Fifty-to-One


Charles Ardai - 2008
    But what if, instead of having been founded 50 books ago, Hard Case Crime had been founded 50 years ago, by a rascal out to make a quick buck off the popularity of pulp fiction? Such a fellow might make a few enemies – especially after publishing a supposed non-fiction account of a heist at a Mob-run nightclub, actually penned by an 18-year-old showgirl. With both the cops and the crooks after them, our heroes are about to learn that reading and writing pulp novels is a lot more fun than living them...

Dope Thief


Dennis Tafoya - 2009
    It’s the perfect sting: the dealers they target are too small to look for revenge and too guilty to call the police, nobody has to die, nobody innocent gets hurt, and Ray and Manny score plenty.But it can’t last forever. Eventually, they choose the wrong mark and walk out with hundreds of thousands of dollars, and a heavy hitter, who is more than willing to kill to get his money back, is coming after them. Now Ray couldn’t care less about the score. He wants out—out of the scam, out of a life he feels like he never chose. Whether the victim of his latest job—not to mention his partner—will let him is another question entirely.Dennis Tafoya brings a rich, passionate, and accomplished new voice to the explosive story of a small-time crook with everything to lose in Dope Thief, his outstanding hardboiled debut.

The Tall Dolores


Michael Avallone - 1953
    You've been alive about thirty years, been all over the world, know your way around the toughest, biggest cities. You're no pushover. You've had lead dug out of your shoulders, fractured a leg here, and broken an arm there. You're tough, see? No lily-of-the-valley. A real hard guy. And yet with all that, you can be dumb. Real dumb. Like when you shoot off your mouth just because you have a gun in your pocket." --Ed Noon, Private EyeEnter Ed Noon on the world scene. The tallest burlesque queen in the universe hires Noon to find her even taller lover, who has vanished under strange circumstances. He turns up stabbed and dead on the steps of the Museum of Natural History, and sets Noon on a twisted murderous missing diamond-encrusted trail that ultimately leads to the Statue of Liberty. Noon meets Lt. Mike Monks of NY’s Homicide Dept who will become not only a Captain, but also Noon’s greatest ally and friend over the next four decades.

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.

Silent City


Alex Segura - 2013
    He's on the brink of being fired from his middle-management newspaper job. His fiancée has up and left him. Now, after the sudden death of his father, he's back in his hometown of Miami, slowly drinking himself into oblivion. But when a co-worker he barely knows asks Pete to locate a missing daughter, Pete finds himself dragged into a tale of murder, drugs, double-crosses and memories bursting from the black heart of the Miami underworld - and, shockingly, his father's past. Making it up as he goes and stumbling as often as he succeeds, Pete's surreptitious quest becomes the wake-up call he's never wanted but has always needed - but one with deadly consequences. Welcome to Silent City, a story of redemption, broken friendships, lost loves and one man's efforts to make peace with a long-buried past to save the lives of the few friends he has left.