It's a tough-guy mystery to please even the most bloodthirsty of fans!

    But a cop named Foley is on to Eddie and he's leaning on him to finger Scalisi, a gang leader with a lot to hide. And then there's Dillon-a full-time bartender and part-time contract killer--pretending to be Eddie's friend. Wheeling, dealing, chasing, and stealing--that's Eddie, and he's got lots of friends.

    First published in 1935, this novel reaffirmed James M. Cain as a virtuoso of the roman noir.

    C. Cook, a legendary, now retired detective, and Dan "Doc" Holiday, his former partner who left the force under a cloud of suspicion.

    He's also a knight errant who's wary of credit cards, retirement benefits, political parties, mortgages, and television. 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.

    No man could resist her charms—not even the hardboiled NYPD detective sent to find out who turned her into a faceless corpse. As this tough cop probes the mystery of Laura's death, he becomes obsessed with her strange power. Soon he realizes he's been seduced by a dead woman—or has he? Laura won lasting renown as an Academy Award-nominated 1944 film, the greatest noir romance of all time. Vera Caspary's equally haunting novel is remarkable for its stylish, hardboiled writing, its electrifying plot twists, and its darkly complex characters—including a woman who stands as the ultimate femme fatale.

    Now one of Sampson's friends may have arranged his kidnapping.Lew Archer follows the clues from the canyon sanctuaries of the mega-rich to jazz joints where you get beaten up between sets.Welcome to the first Lew Archer, private investigator - a roving conscience who walks the treacherous frontier between criminal guilt and human sin. You are sure to find that Ross Macdonald's "The Moving Target" blends sex, greed, and family hatred into an explosively readable crime novel.

    "Red Harvest" is more than a superb crime novel: it is a classic exploration of corruption and violence in the American grain.The Op was in Personville, derogatory nickname aside, as the result of a letter to the Continental Detective Agency in San Francisco from Donald Willsson, publisher of the local paper, asking for an agent to visit. No other information. As soon as the OP arrives, the body count begins. It starts with his client!

    This ingenious twist on a classic noir tale tells the story of Lora King, a schoolteacher, and her brother Bill, a junior investigator with the district attorney's office. Lora's comfortable, suburban life is jarringly disrupted when Bill falls in love with a mysterious young woman named Alice Steele, a Hollywood wardrobe assistant with a murky past. Made sisters by marriage but not by choice, the bond between Lora and Alice is marred by envy and mistrust. Spurred on by inconsistencies in Alice's personal history and possibly jealous of Alice's hold on her brother, Lora finds herself lured into the dark alleys and mean streets of seamy Los Angeles. Assuming the role of amateur detective, she uncovers a shadowy world of drugs, prostitution, and ultimately, murder. Lora's fascination with Alice's "sins" increases in direct proportion to the escalation of her own relationship with Mike Standish, a charmingly amoral press agent who appears to know more about his old friend Alice than he reveals. The deeper Lora digs to uncover Alice's secrets, the more her own life begins to resemble Alice's sinister past -- and present. Steeped in atmospheric suspense and voyeuristic appeal, Die a Little shines as a dark star among Hollywood lights.

    In 1966, Baltimore is a city of secrets that everyone seems to know--everyone, that is, except Madeline "Maddie" Schwartz. Last year, she was a happy, even pampered housewife. This year, she's bolted from her marriage of almost twenty years, determined to make good on her youthful ambitions to live a passionate, meaningful life. Maddie wants to matter, to leave her mark on a swiftly changing world. Drawing on her own secrets, she helps Baltimore police find a murdered girl--assistance that leads to a job at the city's afternoon newspaper, the Star. Working at the newspaper offers Maddie the opportunity to make her name, and she has found just the story to do it: a missing woman whose body was discovered in the fountain of a city park lake. Cleo Sherwood was a young African-American woman who liked to have a good time. No one seems to know or care why she was killed except Maddie--and the dead woman herself. Maddie's going to find the truth about Cleo's life and death. Cleo's ghost, privy to Maddie's poking and prying, wants to be left alone. Maddie's investigation brings her into contact with people that used to be on the periphery of her life--a jewelery store clerk, a waitress, a rising star on the Baltimore Orioles, a patrol cop, a hardened female reporter, a lonely man in a movie theater. But for all her ambition and drive, Maddie often fails to see the people right in front of her. Her inability to look beyond her own needs will lead to tragedy and turmoil for all sorts of people--including the man who shares her bed, a black police officer who cares for Maddie more than she knows.'

    . .All Denny Malone wants is to be a good cop.He is "the King of Manhattan North," a highly decorated NYPD detective sergeant and the real leader of "Da Force." Malone and his crew are the smartest, the toughest, the quickest, the bravest, and the baddest, an elite special unit given carte blanche to fight gangs, drugs, and guns. Every day and every night for the eighteen years he’s spent on the Job, Malone has served on the front lines, witnessing the hurt, the dead, the victims, the perps. He’s done whatever it takes to serve and protect in a city built by ambition and corruption, where no one is clean—including Malone himself.What only a few know is that Denny Malone is dirty: he and his partners have stolen millions of dollars in drugs and cash in the wake of the biggest heroin bust in the city’s history. Now Malone is caught in a trap and being squeezed by the Feds, and he must walk the thin line between betraying his brothers and partners, the Job, his family, and the woman he loves, trying to survive, body and soul, while the city teeters on the brink of a racial conflagration that could destroy them all.This is the great cop novel of our time and a book only Don Winslow could write: a haunting story of greed and violence, inequality and race, crime and injustice, retribution and redemption that reveals the seemingly insurmountable tensions between the police and the diverse citizens they serve. A searing portrait of a city on the edge and of a courageous, heroic, and deeply flawed man who stands at the edge of its abyss, The Force is a masterpiece of urban realism full of shocking and surprising twists, leavened by flashes of dark humor, a morally complex and utterly riveting dissection of modern American society and the controversial issues confronting us today.

    This talented author has shown an extraordinary range in his work, from westerns to crime stories (both contemporary and historical) to a novel about baseball and more.In The Hot Kid, Elmore "Dutch" Leonard breaks new ground with a fast-paced, multifaceted tale of Prohibition-era crime, told from multiple perspectives that reflect the unexpected shifts of allegiance in this turbulent time. Set against a backdrop of speakeasys and shootouts, fast cars and even faster women, this stirring tale recounts a time when life was cheap on both sides of the law. The story unfolds in Oklahoma, featuring the exploits of four "hot kids" -- young lawman Carl Webster, bad-seed oilman's son Jack Belmont, glamorous gun moll Louly Brown, and true-crime journalist Tony Antonelli. Carl Webster, since his first personal encounter with crime as a teenage witness to a brutal robbery by notorious crook Emmet Long, has sought justice. His keen mind and sharpshooter's eye quickly build him a hot reputation in the U.S. Marshals Service, especially after he declares, "If I have to pull my weapon, I'll shoot to kill" and proves he has what it takes to back up his claim...Jack Belmont has big dreams. His goal is to join the ranks of America's most feared criminals to replace John Dillinger as Public Enemy No. 1. This young outlaw has all the instincts of a cold-blooded killer, plus a powerful thirst for glory. He's got a long way to go to join the ranks of Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, and Machine-Gun Kelly but he's off to a good enough start that Webster is hot on his trail...Louly Brown started with nothing but she wasn't about to settle for that. Her first claim to fame came when her cousin married Charley "Pretty Boy" Floyd. Later, running off with ex-con Joe Young added spice to her life. But she was smart enough to see that helping Carl Webster put a stop to Joe's crime spree would be a better deal than sharing his fate. After the smoke cleared, Louly really came into her own, selling her story to the papers, then setting her sights on the handsome lawman who'd captured her heart.Tony Antonelli loves the danger and fame that come along with rubbing shoulders with heartless gangsters, dedicated lawmen, gorgeous gun molls, and bloodthirsty vigilantes in the course of his work for True Detective Mystery magazine. Whether he's writing about bank robbers or the Black Hand, the KKK or rum running, or hot young lawmen and cold-blooded killers and their sexy sidekicks, Tony views other people's troubles as more than just bread-and-butter; they provide an adrenaline-charged kick to his own life, as well as vicarious thrills for eager readers.Elmore Leonard hits his target with The Hot Kid, an unforgettable tale of high adventure where the crooks are out to prove that crime really can pay and where federal marshals trade high risks for low salary to bring these wanted felons in "dead or alive."

    Her alleged murderer—a minister's son—hanged himself in his jail cell. The case is closed. But the dead girl's father has come to Matthew Scudder for answers, sending the unlicensed private investigator in search of terrible truths about a life that was lived and lost in a sordid world of perversion and pleasures.

    But when for the first time in Doc's long criminal career, his shot doesn't hit the mark, everything begins to fall apart. And Doc begins to realize that the perfect bank robbery isn't complete without the perfect getaway to back it up.THE GETAWAY is the classic story of a bank robbery gone horribly wrong, where the smallest mistakes have catastrophic consequences, and shifting loyalties lead to betrayals and chaos. The basis for the classic Steve McQueen film of the same name, as well as a 1994 remake with Alec Baldwin, Thompson's novel set the bar for every heist story that followed--but as Thompson's proved time and again, nobody's ever done it better than the master.

    When someone makes a present of one to Nero Wolfe, Archie Goodwin knows he's getting dreadfully close to solving the devilishly clever murders of an immigrant and a college president. As for Wolfe, he's playing snake charmer in a case with more twists than an anaconda -- whistling a seductive tune he hopes will catch a killer who's still got poison in his heart.