Book picks similar to
Beat to a Pulp: Hardboiled by David CranmerAmy Grech
short-stories
crime
noir
mystery
Los Angeles Noir
Denise Hamilton - 2007
Her books have been shortlisted for the Edgar, Macavity, Anthony, and Willa Cather awards. The Los Angeles Times named Last Lullaby a Best Book of 2004, and it was also a USA Today Summer Pick and a finalist for a Southern California Booksellers Association 2004 award. Her fourth Eve Diamond novel, Savage Garden, is a Los Angeles Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Southern California Booksellers Association award for Best Mystery of 2005.
Black Wings Has My Angel
Elliott Chaze - 1953
The one book Black Lizard never published, it's the dream-like tale of a man after a jailbreak, who meets up with the woman of his dreams... and his nightmares. Phenomenal work of the period, ranking with the best efforts of Thompson, Woolrich, Goodis et al.
In the Pulps - 26 Short Stories
Rex Stout - 2013
Although these stories are not all mysteries, they all are suspenseful and very enjoyable. They already show the creative mind that devised later so many complex plots as well as Stout’s gift for creating characters with a few quick strokes. The stories, which are presented here in order of publication, are: “Excess Baggage,” “The Infernal Feminine,” “A Professional Recall,” “Pamfret and Peace,” “A Companion of Fortune,” “A White Precipitate,” “The Mother of Invention,” “Méthode Américaine,” “A Tyrant Abdicates,” “The Pay-Yeoman,” “Secrets,” “Rose Orchid,” “An Agacella Or,” “The Inevitable Third,” “The Lie,” “Target Practice,” “If He Be Married,” “Baba,” “Jonathan Stannard's Secret Vice,” “Sanétomo,” “The Strong Man,” “It's Science That Counts,” “The Rope Dance,” “An Officer and a Lady,” “Heels of Fate,” and “Annuncio's Violin.”
The Twenty-Year Death
Ariel S. Winter - 2012
1931— The body found in the gutter in France led the police inspector to the dead man’s beautiful daughter—and to her hot-tempered American husband. 1941— A hardboiled private eye hired to keep a movie studio’s leading lady happy uncovers the truth behind the brutal slaying of a Hollywood starlet. 1951— A desperate man pursuing his last chance at redemption finds himself with blood on his hands and the police on his trail... Three complete novels that, taken together, tell a single epic story, about an author whose life is shattered when violence and tragedy consume the people closest to him. It is an ingenious and emotionally powerful debut performance from literary detective and former bookseller Ariel S. Winter, one that establishes this talented newcomer as a storyteller of the highest caliber.
Thieves Fall Out (Hard Case Crime)
Gore Vidal - 1953
The lost pulp crime novel by great American novelist Gore Vidal! Hired to smuggle an ancient artefact out of Egypt, Pete Wells finds himself the target of killers and femme fatales - and just one step away from triggering a revolution that will set Cairo aflame!
The Corpse Wore Pasties
Jonny Porkpie - 2009
But this time, that's just what happened: The show stopped dead, and so did the girl. And as I looked at her nearly naked and completely lifeless body and the bottle of poison in her hand with my fingerprints all over it, I thought to myself: Porkpie, you're in for it this time…
Side Effects
Jeff Menapace - 2016
WARNING: Side effects may include the ability to catch a killer...FBI Agent Maggie Allen had a gift for catching serial killers.Now, following the death of her husband and son, she can barely get out of bed.Desperate, Maggie agrees to take part in a drug trial--a last-ditch effort to find something that might help her cope.The drug helps.However, it also carries several unpleasant side effects, not the least of them being an exceptional heightening of all her senses...just the kind of thing her old partner could use to help the FBI track down a prolific serial killer who is proving impossible to catch.
Blackmailer (Hard Case Crime #32)
George Axelrod - 1952
From the Academy Award-Nominated Screenwriter of BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S and THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE Comes a Breathtaking Story of Murder and Mischief...IT'S THE STORY of a big-game hunter, fisherman, fighter, visitor to Cuba, drunk, and Nobel Prize-winning author, recently deceased of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, whose final unpublished manuscript could fetch a mint...IT'S THE STORY of a short, balding man with a high-pitched voice and a vicious wit, whose cocktail parties are the talk of the town, especially when a beautiful woman dies at one of them...IT'S THE STORY of Hollywood's sexiest starlet, who manages to conceal things even when she's wearing nothing but a towel......and it's the story of Dick Sherman, intrepid New York publisher, on the trail of the literary find of the century-and the killer who will stop at nothing to keep it from being found.
Fifty-to-One
Charles Ardai - 2008
But what if, instead of having been founded 50 books ago, Hard Case Crime had been founded 50 years ago, by a rascal out to make a quick buck off the popularity of pulp fiction? Such a fellow might make a few enemies – especially after publishing a supposed non-fiction account of a heist at a Mob-run nightclub, actually penned by an 18-year-old showgirl. With both the cops and the crooks after them, our heroes are about to learn that reading and writing pulp novels is a lot more fun than living them...
Haiti Noir
Edwidge DanticatMarie Ketsia Theodore-Pharel - 2010
Each book is comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.Featuring brand-new stories by: Edwidge Danticat, Rodney Saint-Éloi, Madison Smartt Bell, Gary Victor, M.J. Fievre, Marvin Victor, Yanick Lahens, Louis-Philipe Dalembert, Kettly Mars, Marie Ketsia Theodore-Pharel, Evelyne Trouillot, Katia Ulysse, Ibi Aanu Zoboi, Nadine Pinede, and others.Haiti has a tragic history and continues to be one of the most destitute places on the planet, especially in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake. Here, however, Danticat reveals that even while the subject matter remains dark, the caliber of Haitian writing is of the highest order.
The Name of the Game Is Death
Dan J. Marlowe - 1962
If one of them can shoot like me... the odds are a damn sight better."In the course of his line of business, the man who calls himself Roy Martin has robbed a bank in Phoenix, killed three men, and caught a bullet in his arm. Safety--and one half of $178,000--awaits him on the other side of the country. All that separates "Martin" from his destination are two thousand treacherous miles and three lethal temptations: to trust the wrong friend, to love the right woman, and to start believing that a man like himself can ever be safe.The Name of the Game is Death combines a narrative as taut as a hangman's rope with chillingly authentic insights into the psychology of casual murder.
The Dead Stay Dumb
James Hadley Chase - 1941
From the first to the last page, the ruthlessness of an inhuman killer is set down with stark realism. Chase's second book.A cold, ruthless racketeer, Dillon had risen from lackey gunman to Kansas City boss. Now he was big time, big money.But then Dillon started living it up with two young beauties - and began to make mistakes. And once Dillon's guard was down, an outsider got his chance to pull a gruesome doubletake.Death was right around the corner... Dillon didn't take his eyes off the exit to the dark alley. He went on, keeping his gun ready. The open street ahead of him, the deep shadows, and the knowledge that death was waiting for him made his nerves tingle.Quite suddenly two men sprang into the alley. Dillon could see them outlined against a street light. Instantly, he started firing before his brain telegraphed to his hand.One of the men tossed up his hands and fell forward, but the other ducked out of sight - now more determined than ever to see Dillon dead.Dillon has been out of the rackets for some time ; now he was ready to carve his way back in. Ambitious, cold-blooded, impatient, he just needed a start, and one or two unlucky people to help him on his way. He found them. Like Nick Gurney and Roxy, small-time operators who reckoned Dillon was the coming man...Myra, the curvaceous boxer's daughter tired of small-town life and reckless for excitement... and Hurst, the racketeer who ruled half a city. One way and another, they all helped Dillon, while Dillon helped himself. He didn't hear any complaints either, for a long time...
Houston Noir
Gwendolyn Zepeda - 2019
Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city.Brand-new stories by: Tom Abrahams, Robert Boswell, Sarah Cortez, Anton DiSclafani, Stephanie Jaye Evans, Wanjiku Wa Ngugi, Adrienne Perry, Pia Pico, Reyes Ramirez, Icess Fernandez Rojas, Sehba Sarwar, Leslie Contreras Schwartz, Larry Watts, and Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton.From the introduction by Gwendolyn Zepeda:In a 2004 essay, Hunter S. Thompson described Houston as a “cruel, crazy town on a filthy river in East Texas with no zoning laws and a culture of sex, money and violence. It’s a shabby, sprawling metropolis ruled by brazen women, crooked cops and super-rich pansexual cowboys who live by the code of the West—which can mean just about anything you need it to mean, in a pinch.” For what it’s worth, that quote is now posted on a banner somewhere downtown and regularly, gleefully repeated by our local feature writers.Houston is a port city on top of a swamp and, yes, it has no zoning laws. And that means it’s culturally diverse, internally incongruous, and ever-changing. At any intersection here, I might look out my car window and see a horse idly munching St. Augustine grass. And, within spitting distance of that horse, I might see a “spa” that’s an obvious brothel, a house turned drug den, or a swiftly rising bayou that might overtake a car if the rain doesn’t let up . . . Overall, this collection represents the very worst our city has to offer, for residents and visitors alike. But it also presents some of our best voices, veteran and emerging, to any reader lucky enough to pick up this book.
Savage Night
Allan Guthrie - 2008
He isn't prepared for the fall-out, though. Before long, his teenage son is in mortal danger, and his daughter and her fiance are knee-deep in corpses. Meanwhile, a masked man known as Mr Smith is blackmailing Tommy Savage - for what, he has no idea. After an attempt to gain the upper hand has near-fatal results, Tommy and his brother find themselves heading to a graveyard with only a couple of swords and a bag of cash for company. A blood-pumping tragi-comedy of love and violence, "Savage Night" unfolds over six frenetic hours in Scotland's capital city.