marvelous stories slip past you."--Jesse Lee Kercheval

Blackwater Moon


B. Michael Radburn - 2012
    Andy Walker, son, lover and an ex-soldier, knows tragedy is only ever a heartbeat away.When an inmate escapes from the prison farm upriver and abducts Nathan, a child Andy has vowed to protect after losing his own son years before, Andy Walker discovers that the escapee is a dark figure from his past, the devil who changed his life, the man who introduced him to 'The Game'.

Shadowlands


Erin Farwell - 2012
    Haunted by nightmares of the Great War both waking and sleeping, Cabel Evans lives in self-imposed isolation at his family's summer home in St. Joseph, Michigan, until a face from the past intrudes. A fellow soldier, one who served under Cable, needs help. His teenage daughter, Kitty, was found floating in the river. He wants Cable to find the murderer. Coerced by a debt that no amount of money can repay, Cable begins an investigation, ushering in his reluctant return to society. From the innocent distractions of the Silver Beach Amusement Park to the dark enticements of a Chicago speakeasy, Cabel must fight through the shadows of his past as he searches for the truth about Kittie's death. Answers lead to more questions, and as the body count rises, Cable must finally face his most dreaded memory in the town where it took place: Chicago, Capone's domain, where violence and corruption are currency and everyone is a pawn in someone else's game. What began as a chance to repay a debt has become an opportunity for redemption. Yet just as Cabel realizes that he wants to live, someone else wants him dead. Caught between the darkness within and the darkness without, he struggles for salvation. Will Cabel find his way back into the light, or will the Shadowlands claim him forever?

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.

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.

American Noir: 11 Classic Crime Novels of the 1930s, 40s, & 50s


Robert Polito - 2012
    CainThey Shoot Horses, Don’t They? by Horace McCoyThieves Like Us by Edward AndersonThe Big Clock by Kenneth FearingNightmare Alley by William Lindsay GreshamI Married a Dead Man by Cornell WoolrichThe Killer Inside Me by Jim ThompsonThe Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia HighsmithPick-Up by Charles WillefordDown There by David GoodisThe Real Cool Killers by Chester Himes

Bar Scars


Nik Korpon - 2012
    No one in Bar Scars gets away clean. In Korpon’s Baltimore, whiskey is thicker than blood and the most important question is where to hide the body. It doesn’t matter that these are the normal people you see every day, because whether they’re from a broken bottle of beer or the jagged edge of broken dreams, these scars will always shine through.

New Haven Blues


Bard Constantine - 2012
    He has a load of debt over his head, the Mob on his back, and half a bottle of Jack in his system. And that's just the start of his day.When a mystery lady enters his office with a load of cash to recover some stolen goods, he doesn't think twice about taking it on. After all, Mick’s business is trouble. And when business is trouble, then business is good. But when the stolen goods turn out to be the missing leg of a beautiful but deadly crime boss, Mick's problems get a lot worse. He's pulled neck-deep in a conspiracy that involves mobsters, femme fatales, an android with a murderous streak, and even the mayor of New Haven.He'll have to tackle the case with more than just sarcasm and his seven-shot revolver. It will take unlikely allies and quick thinking to stay one step ahead of catching a case of the New Haven Blues.

Hilda's Big Day Out: A Short Story


Allan Guthrie - 2012
    It's a tale of violence, abduction, and pilchards, told from the perspective of a Dandie Dinmont terrier called Hilda, who's whisked away from a deserted Edinburgh beach by a skinny stranger on New Year's Day.(word count: 2640; 10/11 Kindle pages)Also included are three bonus storiesYOUR MOTHER SHOULD KNOW was commissioned as part of Nigel Bird and Chris Rhatigan's PULP INK anthology. It's the story of Southern teen from a repressed background who has issues with her mother and a boyfriend she wants to impress. Unfortunately, her attempt to impress him doesn't work out as planned.(word count: 1370; 5/6 Kindle pages)BYE BYE BABY was commissioned by Victim Support Scotland for their SHATTERED: EVERY CRIME HAS A VICTIM anthology. The story's narrated by Mrs Wilson, whose young son, Bruce, has disappeared without trace. She's grief-stricken and angry and a little drunk, but there's something deeper and more heartbreaking than initially meets the eye of the detectives who pay her a visit. This is the original story that spawned the author's Top Ten Kindle novella of the same name.(word count: 2670; 10/11 Kindle pages)CALL ME, I'M DYING was commissioned by Busted Flush Press for A HELL OF A WOMAN: AN ANTHOLOGY OF FEMALE NOIR, edited by Megan Abbott. A couple having a meal on their wedding anniversary are not what they seem. An unusual phone call helps reveal the truth, but is it too late? (word count: 3680; 15 Kindle pages)Total word count: 10360; 41 Kindle pages.Praise for Allan Guthrie's TWO-WAY SPLIT"Seek him out and buy his book." Ian Rankin, creator of Inspector John Rebus and author of THE COMPLAINTS"Excellent." George Pelecanos, author of THE CUT"In the tradition of Irvine Welsh and Ian Rankin, Allan Guthrie chronicles life in the underbelly of Edinburgh with dazzling grace. TWO-WAY SPLIT is a hard-edged, fast-paced noir thriller with outstanding dialogue and plenty of unforgettable bad guys. It's Scottish crime fiction with a unique American hard-boiled twist." Jason Starr, author of THE PACK"With razor-sharp characterisation and an evocative sense of place, the novel's pace never relents: the supremely damaged characters that Guthrie conjures up are seldom let off the hook, and stew throughout in their fetid juices. Dark and splendid." The Guardian"...a memorable and stunning and pitch-perfect debut and one you should grab forthwith. I can't remember a first novel this good in a long, long time." Mystery ScenePraise for the novella BYE BYE BABY, a Top Ten Kindle Bestseller"The approach is so fresh that it makes the whole thing feel like the first time I've read a police story" Do Some Damage"A story that moves quickly, in short chapters of crisp prose, with plenty of plot turns to hold the attention, and characters you can love and others you can hate... Like Guthrie's full-length novels, Bye Bye Baby is sly, noir as all hell (more noir than some, actually), and it just might bring a tear of pity to your eyes. It's a police procedural filled with incident and back story, and man, what an ending." Detectives Beyond Borders "...a dark, clever, funny and sad story which races along to reach a smart conclusion. A tough and lovely slice of the hard side of life." You Would Say That, Wouldn't You?About the author:Allan Guthrie is an award-winning Scottish crime writer.

Gumbo Ya-Ya: Stories


Les Edgerton - 2012
    The characters in these stories range from a man who beds his best friend's girlfriend, to a college football player who discovers his youthful machismo disappearing when he faces a drunk with a revolver in hand. Other characters include a newly-widowed man who tries to honor his deceased wife, a boy who abets his grandfather's suicide, a convict who achieves freedom behind bars, and several men who are unsure about themselves with the women they're with.Included are two essays. In one essay, Edgerton inveighs against the current climate of censorship and political correctness, and in the other provides an excerpt from an as-yet unpublished memoir.The NY Times Book Review compared Edgerton's writing favorably to Raymond Carver with his first collectionSeveral of the stories were published in prestigious literary magazines and nominated for prizes, one appeared in Houghton-Mifflin's Best American Mystery Stories, 2001, and another story was included in the inaugural issue of the crime noir magazine, Murdaland and in the inaugural edition of Flatmancrooked. One of the essays was delivered as an address at Vermont College.The stories in Gumbo Ya-Ya characters living on the fringes of society. These folks have never met Ozzie and Harriet.

Conversations with James Ellroy


James Ellroy - 2012
    Conversations with James Ellroy covers a series of interviews given by Ellroy from 1984 to 2010, in which Ellroy discusses his literary contribution and his public and private image.Born Lee Earle Ellroy in 1948, James Ellroy is one of the most critically acclaimed and controversial contemporary writers of crime and historical fiction. Ellroy's complex narratives, which merge history and fiction, have pushed the boundaries of the crime fiction genre: American Tabloid, a revisionist look at the Kennedy era, was Time magazine's Novel of the Year 1995, and his novels L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia were adapted into films. Much of Ellroy's remarkable life story has served as the template for the personal obsessions that dominate his writing. From the brutal, unsolved murder of his mother, to his descent into alcohol and drug abuse, his sexual voyeurism, and his stints at the Los Angeles County Jail, Ellroy has lived through a series of hellish experiences that few other writers could claim.In Conversations with James Ellroy, Ellroy talks extensively about his life, his literary influences, his persona, and his attitudes towards politics and religion. In interviews with fellow crime writers Craig McDonald, David Peace, and others, including several previously unpublished interviews, Ellroy is at turns charismatic and eloquent, combative and enigmatic.

Noir Nation No. 2


Eddie Vega - 2012
    2 is rich with stories that tell of being stopped at a tense Israeli checkpoint, a man reflecting on the death of his sadistic mother while getting a tattoo, hunting jaguars in the Chimalapas jungle, a fatal conversation between a married couple on a Japanese mountain cliff, the consummation of a macabre wedding in Tangiers, a German psychopath who thinks himself a werewolf, a missing prostitute in Cambodia’s red light district, a Boston businessman trying to survive a murderous economy, barroom pickups that turn deadly, soldiers captured in World War II taking grisly revenge on their guards, the renovation of a theater that hides a crime, a pistol-packing Harlem grandmother who fends for her young, a road trip from New Orleans to Vancouver that ends in a Pulp Fiction style shootout, and hitchhikers who should have kept hiking.Contributors hail from no less than sixteen countries: Finland, Japan, Australia, Thailand, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, Israel, Cuba, Canada, Columbia, Puerto Rico, South Africa, Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom.Entries include stories by classic noir writers such as Edogawa Rampo, considered by many the father of Japanese crime fiction; Paul Calderon, an actor who appears regularly on the television show Law & Order and who played Paul the bartender in the film Pulp Fiction; and first-time authors Mary Therese Gattuso, Hubert Osprey, and Pierce Loughran.Afficionados of hardboiled crime noir will see new works by Nick Arvin, Ray Banks, Paul Calderon, Atar Hadari, Sophie Jaff, Susan Lercher, Julia Madeleine, Court Merrigan, Joe L. Murr, Andrew Nette, Thomas Pluck, Victor Quintas, Stephen D. Rogers, Ulrike Rudolf, Bob Thurber, Ruben Varona, Corinna Underwood, and Tom Vater.The issue also contains an interview with Madison Smartt Bell talking about blowing his knees with Tae Kwon Do and the influence on his fiction by Harry Crews, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and Dostoyevsky. And darkly disturbing entries from 400-year-old London’s Criminal Court logs that show how little has changed in the human drive to murder, maim, and enslave others.Tattoo photos by Miguel Angel, Madeline Keller-Yunes, Julia Madeleine, Ilya Shchanikov, Shaireproductions.com, Aroon Thaewchatturat, and Chris Willis.Translations by Andrew Kirk, Rowena Galavitz, Mary Tannert, and Eddie Vega.

Once Upon a Midnight Noir (Midnight Louie and Delilah Street stories)


Carole Nelson Douglas - 2012
    From Sam Spade's "black bird"--the priceless Maltese Falcon--to Poe's "The Raven," Louie and Delilah keep up with their noted detective forebears.Stories published previously in anthologies are collected here for the first time: "Bogieman" from Unusual Suspects; "Butterfly Kiss" from The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance 2; "The Riches That There Lie" from Poe's Lighthouse. Cover and interior illustrations by author.

New York City Noir: The Five Borough Set


Tim McLoughlin - 2012
    Rozan, "Queens Noir, " edited by Robert Knightly, and "Staten Island Noir, " edited by Patricia Smith.

Worst Enemies (A Penns River Novel)


Dana King - 2012
    Two in little over a week is almost too much for the police force to handle. The assigned detectives—Ben Dougherty, a former MP and Penns River native, and retired Pittsburgh cop Willie Grabek—find links to bind the two cases, but their investigation is complicated by the involvement of private investigator Daniel Rollison, a retired spy on a suspect’s payroll who is really working for himself. Pittsburgh mob boss Mike Mannarino also lives in Penns River and has more than a passing interest in the case. The two cops’ savvy competes with the limitations of their small town’s resources and the interference of Rollison and Mannarino in a story that shows identifying a killer and proving it are separate things.

R.I.P Robbie Silva


Tony Black - 2012
    Before long Jed is back to blagging ― with Gail in tow.But Jed has a past, and Gail has a secret about her gangster father that she wants to keep under wraps.One week in the Scottish capital for Jed and Gail turns into a bloody rollercoaster ride that leads straight to Hell.

Dime Detective


Randy Chandler - 2012
    Something very dark and deadly lurks in the lush shadows of the sleepy Florida town and if he can't unmask the killer soon, others close to Joe will die. Working on a powerful client's dime, Joe Dall's first case could be his last.EDITORIAL REVIEWS"The new breed of retro authors isn't getting paid by the word and, therefore, isn't padding thin stories; instead, they're crafting their books with considerable care and quality, and this novel is every bit a winner. Chandler introduces PI Joe Dall in a slick, atmospheric work that captures the underbelly of the 1950s with a sharp eye for detail and a flair for the sinister." --Booklist"To find a wonderful example of hardboiled detective noir today, you need not look any further than Randy Chandler's latest novel Dime Detective ... Dime Detective is both an homage and a love letter to the genre, but in many ways, an interesting and original departure." --Walt Hicks, Hellbound Times"With the publication of his latest novel, Randy Chandler gives modern readers a truly wonderful taste of a bygone age complemented by today's views on women and minorities ... From Dot Barker, a kind of big sister, to Valentine Cooper and her shotgun, Chandler's characters go beyond the stereotypical dames, dolls, and broads that filled the pulps for a cast of strong, multidimensional, and entertaining characters. Readers can only hope to see them again in a sequel." --ForeWord Reviews

Unquiet Dreams: A Murmuration of Unsettling Tales


K.A. Laity - 2012
    Laity. There's something for everyone who enjoys being disturbed whilst reading.“Kate Laity’s Unquiet Dreams is the long, deep plunge in the coldest quarry in the woods; the lingering look under the rotting wood at all the writhing life there; the stare into the abyss until one realizes something is staring back.” ~ S. R. Bissette

The Midnight Promise


Zane Lovitt - 2012
    John Dorn is a classic gumshoe. His woman has left him, he lives in his office, and he drinks too much. His one friend, a lawyer named Demetri, hands Dorn an infinite supply of hopeless cases and lost causes, to which Dorn, ever the champion of the underdog and the oppressed, is drawn to “as a sledgehammer is to a kneecap.” A superlative work of hardboiled literary detective fiction, The Midnight Promise wonderfully evokes the underbelly of contemporary Melbourne, its battlers, its hard men, its victims, and its ill-fated heroes.

Last Fair Deal Gone Down


Ace Atkins - 2012
    The story was rescued from an old floppy disc and first published in 2008, in a special, 10th anniversary edition of Crossroad Blues. To Atkins' surprise, that edition earned an Edgar Award nomination for the forgotten Nick Travers tale. The story shows Nick at his best: in New Orleans, at JoJo's Blues Bar, helping an old friend, challenging the powerful, and getting in way over his head.

Piggyback


Tom Pitts - 2012
    When two young girls disappear with a trunk-load of pot, unaware that their payload has been packed with an extra five kilos of cocaine, a lovable loser persuades a sociopathic killer to pursue them across Northern California in a violent, twisted goose-chase that ends in a horrific place none of them could have forseen.

Long Way Down


Tony Black - 2012
    Fresh from jail, and attracting the attention of a new breed of Irish gangster, Barry is treading a fine line between his past and the activities of present-day Edinburgh crimelord, Boaby 'Shakey' Stevens. Dury knows Barry has put a time-bomb round his neck and if he can't defuse the situation the consequences for his old friend don't bear thinking about. As the clock ticks Dury finds himself sliding the Long Way Down a winding spiral of tension and despair as he tries to save Barry from his own impending destruction at the hands of those who know brutality is a way of life.Long Way Down is a 14,000 word novella from the author of the Random House UK Gus Dury series: Paying for It, Gutted, Loss, and Long Time Dead.

The Princess of Felony Flats


Bill Cameron - 2012
    In “The Princess of Felony Flats,” a mysterious dwarf makes a risky play for the statuesque consort of a drug kingpin in a hardboiled retelling of a classic fairy tale.Nominated for the 2011 Short Story Dagger Award.

Trinity


Kristin Dearborn - 2012
    But for Val, his troubles are just beginning. His girlfriend’s State Trooper brother comes after him with a shotgun, his mother Caroline has been diagnosed with a mysterious form of terminal cancer, and a mutilated corpse is found on the road outside his house.And there’s something more…something…unnatural out in the desert…something that is not human watches and waits, luring Val deeper and deeper into a terrifying mystery that may very well be tied to otherworldly intelligence…and tied to Val himself. To find the truth Val must delve into nightmares he’d rather forget, horrors he’d rather not know, and into places where there is nowhere to hide.We are not alone. There is no escape from the truth. No escape from...TRINITY.

Dark City Blue


Luke Preston - 2012
    A fistful of people are murdered, fifteen million dollars is stolen and detective Tom Bishop is stuck in the middle. When he hits the street, every clue points in the same direction – his colleagues in a police department demoralised by cutbacks and scandals. Hunted, alone and with no place left to turn, Bishop embarks on a hellish journey down into the gutters where right and wrong quickly become twisted and problems are solved with gunfire and bloodshed. Over the next two days, Tom Bishop will be cornered. He will be beaten. He will bust into prison. He will shoot at police. He will team up with violent criminals. He will become one of them. He will break every rule in the book, chasing a lead nobody else will go near down a rabbit hole of corruption, murder and buried secrets. Will Bishop become the very monster he set out to destroy? A modern hard-boiled tale that unfolds at a relentless pace, Dark City Blue is Serpico, if Serpico snorted a fistful of cocaine and hung out with Lee Marvin. “Dark City Blue is a freight train of a thriller crashing through some madhouse city night while a bomb’s ticking down to zero. It’s the cage fighting equivalent of a police procedural: violent, gaudy, and packing heat.” – Trent Jamieson, author of the Death Works trilogy

When it all Comes Down to Dust


Barry Graham - 2012
    Frank's not a client, but a long time ago he did unspeakable things to children - and Laura was one of them. Now Frank is being released on parole, and they will both learn that their lives are still intertwined. Their story will end in a place even darker than it began in a shattering noir novel of suspense, sex, violence, love and death in the urban desert of Phoenix, Arizona.

Gunshots in Another Room: The Forgotten Life of Dan J. Marlowe


Charles Kelly - 2012
    Dan J. Marlowe (1914-1986), a creator of callous criminal characters, was one of the finest paperback suspense novelists of the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, horror mega-author Stephen King dedicated a book to him. Marlowe’s life was like his fiction: full of dark drama and strange twists. In the early 1960s, Marlowe befriended bank robber, Al Nussbaum, who partnered with murderous sociopath Bobby “One-Eye” Wilcoxson. Gunshots in Another Room: The Forgotten Life of Dan J. Marlowe interweaves the stories of Nussbaum, who became a mystery-story writer, Wilcoxson, who committed a savage murder after being released from prison, and Marlowe, who, stricken with amnesia, was haunted by the ghosts of his past, some of whom roamed the seamy world of kinky sex. Book contains 16 photos.

We're Going to Die Here, Aren't We?


Eirik Gumeny - 2012
    Originally published in a variety of journals ranging from Thieves Jargon to Jersey Devil Press, these stories are every bit as insane and hilarious as Gumeny's longer works.Opening with a doorbell and an existential debate, and ending with an all-out war between cereal-box evangelists and French mimes, this collection is a zany, darkly comic ride through office parks and human hearts.WE'RE GOING TO DIE HERE, AREN'T WE? includes the acclaimed short "The Astrophysicist" and the Pushcart-nominated story "114."

Embers of the Raven


Chris Paton - 2012
    Nissimaaq, the hunter, enlists the help of a northern dwarf, Mikissok, and his raven to return the children to their family before the turn of winter.Inspired by Greenlandic mythical beings, this short Christmas story captures the dramatic winter landscape of Greenland with a festive twist for the holidays."Embers of the Raven" is the first of 3 stories set in Greenland. "Ravenmind", story 2, is also available on Kindle. "Sedna's Servant", a full-length novel, will be available in 2016.