Right as Rain


George Pelecanos - 2001
    The two detectives soon find themselves up against institutionalised racism and the worst killers in the USA.

A Cool Breeze on the Underground


Don Winslow - 1991
    A graduate student at Columbia University, he grew up on the streets of New York, usually on the wrong side of the law. Then he met Joe Graham, a one-armed P.I. who introduced him to the Bank, an exclusive New England institution with a sideline in keeping its wealthy clients happy and out of trouble. They pay Neal's college tuition, and Neal gets an education that can't be found in any textbook-- from learning how to trail a suspect to mastering the proper way to search a room.Now it's payback time. The Bank wants Neal to put his skills to work in finding Allie Chase, the rebellious teenage daughter of a prominent senator. The problem: Allie has gone underground in London, and to get her back, Neal has to follow her into the punk scene, a violent netherworld where drugs run rampant and rage is the name of the game. Up against punk junkies, antique book thieves, and murderous betrayal, Neal has his work cut out for him to save Allie-- and get back above ground for good.

The Deep Blue Good-By


John D. MacDonald - 1964
    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.

The Sins of the Fathers


Lawrence Block - 1976
    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.

The Last Good Kiss


James Crumley - 1978
    Sughrue, a Montana investigator who kills time by working at a topless bar. Hired to track down a derelict author, he ends up on the trail of a girl missing in Haight-Ashbury for a decade. The tense hunt becomes obsessive as Sughrue takes a haunting journey through the underbelly of America's sleaziest nightmares.

Miami Blues


Charles Willeford - 1984
    With his guard down, he doesn’t think twice when he hears a knock on the door. The next day, he finds himself in the hospital, badly bruised and with his jaw wired shut. He thinks back over ten years of cases wondering who would want to beat him into unconsciousness, steal his gun and badge, and most importantly, make off with his prized dentures. But the pieces never quite add up to revenge, and the few clues he has keep connecting to a dimwitted hooker, and her ex-con boyfriend and the bizarre murder of a Hare Krishna pimp.Chronically depressed, constantly strapped for money, always willing to bend the rules a bit, Hoke Moseley is hardly what you think of as the perfect cop, but he is one of the the greatest detective creations of all time.

Swag


Elmore Leonard - 1976
    figures his luck's about to change when Detroit used-car salesman Frank Ryan catches him trying to boost a ride from Ryan's lot. Frank's got some surefire schemes for getting rich quick--all of them involving guns--and all Stickley has to do is follow "Ryan's Rules" to share the wealth.But sometimes rules need to be bent, maybe even broken to succeed in the world of crime, especially when the "brains" of the operation knows less than nothing.

Little Girl Lost


Richard Aleas - 2004
    So how did she wind up shot to death on the roof of New York s seediest strip club? It s up to detective John Blake to uncover his ex-girlfriend s secret life as a striptease queen. But the deeper he digs, the darker the secrets he uncovers, until a shattering face-off in an East Village tenement changes his life forever. First time in paperback--a stunning debut novel from an author whose stories have been selected for BEST MYSTERY STORIES OF THE YEAR and THE YEAR S BEST HORROR STORIES, as well as short-listed for the Shamus Award by the Private Eye Writers of America.

The Moving Target


Ross Macdonald - 1949
    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.

The Continental Op


Dashiell Hammett - 1930
    The Continental Op was his great first contribution to the genre and these seven stories, which first appeared in the magazine Black Mask, are the best examples of Hammett's early writing, in which his formidable literary and moral imagination is already operating at full strength. The Continental Op is the dispassionate fat man working for the Continental Detective Agency, modelled on the Pinkerton Agency, whose only interest is in doing his job in a world of violence, passion, desperate action and great excitement.The tenth clew.--The golden horseshoe.--The house in Turk Street.--The girl with the silver eyes.--The whosis kid.--The main death.--The farewell murder.

Flood


Andrew Vachss - 1985
    Burke's newest client is a woman named Flood, who has the face of an angel, the body of a high-priced stripper, and the skills of a professional executioner.  She wants Burke to find a monster for her—so she can kill him with her bare hands.In this cauterizing thriller, Andrew Vachss's renegade investigator teams up with a lethally gifted avenger to follow a child's murderer through the catacombs of New York, where every alley is blind and the penthouses are as dangerous as the basements.  Fearfully knowing, crackling with narrative tension, and written in prose as forceful as a hollow-point slug, Flood is Burke at his deadliest—and Vachss at the peak of his form.

Blood Work


Michael Connelly - 1998
    He's recuperating from a heart transplant and avoiding anything stressful. But when Graciella tells him the way her sister Gloria was murdered, it leaves Terry no choice. Now the man with the new heart vows to take down a predator without a soul. For Gloria's killer shatters every rule that McCaleb ever learned in his years with the Bureau--as McCaleb gets no more second chances at life...and just one shot at the truth.

Queenpin


Megan Abbott - 2007
    Notoriously cunning and ruthless, Gloria shows her eager young protégée the ropes, ushering her into a glittering demimonde of late-night casinos, racetracks, betting parlors, inside heists, and big, big money. Suddenly, the world is at her feet--as long as she doesn't take any chances, like falling for the wrong guy. As the roulette wheel turns, both mentor and protégée scramble to stay one step ahead of their bosses and each other.

Caught Stealing


Charlie Huston - 2004
    But now Hank is here, working as a bartender and taking care of a cat named Bud who is surely going to get him killed.It begins when Hank’s neighbor, Russ, has to leave town in a rush and hands over Bud in a carrier. But it isn’t until two Russians in tracksuits drag Hank over the bar at the joint where he works and beat him to a pulp that he starts to get the idea: Someone wants something from him. He just doesn’t know what it is, where it is, or how to make them understand he doesn’t have it.Within twenty-four hours Hank is running over rooftops, swinging his old aluminum bat for the sweet spot of a guy’s head, playing hide and seek with the NYPD, riding the subway with a dead man at his side, and counting a whole lot of cash on a concrete floor.All because of two cowboys, two Russian mafia men, and some of the weirdest goons ever assembled in one place. All because of Bud. All because once, in another life, in another world, the only thing Hank wanted was to take third base—without getting caught.

The Hunter


Richard Stark - 1962
    The thriller that introduces Parker. “A brilliant invention”. Played by Lee Marvin in the John Boorman movie. “The funnies call it the syndicate. The goons and hustlers call it the Outfit. You call it the Organization. But I don’t care if you call yourselves the Red Cross, you owe me forty-five thousand dollars and you’ll pay me back whether you like it or not.”This novel was originally titled The Hunter, later retitled Point Blank because of the movie, later retitled Payback because of the other movie.