Book picks similar to
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The Consummata
Mickey Spillane - 2011
But it's all the money in the world to the struggling Cuban exiles of Miami who rescued Morgan the Raider. So when it's snatched by a man the Cubans trusted, Morgan sets out to get it back.A simple favor but as the bodies pile up - dead men and beautiful women - the Raider wonders what kind of Latin hell he's gotten himself into, and just who or what is the mysterious Consummata?Begun by mystery master Mickey Spillane in the late 1960s and completed four decades later by his friend Max Allan Collins (Road to Perdition), The Consummata is the long-awaited follow-up to Spillane's bestseller The Delta Factor - a breathtaking tale of treachery, sensuality, and violence, showcasing two giants of crime fiction at their pulse-pounding, two-fisted best.
The Case of the Velvet Claws
Erle Stanley Gardner - 1933
Eva's husband George is behind tabloid editor Frank Locke’s blackmail of Congressman Harrison Burke. The politician and Eva had been together at a restaurant when there was an attempted robbery. It's not long before George takes a bullet to the heart as he's getting out of his bath. There's a forged will too. It benefits his nephew Carl, who is engaged to the daughter of Mrs. Veitch, the Belters’ secretive housekeeper. Is this complicated or what!At least Eva Belter had brains; she was smart enough to consult Perry Mason.
The Bastard Hand
Heath Lowrance - 2011
He's escaped from a mental hospital up north and hitchhiked his way south, the voice of his dead brother urging him on. But when Charlie hits Memphis, the fine line between his delusions and reality shift in the form of the Reverend Phineas Childe-a preacher bent on booze and women; a Man of God with a dark agenda. Charlie is the perfect pawn in the Reverend's game of retribution. And the small North Mississippi town of Cuba Landing will be the setting for the Reverend's very personal Apocalypse. . . .
Epitaph for a Tramp & Epitaph for a Dead Beat: The Harry Fannin Detective Novels
David Markson - 1959
Together here in one volume, these works are now available to a new generation of readers.In Epitaph for a Tramp, Fannin isn't called out to investigate a murder — it happens on his doorstop. In the sweltering heat of a New York August night, he answers the buzzer at his door to find his promiscuous ex-wife dying from a knife wound. To find her killer, Fannin plies his trade with classic hard-boiled aplomb. In the second novel, Epitaph for a Dead Beat, Fannin finds himself knee-deep in murder among the beatniks and bohemians of the early 1960s, where blood seems to flow as readily as cheap Chianti.Intricately plotted and rife with wisecracks, David Markson offers suspenseful and literary crime novels.
Easy Death
Daniel Boyd - 2014
...and two robbers hired by a local crime boss manage to heist half a million dollars from an armored car. But getting the money and getting away with it are two different things, especially with a blizzard coming down, the cops in hot pursuit, and a double-crossing gambler and a murderous park ranger threatening to turn this white Christmas blood red.
Bust
Ken Bruen - 2006
When you hire someone to kill your wife, don’t hire a psychopath.2. Drano is not the best tool for getting rid of a dead body.3. Those locks on hotel room doors? Not very secure.4. A curly blond wig isn’t much of a disguise.5. Secrets can kill.
A Firing Offense
George Pelecanos - 1992
Blow-out sales and shady deals are his life. When a stockroom boy hooked on speed metal and the fast life disappears, Nick has to help find him.
Fun & Games
Duane Swierczynski - 2011
His latest gig comes replete with an illegally squatting B-movie actress who rants about hit men who specialize in making deaths look like accidents. Unfortunately, it's the real deal. Hardie finds himself squared off against a small army of the most lethal men in the world: The Accident People.It's nothing personal-the girl just happens to be the next name on their list. For Hardie, though, it's intensely personal. He's not about to let more innocent people die. Not on his watch.
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 Shark-Infested Custard
Charles Willeford - 1993
Eddie Miller is an airline pilot who's studying to get his real estate license. Don Luchessi is a silver salesman who's separated from his wife but too Catholic to get a divorce. Hank Norton is a drug company rep who gets four times as many dames as any of the other guys. They are all regular guys who like to drink, play cards, meet broads, and shoot a little pool. But when a friendly bet goes horribly awry, they find themselves with two dead bodies on their hands and a homicidal husband in the wings—and acting more like hardened criminals than upstanding citizens.
Bedelia
Vera Caspary - 1945
But is Bedelia too good to be true? A mysterious new neighbor turns out to be a detective on the trail of a “kitten with claws of steel”—a picture-perfect wife with a string of dead husbands in her wake.Caspary builds this tale to a peak of psychological suspense as her characters are trapped together by a blizzard. The true Bedelia, the woman who chose murder over a life on the street, reveals how she turns male fantasies of superiority into a deadly con.Femmes Fatales restores to print the best of women’s writing in the classic pulp genres of the mid-20th century. From mystery to hard-boiled noir to taboo lesbian romance, these rediscovered queens of pulp offer subversive perspectives on a turbulent era. Enjoy the series: Bedelia; The Blackbirder; Bunny Lake Is Missing; By Cecile; The G-String Murders; The Girls in 3-B; In a Lonely Place; Laura; Mother Finds a Body; Now, Voyager; Skyscraper; Stranger on Lesbos; Women's Barracks.
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.
Gun Machine
Warren Ellis - 2012
When examined, each weapon leads to a different, previously unsolved murder. Someone has been killing people for twenty years or more and storing the weapons together for some inexplicable purpose. Confronted with the sudden emergence of hundreds of unsolved homicides, Tallow soon discovers that he's walked into a veritable deal with the devil. An unholy bargain that has made possible the rise of some of Manhattan's most prominent captains of industry. A hunter who performs his deadly acts as a sacrifice to the old gods of Manhattan, who may, quite simply, be the most prolific murderer in New York City's history.
Dutch Uncle (Hard Case Crime #12)
Peter Pavia - 2005
The Dutch uncle in the book is an actual Dutchman whose cocaine and untimely demise set a small swarm of crooks and cops in motion. Harry Healy is the sort-of hero, a likable, small-time criminal, just out of jail, who has a hard time making good decisions. But he's just one player in a memorably quirky cast that includes a dim ex-jock snorting his way through his inheritance; a ditzy babe whose constant nakedness is annoying everyone; a short, chunky detective who struggles with his sensitivity training; and the braces-wearing Latina colleague he might just be made for. Pavia, coauthor of The Other Hollywood, an "oral history" of the porn industry, redraws the hard-boiled boundaries of the Hard Case Crime line a bit to include this offbeat diversion in the style of Leonard, Carl Hiaasen, and Charles Willeford's Hoke Moseley books