Book picks similar to
Dirtbags by Eryk Pruitt


noir
crime-noir
rural-noir-grit-lit
crime-fiction-all

From Green to Blue


Jonathan Cox - 2013
    Having walked the beat in the early eighties in some of London’s most fractious communities, he worked on a variety of specialist teams dealing with murder, fraud, witness protection and surveillance before becoming a Detective Inspector responsible for investigating the most serious cases of police corruption.

A Matter of Blood


Sarah Pinborough - 2010
    Crime is rising in every major city. Financial institutions across the world have collapsed, and most governments are now in debt to The Bank, a company created by the world's wealthiest men. But Detective Inspector Cass Jones has enough on his plate without worrying about the world at large. His marriage is crumbling, he's haunted by the deeds of his past, and he's got the high-profile shooting of two schoolboys to solve - not to mention tracking down a serial killer who calls himself the Man of Flies. Then Cass Jones' personal world is thrown into disarray when his brother shoots his own wife and child before committing suicide - leaving Cass implicated in their deaths. And when he starts seeing silent visions of his dead brother, it's time for the suspended DI to go on the hunt himself - only to discover that all three cases are linked ...As Jones is forced to examine his own family history, three questions keep reappearing: what disturbed his brother so badly in his final few weeks? Who are the shadowy people behind The Bank? And, most importantly, what do they want with DI Cass Jones?

The Darkening Hour


Penny Hancock - 2013
    A middle class woman at her wits' end.A struggling migrant worker with few options for survival.When tensions boil over, who will be the first to snap?Will it be Theodora, finally breaking under the pressure?Or Mona, desperate to find a way out?

Dead Man's Badge


Robert E. Dunn - 2018
    It's lean and smart and very good. I say, check it out.” Joe Lansdale Career criminal Longview Moody, on the run from killers, assumes his dead, twin brother's identity as the new Chief of Police of a Texas town that's being terrorized by a Mexican drug cartel. To pull off the deadly deception, Longview desperately works to become the kind of cop and man that his brother was. But when the two lives he’s living converge, he’s forced to embrace the violence within him to get justice...and vengeance. PRAISE FOR ‘DEAD MAN’S BADGE' “Robert Dunn unloads both barrels – DEAD MAN'S BADGE is a fast, furious shootout from beginning to end. This tale of corrupt cops, cartel killers, and one bad guy just trying to make good, lingers like gun smoke. Bloody, dark, and pistol-whip smart, it's Border noir at its best.” J. Todd Scott, author of THE FAR EMPTY “Fans of Clint Eastwood’s spaghetti westerns will find a lot to like.” Publishers Weekly "In Dunn's capable hands, readers will jump onboard for the ride. Dunn is a gifted writer and he opens DEAD MAN'S BADGE with one of the most gripping scenes I've ever read. Fans of grit will love this fast-paced book." Mystery Scene Magazine "Riveting thriller about coming back from the dead, revenge and redemption. The pages fly by even faster than the bodies pile up. DEAD MAN'S BADGE establishes Robert E. Dunn as a formidable new name in hard-boiled fiction." R.G Belsky, author of the Clare Carlson and Gil Malloy mystery series "DEAD MAN'S BADGE sizzles with suspense! Dunn promises action on page one of this thriller and delivers the goods nonstop to the very end." Margaret Mizushima, award-winning author of HUNTING HOUR. "Brutal, vivid, and unforgettable...a modern-day western morality tale in crime-novel wrapping with a blood-red bow. This one will haunt you." -Lee Goldberg, #1 New York Times bestselling author of TRUE FICTION "DEAD MAN’S BADGE is crazy good, a great story, non-stop action, and a brilliantly-crafted hero. Dunn hit it out of the park with this one". -Harry Hunsicker, former executive vice president of the Mystery Writers of America and the author of THE DEVIL’S COUNTRY

Follow You Home


Mark Edwards - 2015
    To find their way back to civilisation, they must hike along the tracks through a forest…a haunting journey that ends in unimaginable terror.Back in London, Daniel and Laura vow never to talk about what they saw that night. But as they try to fit back into their old lives, it becomes clear that their nightmare is just beginning…Follow You Home is a chilling tale of secrets, lies and deadly consequences from the author of #1 bestsellers The Magpies and Because She Loves Me.

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.

The Contortionist's Handbook


Craig Clevenger - 2002
    In the face of his impending institutionalization, he continually reinvents himself to escape the legal and mental health authorities and to save himself from a life of incarceration. But running turns out to be costly. Vincent's clients in the L.A. underworld lose patience, the hospital evaluator may not be fooled by his story, and the only person in as much danger as himself is the woman who knows his real name.

The One Who Got Away


Caroline Overington - 2016
    The not-to-be-missed new psychological thriller from Caroline Overington.We all keep secrets. Some are deadly. Loren Wynne-Estes appears to have it all: she's the girl from the wrong side of the tracks who's landed a handsome husband, a stunning home, a fleet of shiny cars and two beautiful daughters ... Then one day a fellow parent taps Loren on the shoulder outside the grand school gate, hands her a note ... and suddenly everything's at stake. Loren's Facebook-perfect marriage is spectacularly exposed - revealing an underbelly of lies and betrayal. What is uncovered will scandalise a small town, destroy lives and leave a family divided. But who is to be believed and who is to blame? Will the right person be brought to justice or is there one who got away? An unsettling psychological thriller for fans of Girl on a Train and Gone Girl.

Santa Cruz Noir


Susie BrightPeggy Townsend - 2018
    Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.Featuring brand-new stories by: Tommy Moore, Jessica Breheny, Naomi Hirahara, Calvin McMillin, Liza Monroy, Elizabeth McKenzie, Jill Wolfson, Ariel Gore, Jon Bailiff, Maceo Montoya, Micah Perks, Seana Graham, Vinnie Hansen, Peggy Townsend, Margaret Elysia Garcia, Lou Mathews, Lee Quarnstrom, Dillon Kaiser, Beth Lisick, and Wallace Baine.From the introduction by Susie Bright:Every town has its noir-ville. It’s easy to find in Santa Cruz. We live in what’s called “paradise,” where you can wake up in a pool of blood with the first pink rays of the sunrise peeking out over our mountain range. The dewy mist lifts from the bay. Don’t hate us because we’re beautiful—we were made that way, like Venus rising off the foam with a brick in her hand. We can’t help it if you fall for it every time . . .“If I lived in a place like this,” visitors often say, “I’d wake up with a smile every day.”Oh, we do, thank you for that. There’s no beauty like a merciless beauty—and like every crepuscular predator, it thrives at dawn and dusk. You’re just the innocent we’ve been waiting for, with your big paper cone of sugar-shark cotton, whipped out of pure nothing. We have just the ride for you, the longest tunnel ever. Santa Cruz is everything you ever dreamed, and everything you ever screamed, in one long drop you’ll never forget.

The Price


Kerry Kaya - 2020
    Together they work for notorious East End gangster Billy King. Across the water in South London is Billy’s rival George Bannerman and the two firms are locked in a bitter turf war.Amid murder, drug deals, and rival firms, Fletch is harbouring his own secrets and it’s only a matter of time until those secrets are revealed, and when you break the rules you have to pay the price.

The Kings of Cool


Don Winslow - 2012
    Among the most celebrated thrillers in recent memory—and now a major motion picture directed by Academy Award–winning filmmaker Oliver Stone—Savages was picked as a best book of the year by Stephen King in Entertainment Weekly, Janet Maslin in The New York Times, and Sarah Weinman in the Los Angeles Times. Now, in this high-octane prequel, Winslow reaches back in time to tell the story of how Ben, Chon, and O became the people they are. Spanning from 1960s Southern California to the recent past, The Kings of Cool is a breathtakingly original saga of family in all its forms—fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, friends and lovers. As the trio at the center of the book does battle with a cabal of drug dealers and crooked cops, they come to learn that their future is inextricably linked with their parents’ history. A series of breakneck twists and turns puts the two generations on a collision course, culminating in a stunning showdown that will force Ben, Chon, and O to choose between their real families and their loyalty to one another. Fast-paced, provocative, and wickedly funny, The Kings of Cool is a spellbinding love story for our times from a master novelist at the height of his powers. It is filled with Winslow’s trademark talents—complex characters, sharp dialogue, blistering social commentary—that have earned him an obsessive following. The result is a book that will echo in your mind and heart long after you’ve turned the last page.

Kiss Her Goodbye (Hard Case Crime #8)


Allan Guthrie - 2005
    When they don't pay it back, they get a visit from Joe Hope. — But now Joe's got troubles of his own. His teenage daughter's found dead, an apparent suicide. Then the police arrest him for murder. But for once, Joe's innocent--and with help from Scotland's hardest men (and one of Scotland's hardest women), he sets out to find who's framed him and deliver his own brutal brand of justice.

Country Dark


Chris Offutt - 2018
    He falls in love and starts a family, and while the Tuckers don’t have much, they have the love of their home and each other. But when his family is threatened, Tucker is pushed into violence, which changes everything. The story of people living off the land and by their wits in a backwoods Kentucky world of shine-runners and laborers whose social codes are every bit as nuanced as the British aristocracy, Country Dark is a novel that blends the best of Larry Brown and James M. Cain, with a noose tightening evermore around a man who just wants to protect those he loves. It reintroduces the vital and absolutely distinct voice of Chris Offutt, a voice we’ve been missing for years.Chris Offutt is an outstanding literary talent, whose work has been called “lean and brilliant” (New York Times Book Review) and compared by reviewers to Tobias Wolff, Ernest Hemingway, and Raymond Carver. He’s been awarded the Whiting Writers Award for Fiction/Nonfiction and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Fiction Award, among numerous other honors. His first work of fiction in nearly two decades, Country Dark, is a taut, compelling novel set in rural Kentucky from the Korean War to 1970.

Kiss Me, Judas


Will Christopher Baer - 1998
    Red dress, black hair, body like a knife. He takes her back to his room and wakes the next morning in a bathtub full of blood and ice, missing a kidney.Dragging himself from a hospital bed, Phineas discovers he wants to be with Jude like a hunger -- and he wants to find her and kill her. Falling for her is the start of a twisted love story that takes him from the snowy streets of Denver to the high plains of Texas where the boundaries between torturer and victim, killer and accomplice, become nightmarishly distorted.

American Tabloid


James Ellroy - 1995
    Edgar Hoover, Howard Hughes, Jimmy Hoffa, Cuban political exiles, and various loose cannons conspire in a covert anarchy...Where the right drugs, the right amount of cash, the right murder, buys a moment of a man's loyalty...Where three renegade law-enforcement officers—a former L.A. cop and two FBI agents—are shaping events with the virulence of their greed and hatred, riding full-blast shotgun into history....James Ellroy's trademark nothing-spared rendering of reality, blistering language, and relentless narrative pace are here in electrifying abundance, put to work in a novel as shocking and daring as anything he's written: a secret history that zeroes in on a time still shrouded in secrets and blows it wide open.Chosen by Time magazine as one of the ten best books of the year."Hard-bitten ... ingenious ... Ellroy segues into political intrigue without missing a beat." —The New York Times"Vastly entertaining." —Los Angeles Times"One hellishly exciting ride." —Detroit Free Press"A supremely controlled work of art." —The New York Times Book Review