Nineteen Seventy Four


David Peace - 1999
    Crime correspondent for the Evening Post. He didn't know it was going to be a season in hell. A dead little girl with a swan's wings stitched to her back. A gypsy camp in a ring of fire. Corruption everywhere you look.In Nineteen Seventy Four, David Peace brings passion and stylistic bravado to this terrifyingly intense journey into a secret history of sexual obsession, greed and sadism.

The Bouncer


David Gordon - 2018
     Joe Brody is just your average Dostoevsky-reading, Harvard-expelled strip club bouncer who has a highly classified military history and a best friend from Catholic school who happens to be head mafioso Gio Caprisi. FBI agent Donna Zamora, the best shot in her class at Quantico, is a single mother stuck at a desk manning the hotline. Their storylines intersect over a tip from a cokehead that leads to a crackdown on Gio's strip joint in Queens and Joe's arrest. Outside the jailhouse, the Fed and the bouncer lock eyes, as Gordon launches them both headlong into a non-stop plot that goes from back-road gun running to high-stakes perfume heist, and manages to touch everyone from the CIA to the Triads. Beneath it all lurks a sinister criminal mastermind whose manipulations could cause chaos on a massively violent scale.

Heaven's a Lie


Wallace Stroby - 2021
    Inside is a bounty better than she could have dreamed—just shy of $300,000 in neatly stacked hundreds and fifties. Enough to pay off her debts, give her mother the care she deserves, and maybe even help out a few of her friends.But, of course, the missing briefcase didn't go unnoticed by its original owner, Travis Clay—a ruthless dealer who'll stop at nothing to get back what's his.Joette is way out of her depth, but can't seem to stop herself from participating in this cat-and-mouse chase. But can she beat Travis at his own game?

Laidlaw


William McIlvanney - 1977
    In Glasgow, the city with the worst slums in Europe, a city of hard men, powerful villains, bitter victims and cynical policemen, Laidlaw uses unconventional methods.

Grave Descend


John Lange - 1970
    Raising it would be a near-impossible task, but James McGregor is suited to the impossible. An expert diver, he makes his living exploring sunken ships. But there’s something strange about the wreck of the Grave Descend. How did she sink? Why do none of the survivors tell the same story? And what was the cargo inside her hull? To answer these questions, McGregor will have to contend with the deadliest sharks around—both underwater and on land. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Michael Crichton including rare images from the author’s estate.

The Plantation


Chris Kuzneski - 2000
    But these aren’t random kidnappings. They’re crimes of passion,planned and researched several months in advance, then executed with a singular objective in mind. Revenge.Ariane Walker is one of the victims, dragged from her apartment with few clues to follow. The police said there’s little they can do for her, but that isn’t good enough for her boyfriend, Jonathon Payne.With the help of his best friend (David Jones), Payne gives chase, hoping that a lead in New Orleans somehow pays off. Together, they uncover the mystery of Ariane’s abduction and the truth behind the South’s most violent secret.

Gypsy in Amber


Martin Cruz Smith - 1971
    When you are a gypsy, an antique dealer, and you've been entrusted with a very old highboy in which a dead body is discovered, you have a major problem.Sorcery and the dark sciences lie at the heart of a terrible murder that threatens to force the police into a confrontation with New York's gypsy community. However, Roman Grey decides to unearth the truth about the killing, whatever the cost.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle


George V. Higgins - 1970
    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.

The Prone Gunman


Jean-Patrick Manchette - 1981
    Ebook ISBN: 9780872866652). Film opened March 20, 2015 starring Sean Penn, Javier Bardem, Idris Elba and Ray Winstone, directed by Pierre Morel (Taken).Martin Terrier is a hired killer who wants out of the game — so he can settle down and marry his childhood sweetheart. After all, that's why he took up this profession! But "the company" won't let him go: they have other plans. Once again, the gunman must assume the prone firing position. A tour de force, this violent tale shatters as many illusions about life and politics as it does bodies. Jean-Patrick Manchette subjects his characters and the reader alike to a fierce exercise in style. This tightly plotted, corrosive parody of "the success story" is widely considered to be Manchette's masterpiece, and was named a New York Times "Notable Book" in 2002. The Prone Gunman is a classic of modern noir."For Manchette and the generation of writers who followed him, the crime novel is no mere entertainment, but a means to strip bare the failures of society, ripping through veils of appearance, deceit, and manipulation to the greed and violence that are the society's true engines."—Boston Globe"There's not a superfluous word or overdone effect . . . one of the last cool, compact and shockingly original crime novels Manchette left as his legacy to modern noir fiction."—New York Times"For the first time readers can experience in English translation the masterful thriller considered Manchette's finest, proof positive that the French knew what they were talking about when they labeled this sort of novel 'noir'." —Publishers Weekly"This superbly muscular translation of the late French mystery writer Jean-Patrick Manchette's most celebrated work, The Prone Gunman, is the third volume issued [by] City Lights Noir. The series may prove to be the most needed contribution to contemporary fiction by any publisher in a good long while." —The San Francisco ChronicleJean-Patrick Manchette was a French crime novelist credited with reinventing and reinvigorating the genre. He wrote ten short novels in the 1970s and early 80s, and is widely recognized as the foremost French crime fiction author of that time. His stories are violent, existentialist explorations of the human condition and French society. Jazz saxophonist and screenwriter, Manchette was also a left-wing activist influenced as much by the writings of the Situationist International as by Dashiell Hammett. Jean-Patrick Manchette's other work, 3 to Kill is also published by City Lights Publishers.

Don't Point that Thing at Me


Kyril Bonfiglioli - 1972
    He's not one to pass up a drink - or too many - and he prides himself on being stylishly dressed for whatever occasion may present itself, no matter how debauched. Don't miss this brilliant mixture of comedy, crime, and suspense.

No Good from a Corpse


Leigh Brackett - 1943
    She was never successful in this, but her Chandler-influenced novel No Good From a Corpse was so impressive in its hard-boiled dialogue that Howard Hawks insisted its author, unseen, be brought in to work on the screenplay adaption of The Big Sleep (together with a fella by the name of Faulkner.) Though Hawks was stunned to discover that Leigh was a woman, she got the job, and worked on what was probably the best film adaptation of a Chandler novel. No Good From a Corpse offers hard-boiled private eye Ed Clive, who gets involved with a dead girl, and suspects every one of her boyfriends--an ex-husband, a playboy, a blackmailer and a brute. There's a woman suspect as well, and a long chase through Sunset Strip.

A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away


Christopher Brookmyre - 2001
    In both their cases, it was to be rock stars. Fifteen years later, their mid-thirties are bearing down fast, and just like everybody else, they're having to accept the less glamorous hands reality has dealt them. Nervous new father Ray takes refuge from his responsibilities by living a virtual existence in online games. People say he needs to grow up, but everybody has to find their own way of coping. For some it's affairs, for others it's the bottle, and for Simon it's serial murder, mass slaughter and professional assassination.

Beast In View


Margaret Millar - 1955
    What starts with a crank call from an old school chum sets the lonely, aloof, financially comfortable Miss Helen Clarvoe on a path as predictable only as madness. Lured from her rooms in a second-rate residential Hollywood hotel, she finds herself stranded in the more perilous terrain of extortion, pornography, vengeance, and ultimately murder.

The Choirboys


Joseph Wambaugh - 1976
    Each wears his cynicism like a bulletproof jockstrap–each has his horror story, his bad dream, his night shriek. He is afraid of his friends–he is afraid of himself.

The Vengeful Virgin


Gil Brewer - 1958
    But that's the life she was trapped in - until she met Jack.Now Shirley and Jack have a plan to put the old man out of his misery and walk away with a suitcase full of cash. But there's nothing like money to come between lovers – money, and other women...