Tao's cut off every means of escape, and he's persuaded Carver to join him...for real this time.Collecting Point Blank #1-5, Sleeper Season One #1-12, Sleeper Season Two #1-12, Coup D’Etat: Sleeper #1 and material from Coup D’Etat: Afterward #1,

    Sam Russo, self-named and self-styled, would follow in the hard-boiled footsteps of Sam Spade, if he was hard-boiled. Up to his hocks in the murders of three young jockeys with both local cops and the track turning a blind eye, Sam is a closer. He's coming home if it kills him. Race horses, a gorgeous sassy dame, the Season at Saratoga, what more could a PI want? To become the "owner" of a dog named Jane who is smarter than he is. Sam is Jane's partner. Sam is the human half who gets the jobs that Jane solves.

    Few know these characters—and their creators—better than Sarah Weinman. One of today’s preeminent authorities on crime fiction, Weinman asks: Where would bestselling authors like Gillian Flynn, Sue Grafton, or Tana French be without the women writers who came before them? In Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives, Weinman brings together fourteen hair-raising tales by women who—from the 1940s through the mid-1970s—took a scalpel to contemporary society and sliced away to reveal its dark essence. Lovers of crime fiction from any era will welcome this deliciously dark tribute to a largely forgotten generation of women writers.

    "The Dashiell Hammett Megapack" collects 20 early and rare stories by the famous mystery writer, plus one poem.Included in this volume are: AFRAID OF A GUNARSON PLUSTHE NEW RACKETBODIES PILED UPDEATH ON PINE STREETTHE MAN WHO KILLED DAN ODAMSMIKE, ALEC, OR RUFUSNIGHT SHOTSNIGHTMARE TOWNONE HOURTHE ROAD HOMERUFFIAN'S WIFETHE SECOND-STORY ANGELTHE TENTH CLUEWHO KILLED BOB TEAL?ZIGZAGS OF TREACHERYTHE WAGES OF CRIMENIGHT SHADETHE PARTHIAN SHOTIMMORTALITYCURSE IN THE OLD MANNER

    Dark, spastic poetry from the gutter of the mind.

    Ida clings to her dream of returning to New York while weathering storms both meteorological and emotional, and comes to understand that nobody's luck—even hers—is all bad.Claudia Zuluaga's fiction has appeared in Narrative Magazine, Lost Magazine, JMWW, Linnaean Street, and the Best of the Web series. Zuluaga is a lecturer in the English department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY) in New York City.

    Beginning with silent, German, and French films that were early influences on the genre, through to seminal works such as Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and Vertigo, you’ll make your way to the present day via Chinatown, Pulp Fiction, Heat,Memento, and the recent cult favorite Drive. Entries include posters, tons of rare stills, cast/crew details, quotes from the films and from critics, and analyses of the films. Film director, film noir scholar, and Taxi Driverscreenwriter Paul Schrader provides the introduction to this feast of noir worship. Populated by the genre’s most revered directors like Hitchcock, Wilder, Welles, Polanski, Mann, and Scorsese, the book also pays homage to its iconic faces such as those of Mitchum, Bogart, Hayworth, Bergman, Grant, Bacall, Crawford, Nicholson, Pacino, and so many more.

    Left with virtually nothing but his failing ranch, Daniel takes it upon himself to seek out those responsible for his lover’s death, experiencing puzzling new relationships along the way, including repeat encounters with a ghostly coyote that leads him to the final stop on his odyssey for revenge.PRAISE:"A Wind of Knives dusts off the classic western’s most enduring motifs and gives them a shine. With no lack of gunplay and bloodshed, the book also has heart and intelligence. In short, Kurtz delivers an intense, gritty, and moving story that takes a new look at the Old West." –Lee Thomas, Bram Stoker Award and Lambda Literary Award-winning author of The German and Ash Street“Many Westerns have explored the theme of revenge, but few have done so as provocatively as Ed Kurtz’s A Wind of Knives. And certainly none have approached it in quite the same way. On its surface, this is a familiar story: after his lover is brutally murdered, farmer Daniel Hays seeks revenge. The difference, from the start, is Daniel’s lover is… was… a man. And in Texas during the Civil War, justice for the slaying of a ‘sodomite’ is not a priority for the law.“But if switching up gender roles in an otherwise traditional Western was all A Wind of Knives offered, it would be thin gruel. Kurtz gives us much more than that—sympathetic characters skillful plotting, and most notably a moving and insightful meditation on love and loyalty.” —Heath Lowrance, author of City of Heretics"A western must be gritty and raw. The story must embrace not only the manifest destiny of the frontier but the loneliness of the land. Ed Kurtz does all this and more with A Wind of Knives. His rancher possesses a spirit for vengeance (if not justice) that drag readers deeper into the tale while the pages smell of gunsmoke." –Steve Berman, editor of the Wilde Stories annual series"Daniel Hays is one of the most interesting characters to cross the western terrain." --Edward A. GraingerAbout the Author:Ed Kurtz is the author of BLEED, CONTROL, DEAD TRASH, and A WIND OF KNIVES, as well as numerous short stories. His work has appeared in Dark Moon Digest, Needle: A Magazine of Noir, BEAT to a PULP, Shotgun Honey, and the anthology Mutation Nation: Tales of Genetic Mishaps, Monsters, and Madness. Ed resides in Texas, where he is at work on his next novel and running his genre imprint, Redrum Horror.Visit Ed Kurtz online at edkurtz.net.

    The most open part of town is the Levee District. It is an area of the city that's hard to tell the crooks from the cops. There are brothels, madams, opium dens, gambling joints and plenty of alcohol, but it all comes at a price in the Levee, and the two Ward Aldermen get their share of every vice's dollar. With the hanging of serial killer, Simon Kluge, police Detective Patrick Moses is suddenly without a case. Before Moses can relax he is approached by an aging retail mogul who asks him to investigate the mysterious shooting death of his son. Moses accepts the offer and at the same time is asked by the department to search for the niece of the Italian Ambassador who has gone missing in the Levee and is suspected of becoming a victim of Chicago's "white slave" traffic, forced into a life of enslaved prostitution. As Moses gets deeper into both cases, he realizes that in the Levee there are a lot people who don't want the two cases solved, including the police and the Ward Aldermen. Soon a number of sources and witnesses end up murdered. Someone wants Moses and his partner, Gunter Krause, dead. On top of that, trinkets from the Simon Kluge murders begin to appear on Moses' doorstep, leading him to believe they may have executed the wrong person.

    A man sits in a high tower making tiny, mechanical birds, longing for the day when he might see the sky again. A couple spends an evening in an underground sex club where jealousy and possession are the means of barter. A woman is victimized as a child, and turns that rage and vengeance into a lifelong mission, only to self-destruct, and become exactly what she battled against. A couple hears the echo of the many reasons they’ve stayed together, and the one reason the finally have to part. And a boy deals with a beast that visits him on a nightly basis, not so much a shadow, as a fixture in his home. These 20 stories will take you into the darkness, and sometimes bring you back. But now and then there is no getting out, the lights have faded, the pitch black wrapping around you like a festering blanket of lies. What will you do now? It’s eat or be eaten—so bring a strong stomach and a hearty appetite.

    Master storyteller Les Edgerton guides us on a haunting journey inside the criminal mind to show that no matter how depraved a person appears to be, there might still exist a spark of humanity.

    As Hagedorn points out in her insightful introduction, Manila is a city burdened with a violent and painful past, with a long heritage of foreign occupation. The specters of WWII (during which the city suffered from U.S. saturation bombing), and the oppressive 20-year reign of dictator Ferdinand Marcos live on in recent memory. The Filipino take on noir includes a liberal dose of the gothic and supernatural, with disappearance and loss being constants."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)"This Southeast sampler is unique, possessing an overall gritty tone. Each slice of supernatural splendor pulls the reader in with their nontraditional heroes…Ultimately, readers get a strong taste of the real Manila and all her dark secrets, wanting more of while being slightly afraid of what she might do next. Manila is the perfect place for noir scenes to occur, and it is easy to get sucked into its deadly nightshade of doom."--Criminal Class PressBrand-new stories by: Lourd De Veyra, Gina Apostol, Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldisimo, F.H. Batacan, Jose Dalisay Jr., Eric Gamalinda, Jessica Hagedorn, Angelo Lacuesta, R. Zamora Linmark, Rosario Cruz-Lucero, Sabina Murray, Jonas Vitman, Marianne Villanueva, and Lysley Tenorio.Manila provides the ideal, torrid setting for an Akashic Noir series volume. It's where the rich rub shoulders with the poor, where five-star hotels coexist with informal settlements, where religious zeal coexists with superstition, and where politics is often synonymous with celebrity and corruption.From the Introduction by Jessica Hagedorn:Manila is not for the faint of heart. Built on water and reclaimed land, it’s an intense, congested, teeming megalopolis, the vital core of an urban network of sixteen cities and one municipality collectively known as Metro Manila. Population: over ten million and growing by the minute. Climate: tropical. Which means hot, humid, prone to torrential monsoon rains of biblical proportions.I think of Manila as the ultimate femme fatale. Complicated and mysterious, with a tainted, painful past. She’s been invaded, plundered, raped, and pillaged, colonized for four hundred years by Spain and fifty years by the US, bombed and pretty much decimated by Japanese and American forces during an epic, month-long battle in 1945.Yet somehow, and with no thanks to the corrupt politicians, the crime syndicates, and the indifferent rich who rule the roost, Manila bounces back. The people’s ability to endure, adapt, and forgive never ceases to amaze, whether it’s about rebuilding from the latest round of catastrophic flooding, or rebuilding from the ashes of a horrific world war, or the ashes of the brutal, twenty-year dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos . . .Many years have passed since the end of the Marcos dictatorship. People are free to write and say what they want, yet nothing is different. The poor are still poor, the rich are still rich, and overseas workers toil in faraway places like Saudi Arabia, Israel, Germany, and Finland. Glaring inequities are a source of dark humor to many Filipinos, but really—just another day in the life . . .Writers from the Americas and Europe are known for a certain style of noir fiction, but the rest of the world approaches the crime story from a culturally unique perspective. In Manila Noir we find that the genre is flexible enough to incorporate flamboyant emotion and the supernatural, along with the usual elements noir fans have come to expect: moody atmospherics, terse dialogue, sudden violence, mordant humor, a fatalist vision.

    Many consider him a fanatic. Others see him as a prophet. And some simply think he’s insane. Here, he tells his story.

    A respected sheriff fights to solve the crime before a tragic disease devours his mind. A traumatized war vet struggles to quell the violence he carried home from the battlefield. Death rides a Pale Horse, and no one in its path escapes unscathed. Most days, Sheriff Hal Kendrick can remember his wife’s name, but what frightens him are the days he can’t. When a local woman is found dead, naked and dumped on the banks of the Ohio River, Sheriff Kendrick is determined to solve the crime before Alzheimer’s disease destroys his ability to reason. No matter the cost, he will leave his county better than he found it, but murder is only the beginning, a spark that ignites a firestorm of violence, betrayal, and deceit. Most mornings, former marine Korey Hunt can remember the previous night. Other times, he only remembers darkness. When a body is found on his family’s property, Korey wants to believe he’s incapable of murder. Deep down, however, killing is all he knows. Pale Horses examines the gray areas in human behavior, where good and evil blur, and how even the purest intentions can have terrible consequences.

    As a chronicler of this underworld of criminality, he created the Continental Op, the nameless, stoic detective, jaded and fearless, who’s cast in the role of protagonist of most of the stories in this volume.Hammett’s experience as a Pinkerton detective gave his heavily plotted mysteries a gritty reality. His first-hand knowledge of San Francisco made him a natural chronicler of its seedy waterfronts, police stations, back alleys, and luxury hotels. By connecting the reality of American street life with American speech, Hammett pioneered a method of storytelling that came to be known as noir fiction, which would have a huge impact on fiction and movies for decades to come.Along with the rare classic "From The Memoirs of a Private Detective," this anthology also includes "Arson Plus," "The Tenth Clew," "Zigzags of Treachery," "The Assistant Murderer," "The Man Who Killed Dan Odams," "Women, Politics and Murder," "Who Killed Bob Teal?" "Mike, Alec, or Rufus," "Nightmare Town," "Night Shots," "One Hour," "The Bodies Piled Up," "The Road Home," "Ruffian’s Wife," "The Second-Story Angel," and "Afraid of a Gun."

    These stories have one thing in common: they will come at you, all guns blazing. There’s a story lurking down every dark alley. Just when your back is turned a plot-twist is ready to attack. The stories in this anthology are mainly crime, but there is also grim humour and the supernatural; dark tales for an adult audience featuring hit men, mobsters, bikers and stalkers. Are you prepared for the bloody scenes within?This anthology was spawned from the dark, talented minds of:Gareth Spark, Richard Godwin,Paul D. Brazill, Aidan Thorn,Pete Sortwell, B.R. StatehamBrian Panowich, Ryan Sayles,Chris Leek, David Barber,Vic Errington, Graham Smith,Walter Conley, Tom Pitts,Allen Miles, Jim Spry,Veronica Marie Lewis-Shaw, Mike Monson,Alan Griffiths.

    When his last target tries to taker her life upon being discovered, he begins to rethink his career as a private eye. However, a persuasive offer from a sexy woman has him back on the case, chasing a missing sixteen-year-old pregnant girl from the swampy ruins of post-Katrina New Orleans to the neon grime of Las Vegas. Along the way he'll have to contend with a rogue's gallery of henchmen, pornographers, and his own incestuous sister. After he makes a deal with a sociopathic murderer who believes he's found the secret to eternal life, Hopper will relearn that old saw: some things are better off left alone. "XXX Shamus is the most trangressive PI novel ever written. It's also one of the best." - Allan Guthrie "There are a lot of people that think they like it tough and raw, a lot of hardboiled wannabes. Okay, you tough readers. You like it so raw? Time to put up or shut up. Stick your face into the pages of XXX SHAMUS. Turn away before the last page and I'll kick your fucking teeth out. Take it. Take it all." - Victor Gischler

    When a full moon fills the night sky, Private Investigator Roman Dalton becomes a werewolf and prowls The City's neon and blood soaked streets.Roman Dalton - Werewolf PI is a short, sharp collection of vivid and violent noir horror stories.Drunk On The MoonThe MissionaryBlack Moon RisingThe Brain Salad MurdersShe's My WitchBefore The Moon Falls

    Night lasts for days on planet Jannix, and in a city full of murderers, thugs, gangsters and con artists, no man can ever be sure he'll see another dawn. So when private investigator Jack Tarelli is called to the home of an enigmatic billionaire just hours after an unspeakable murder, he knows a long, long night has only just begun. Led on a chase into the shadowy underbelly of a city that never wakes, the hard-nosed and uncompromising Jack will stop at nothing to track down a deadly killer whose motives are shrouded in corruption, betrayal and deceit. But as connections to Jack's own dark and mysterious past arise, it becomes clear that this is more than a search for answers; it's a race against time. Fools rush in where devils fear to tread.

     When John Smith wakes from a coma in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania he remembers nothing of his past except that he might have tried to commit suicide. In an effort to pay the bills he becomes a private detective and is hired by a strange pair of clients who are determined to find out who killed the Voice of God. The clues lead him to the doorstep of the strange and reclusive Virgil Calahan and a hundred year old crime.

    Brazill, author of Guns Of Brixton and Roman - Dalton - Werewolf PI.Gumshoe is the short, sharp story of Peter Ord, a divorced teacher who decides to become a private detective in fading 'one-whore-town' somewhere in the north-east of England. Dark farce and tragicomedy ensue.

    He kills for money and feels nothing. He is an island untouched by the world, living a life of self-indulgence in Mexico with nice clothes, a fine apartment and the company of women who take money and ask no questions.When Cooper takes a contract that threads the line between life and death for his target, he steps into another world: the Mexico of true money and unfettered power. There he finds that sin is the most powerful driver behind the lives of the fabulously wealthy. One sin in particular draws him into a cycle of deception that can only end in bloodshed and may yet hold the key to personal salvation.Cooper Townsend is about to learn that love is the most dangerous thing of all.

    Bella is about to find out she's a real life fairy princess, but all she wants to do is live peacefully in Alaska, where the biggest problems are hungry grizzly bears. He has to bring her in. It's nothing personal, it's his job… "They had almost had me, that once. I’d been young and foolish, trying to do something heroic, of course. I wouldn’t do that again anytime soon. Now, I work for duty, but nothing more than is necessary to fulfill the family debt. I get paid, which makes me a bounty hunter, but she's about to teach me about honor. Like all lessons, this one was going to hurt. Fortunately, I have a good gun to fill my hand, and if I have to go, she has been good to look at."Dave Freer, author of Dog and Dragon, The Forlorn, and many others, says: ""To those of you who thought there was nothing new worth reading in Fantasy: Cedar Sanderson’s Pixie Noir proves that you are wrong. The author plainly knows and loves her setting and characters, and this carries through to the reader. The pace picks up throughout, so save this book for a weekend, or you’ll be complaining about a lack of sleep at work. A very good read!"

    When the simple task of collecting a briefcase from a Northern courier in his London lock-up results in a dead Geordie gangster there's only one thing that Kenny Rogan can do...dress up in drag and rob a jewellers with 'Big' Jim and hope everything turns out okay! From the pen of Paul D Brazill comes a whole host of larger-than-life characters, a sharp plot and the kind of humour you wouldn't let your granny read...but don't just take our word for it :-

    Brazill, creator of Roman Dalton - Werewolf PI. A priest tracks down his kidnapped daughter and finds her trapped in a nest of evil. Van Helsing meets The Punisher in a hard-boiled noir/ horror serial from Paul D. Brazill

    Amidst a firestorm of violence, betrayal and horror, their three worlds will eventually collide in an old mining shack buried deep in the mountains. CORROSION, the shattering debut novel by Jon Bassoff, is equal parts Jim Thompson, Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner, and an unforgettable journey into the underbelly of crime and passion. Drawn from the darkest corners of the human experience, it is sure to haunt readers for years to come.

    According to Francis M. Nevins Jr., the preeminent biographer of Woolrich, this was the last story Woolrich ever wrote in first person from a woman's perspective, and Nevins says "one of his finest."However, when Woolrich was contracted to create a collection of new short stories for Dodd Mead in 1958, Woolrich actually revised older stories and included them in the collection titled "Violence". "Murder, Obliquely" is the revised version of "Death Escapes the Eye".

    Graham Ellis is reliable, efficient, focused – the best pit boss Sovereign Casinos has, even if he does say so himself.But rumours of mental instability, along with the fallout of a particularly bloody night on the tables, relegate him to day shifts at a low-rent Salford club.There he catches the attention of local gangster Barry Pollard, who has every intention of making Graham his inside man and is about to make him an offer he can’t refuse…

    Rumors immediately shoot through the city that Jones is taking revenge on all of his critics. When a former Temple member and friend of Tenderloin vagabond Sleeper Hayes is murdered, and another friend is accused of the crime, Sleeper sets out to uncover the truth. But the truth and justice are hard to find as Sleeper becomes the Temple's next target while investigating a murderous plot that stretches from skid row all the way to City Hall.

    He schemes to be endlessly reincarnated within the lifespan of the woman he loves, no matter how often the violent bailiffs of the Karmic Accountancy cut-short each life. It falls to one such agent - the surly Bastard Zane - to put a stop to the time-twisting romance!

    His clients are dying. What's even more worrying is that they appear to be planning to kill him first. As he delves deeper into the cases he's confronted with a past he never knew he had. In a desperate and dying alternate Earth, Joshua is in a race to uncover who he once was, and to make one single, simple decision that will either wipe out an entire race or destroy Earth and the very fabric of time and space itself. No pressure. Beyond Belief is a dystopian alternate-reality fantasy-comedy novel. It pokes fun at many pop culture icons, and blows raspberries at society in general.

    It’s a story of lust, violence and madness with a heavy metal beat. Jim Thompson meets Alice Cooper. Metallica reading James M. Cain. PRAISE: “Warren Moore’s Broken Glass Waltzes is as relentless as Tony Iommi’s guitar and pounds at the reader’s brain like Dave Lombardo’s machine gun drums. A Heavy Metal Noir ride replete with sex, drugs, rock n’ roll—and a murder conceived in insanity—this wicked gem moves at a breakneck pace from the moment Cincinnati’s number one metal drummer meets the girl of his nightmares to the shocking climax. Two sets of devil horns, high up.” —Ed Kurtz, author of Bleed, Control, and A Wind of Knives

    Solitary and haunted, he prefers to be invisible. He doesn't allow himself friends or lovers and makes a living rescuing young girls from the deadly clutches of the sex trade. But when a high-ranking New York politician hires him to extricate his teenage daughter from a Manhattan brothel, Joe uncovers a web of corruption that even he may not be able to unravel. When the men on his trail take the only person left in the world who matters to him, he forsakes his pledge to do no harm. If anyone can kill his way to the truth, it's Joe...Novelist, essayist, creator of the beloved TV series Bored to Death and Blunt Talk, Jonathan Ames is celebrated not only for his comic sensibilities and devotion to the absurd but for his lurid attraction to inner demons. In this shocking and suspenseful thriller, the author goes darker than noir, with an ass-kicking and psychologically tormented guardian angel who rescues others but refuses to save himself.

    This extensive encyclopedia describes movies from noir's earliest days - and even before, looking at some of noir's ancestors in US and European cinema - as well as noir's more recent offshoots, from neonoirs to erotic thrillers. Entries are arranged alphabetically, covering movies from all over the world - from every continent save Antarctica - with briefer details provided for several hundred additional movies within those entries. A copious appendix contains filmographies of prominent directors, actors, and writers. With coverage of blockbusters and program fillers from Going Straight (US 1916) to Broken City (US 2013) via Nora Inu (Japan 1949), O Anthropos tou Trainou (Greece 1958), El Less Wal Kilab (Egypt 1962), Reportaje a la Muerte (Peru 1993), Zift (Bulgaria 2008), and thousands more, A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir is an engrossing and essential reference work that should be on the shelves of every cinephile.

    Friends call me Dill. I'm a mutant armadillo. I dig for the truth.And the truth is I need to get out of the city, away from supernatural mobsters that want my carapace for a foot bath. So when some rich dame saunters into my Hovel Office with a job, I take it. Even if it's to retrieve a pearl necklace that's not here. I'm desperate enough, I don't even care the job sends me to Nevermore Bay.Yeah, Nevermore Bay: the city where some wacko in a mask hurdles across rooftops; calls himself The Buzzard. Criminals are scared pantsless of him. 'Course, most people think he's a myth created by the police department.If you ask me, that's a far more exciting mystery than some oyster's cough drops. Maybe I can kill two birds with one stone during this vacation. If, that is, I don't get killed by the police, Don Komodo's crew that's on my tail, some of The Buzzard's rogues gallery or the Buzzard, himself.

    He only works when his cash runs out, and his rule is simple: He'll help you find whatever was taken from you, as long as he can keep half. Discover Travis McGee with this special collection of the first three titles of John D. MacDonald's classic series.The Deep Blue Goodbye Travis McGee isn't particularly strapped for cash, but how can anyone say no to Cathy, a sweet girl who's been tortured repeatedly by her manipulative ex-boyfriend Junior Allen? What Travis isn't anticipating is just how many women Junior has torn apart and left in his wake . . . Nightmare in Pink Travis McGee's old army buddy needs a favour. His sister's fiancé has just been murdered in what the authorities claim was a standard Manhattan mugging. But Nina knows better. Travis is determined to get to the bottom of things, but just as he's closing in on the truth he finds himself taken captive. Some people will go to any lengths to make sure their secrets don't get out . . .A Purple Place for Dying Travis McGee isn't sure he wants to help Mona, a woman trapped in a marriage with a wealthy businessman whom she is convinced is stealing from her trust fund. That is until he sees Mona shot dead on the cliffs near her cabin. But when he arrives at the scene, her body is gone. And there's no trace of them ever having met. Will Travis prove that what he saw was real, and unravel a complex murder web, in time to save his own skin?

    Please message the author if you have any questions or concerns.Description: For ten years Myadar has tended her estranged husband's estate, far in the south of Ódalnord, when one day he sends for her and their five year old son to come to the island capitol to witness the coronation of the country's latest monarchs. Bewildered by strange, decadent fashions, courtiers' innuendos, and the new ruler's authoritarianism, Myadar is unprepared to succeed there. When Myadar's husband insists that she remain permanently, she must find a way to resist him and take her son back to the safety of their familiar lives.Myadar's Snare is part one of the serialized novel, The City Darkens.

    Far from the hardboiled streets of Los Angeles, Flynn and his partner, Tombstone Jones, are on a two-fisted rampage to find a killer. But hiding in the swamp, deep inside the walls of the Bayou Sauvage Federal Penitentiary, the killer patiently waits to crush his prey with razor sharp teeth and deadly jaws. After taking down gangster Mickey Cohen’s championship prospect Solomon Kane in “Felony Fists,” Patrick Flynn triumphantly returns in “Swamp Walloper,” facing an even more dangerous foe – a killer fueled by voodoo and revenge ...

    Film Noir FAQ celebrates and reappraises some 200 noir thrillers representing 20 years of Hollywood's Golden Age. Noir pulls us close to brutal cops and scheming dames, desperate heist men and hardboiled private eyes, and the unlucky innocent citizens that get in their way. These are exciting movies with tough guys in trench coats and hot tomatoes in form-fitting gowns. The moon is a streetlamp and the narrow streets are prowled by squad cars and long black limousines. Lives are often small but people's plans are big sometimes too big. Robbery, murder, gambling; the gun and the fist; the grift and the con game; the hard kiss and the brutal brush-off. Film Noir FAQ brings lively attention to story, mood, themes, and technical detail, plus behind-the-scenes stories of the production of individual films. Featuring numerous stills and posters many never before published in book form highlighting key moments of great noir movies. Film Noir FAQ serves up insights into many of the most popular and revered names in Hollywood history, including noir's greatest stars, supporting players, directors, writers, and cinematographers. Pour a Scotch, light up a smoke, and lean back with your private guide to film noir.

    NEW CLIENT. SAME HANGOVER.It starts out as a simple maritime stalking case, which Banyon flat-out refuses. The would-be client is the god of the sea, see, and Crag Banyon is a strict reformed agnostic: while he believes in the existence of gods, he prefers it if they don't pester him during happy hour.Unfortunately, something big is stirring offshore, the coast is being flooded, and despite his best efforts to stay planted on his favorite barstool, Banyon finds himself swept up in a case of Olympian intrigue, dirty deals and fresh fish. Soon he's up to his pretty little neck in trouble, paddling for his life, taking on water, and in the end it's either sink or swim.Does it all come out in the wash? Just ask his secretary:"CRAG BANYON? THAT JERK'S A BUM, AND THAT'S THE GODS' HONEST TRUTH."

    It follows a disillusioned 29-year-old named Dylan who has worked at Outer Shell gift shop for eleven years. The Outer Shell is located at the exit from Hell, where Inhabitants march in a straight line out of the exit, by the gift shop and back through the entrance. This was once a cultural phenomenon, now nobody cares. Fed up with his station in life and, infatuated with one of the dead women in the line, Dylan goes on a quest to leave his former life behind and, with the help of his two friends, sneak into Hell. Battling a throng of incompetent guards, a Devil with a speech impediment and a villain with a fake English accent Dylan eventually completes his quest and later realizes it was a horrible mistake. Hell is in New Jersey takes Keret's vision and adds a modern theme to it touching on the short attention span of the human race and the disenchantment in most of us.

    The city's underclass, living in the sewers, stir in response, but before she can rouse them to revolution, she falls into a peril she cannot escape.This twisting tale of the struggle against the birth of a new, violent age is dystopian decopunk inspired by a 1920s aesthetic. A world of fanatical rulers, ambitious priests, seductive courtiers, shining robots, and a nearly forgotten people living under the city in the sewers... all seen through the shocked eyes of a determined heroine.This is the complete novel, formerly released as a serial.

    Jack's got a bit of a past with the city, in the form of a Cajun PI named Lameaux--a guy who mixes his "investigations" with organized vice. So Jack decides to lay low, holing up in a swanky downtown hotel called the Fulton. It's a splurge after sleeping in an old horse trailer night after night, but Jack figures he deserves a break. Until the Fulton's grizzled house detective shows up with a proposition ...Jack's way out of his league this time around, and when he discovers a blackmailing scheme involving a famous industrialist, he finds himself bumping gun-barrels with the Federal Government. Survival's going to require throwing the PI code out the window. And some quick thinking. Join Cash Laramie's hardluck grandson in this second installment of The Drifter Detective series, "Hell Up in Houston." At around 15K words, it won't take too long--just remember to bring your Colt.

    Even in her chirpy feel-good Bollywood films, guns and gangsters vie with the singing and the dancing. Although the work of many Indian writers of crime noir are not to be found in fashionable bookstores—next to the hardcover books of Jhumpa Lahiri, Salmon Rushdie, and Vikram Seth—they are in much more popular spots: the stalls and book carts of A. H. Wheeler & Co. found among the 8,000 railway stations that serve India’s 25 million daily commuters, riding 71,000 miles of uneventful track. That is India’s open secret: crime novels stay close to their devouring readers. This needs commemorating. Hence Noir Nation No. 3: The India Issue—with stories that are dark, brutal, and beautiful to the eye that loves the shadows—where the dark angels flock.Illustrated with stunning Mehndi tattoos, Noir Nation's India Issue contains over thirty entries from some of the very best literary crime fiction writers in the world, among them Suparn Verma, Samrat X, Yaeer Talker, Bianca Bellova, JJ Toner, Richard Godwin, Simon Rowe, Graham Wynd, David Siddell, and Meeah Cross-Williams; and ace contributions from emerging noir writers Alastair Keen, Terrence P. McCauley, Frauke Schuster, Ryan Gattis, Chelsea L. Clemmons, Gila Green, Paul Alexander, Carmen Tudor, and Anthony Pioppi; and established hard-boiled wunderkinds Jonathan Sturak, Ed Lynskey,, Christopher L. Irvin, and Nik Korpon, The issue also includes essays on noir-related poetry, music, and the visual arts by Atar Hadari, Vicki Gundrum, and Robert Brunet and two works of classic noir: "The Turkish Brothel" by the late Cortright McMeel and "The Perfect Courtesan" by Kshemendra.

    Inside you'll find 11 hard boiled tales of revenge, deceit, extortion and murder. Take a look inside the minds of hit men, gangsters, policemen, prisoners and more as they wade through the underworld. Aidan's Fiction has been Published in the Near to the Knuckle Anthology: Gloves Off and in the Byker Books Radgepacket series. His work has also appeared online at Near to the Knuckle, Thrillers, Killers N' Chillers and Thrills, Kills, N' Chaos.

    A sinner. A broken and worthless excuse of a man. A man haunted by his past condemned to roam the streets of Misery City. Can Max survive a race against hell to save his soul? Or is it his fate to remain cloistered in a damned city cloaked in eternal darkness?

    Krigstein 's legend rests mostly on the 30 or so stories he created for the EC Comics, but dozens of stories drawn for other, lesser publishers such as Rae Herman, Hillman, and Atlas (which would become Marvel) showcase his skills and radical reinterpretation of the comics page, in particular his groundbreaking slicing and dicing of time lapses through a series of narrow, nearly animated panels. Greg Sadowski, who has previously written and designed a Harvey Award-winning biography of Krigstein, has assembled the very best of Krigstein 's comics work, starting with his earliest creative rumblings, through his glory days at EC, to his final, even more brilliantly radical stories for Atlas Comics running through every genre popular at the time, be it horror, science fiction, war, western, or romance (but no super-heroes). Legendary EC colorist Marie Severin, in her last major assignment before her retirement, has recolored 15 stories for this edition. The remainder has been taken from printed comics, digitally restored with subtlety and restraint. This edition reprints the out-of-print 2004 hardcover B. Krigstein Comics, with a number of stories re-tooled and improved in terms of reproduction, and several new stories added. It also contains an extensive set of historical and editorial notes by editor Greg Sadowski. Page stats from Krigstein 's personal archives and a comic book checklist of the artist 's entire body of work round out this substantial volume.

    Plus, take a peek at the creators' private email exchange in our very own BKVleaks!

    It's one thing to make a deal with the Devil; it's another when the deal is made for you. Featuring an interview with Joe McKinney, "Talking Zombies". Cover art by Matthew Revert.

    Dark, cerebral stories of the American grotesque that light up hidden corners of the individual and national consciousness.

    Since the release of the complete novel, Myadar's Betrayal is no longer available as an individual ebook. Please message the author if you have any questions or concerns.

    A hurricane. A horny cop. A naked priest. An angry cab driver. Two wanna-be criminals. A speeding train. A hot soldering iron. A peeping tom. A fed-up girl. A gun dealer. A homeless lady. An empty shotgun. A girlfriend with other plans. One pissed-off mom. Two pissed-off drug dealers. A bitchy landlord. And 48 crazy hours.When this is all over, they’ll either be rich, in prison or dead.Eric Beetner is the author of Rumrunners, Nine Toes In The Grave, The Year I Died Seven Times and many more.

    Maybe it's all the busted dreams and the way they seep into the pavement like acid rain, bleaching the color out of things..."It's 1947, the streets are filthy with grease and empty promises, and private detective Colt Coltrane trolls the city for cheaters and deadbeats with his robotic sidekick Petey. It's all business as usual until a mysterious Japanese woman walks into his office asking him to look into a string of grisly murders along the L.A. River, where the only trace the killer leaves behind, other than a mutilated female victim, is a single white lotus flower. But there is far more to this dame than meets the eye, and Colt's quest to find the Lotus Killer soon leads him to shocking and terrifying secrets lurking beneath Los Angeles.A pulpy mix of the past, present, and future, COLT COLTRANE AND THE LOTUS KILLER is a non-stop thrill that won't soon be forgotten.

    1930. Salazar is an English detective haunted by his experiences of the Great War, who wiles away the days playing chess and taking on as little work as possible. When the alluring Marie Poncelet hires him to find a missing man he quickly realises it's a case he wishes he'd refused. Finding a missing man isn't anything like finding a man who doesn't want to be found and Gustave Marty has covered his tracks with a smokescreen that will push Salazar beyond the limits of physical endurance and to the edge of insanity. As he's drawn deeper into the shadowy underbelly of the City of Light, Salazar's closed, structured world is blown apart by the arrival of a friend from his pre-war youth, the beautiful Megan Fitzwilliam, whose tenderness and love of life is a stark contrast to the brutal violence that lies within him. When that violence threatens to engulf them both, Salazar must seek redemption or lose the very thing that has finally made his life worth living. PRAISE FOR CITIZEN OF NOWHERE “Salazar is richly cinematic and completely enthralling with a great sense of time and place, as well as a great deal of wry humour.” “Knowing well the parts of France where the story unfolds, I realize that this book has been meticulously researched, and the pictures painted and the setting of the characters are perfectly described and richly amplified. Lynch has created a lead character in Salazar that is up there with the Colombos and the Wallanders of this genre, and I look forward impatiently to the second book, in what I'm sure will be a long-lived series.” “Fans of Highsmith's Ripley or Chandler's Marlow will love this book as much as just about anybody simply looking for an absorbing holiday read.” “A real page turner. Salazar is so much more than a crime novel and a real insight into the minds and lives in those post war Paris years, accompanied by knowledgeable descriptive detail of people and places.” “An enjoyable read that takes you on a trip back to 1930 Paris. Salazar is on a mission to find more than just a man but his new identity in a turbulent time and place.”

    The protagonists of ambiguous morality who populate Cain’s work are portrayed with a cinematic flair for the grim hardness of their world. Fast One, Cain’s only novel, was originally serialized in Black Mask in the 1930s. It introduces us to Gerry Kells, a hard-nosed criminal who still holds fast to his humanity in a Los Angeles that’s crooked to the core.This collection presents Cain’s classic crime writing to a contemporary audience.This ebook features an introduction by Boris Dralyuk.

    An ill-starred young man is frustrated by a faulty lucky amulet. A new lodger introduces two flatmates to a card game with stakes too high for any gambler. A divorced dad gets some late-night advice down the telephone line from the late Stanley Kubrick. Noir, horror and a streak of black humour a mile wide merge in these stories. This is a world whose inhabitants cling to hope but can't seem to escape the shadows.

    Young, homeless, and wearing a tattered wedding dress and veil matted with grime, she floated through the streets of Hell’s Kitchen like a spectre. Until she wound up dead.To everyone, including the NYPD, she was a throwaway. But not to Steeg. Her life was a nightmare, but her death demanded justice. There had to be a balancing of the books.But with Steeg nothing is easy. His search for The Bride’s killer is filled with blind alleys and potholes, but ultimately leads him to a vast international conspiracy that almost costs him his life.Black Angel is the fourth book in the critically acclaimed Jackson Steeg Mystery Series, and shows once again that Ira Berkowitz writes “tightly written, deftly plotted gems of crime fiction.” -- Booklist

    10 tales of paranormal / supernatural crime from some of the world's best authors:A man finds that revenge may cost you your soul, in an endlessly repeated day... A missing girl case leads to a cult being discovered, of malnourished beings that feed on flesh... A man drives a corpse around on its road to redemption... A ghostly intruder won’t let an ex-lover rest... Dirty detectives pay one last visit to a demented dentist... Mysterious deaths are solved by a grievance visitation... A mobster’s secret weapon is discovered, a turf war hinging on magic... A spirit possesses victims to find their killers, but discovers the devil himself... A detective finally unleashes the spiritual powers he’s tried to ignore, conjuring the demise of his world... And a makeshift surgery helps those afflicted by the drug of Musik...

    Sent from Chicago to Atlanta for a routine hit, the assignment goes bad. Brutally betrayed, she's content to nurse her wounds until she's lured back to life with an irresistible con game involving a sister she never knew she had. BLACK-HEARTED BITCH is hard-boiled noir. It is the first title in the Kell Digby Crime Novel series.It was a runner-up in the Lesbian Mystery / Thriller category in the 2013 Rainbow Awards.

    Films like Double Indemnity, Ace in the Hole, and Kiss Me Deadly alongside novels by Dashiel Hammett and Raymond Chandler provide rich examples for the first half of the study. The second is largely devoted to works less commonly understood in relation to the hard-boiled and noir canon. Examinations of the conspiracy films from the Seventies and Eighties -- like Klute and The Parallax View -- novels by Thomas Pynchon, Chester Himes and William Gibson reveal the persistence and evolution of these authenticity effects across the second half of the American twentieth century.

    

    Eleven of the best stories in hard-boiled crime from the award-winning pen of John Dwaine McKenna, author of The Neversink Chronicles and The Whim Wham Man. In Colorado Noir, you'll ride along with Elaine, The Aluminum Mistress, as she struggles to survive on the cold streets of Colorado Springs, making her living from trash cans; Hang out with Yazzie and Darrell Lee as they learn to live rough, surviving by petty theft, until one of them commits a capital crime in The Ghosts of Christmas Present; There's merry mischief and pathos in Mosby's Retreat, where you'll meet a four footed usher of death; Experience utter terror at 30,000 feet on a B-17 flying abattoir in The Rising, an unforgettable World War II story; Treat yourself to the second Jake McKern novella in A Mischief of Rats, as you countdown to a crime spree that leaves the reader gasping and blood running in the streets of Colorado Springs. All of these, plus six more of the best noir stories in town. If you love crime fiction and mystery, don't you dare miss Colorado Noir!