I just want to shoot somebody."--Mike Hammer Everybody loves a mystery, and nobody solves them like Mike Hammer. While other detectives bend and manipulate the law, Hammer holds it in total contempt, seeing it as nothing more than an impediment to justice, the one virtue he holds in absolute esteem. Now, the no-holds-barred private eye returns, along with his gorgeous secretary, Velda, and a collection of New York City characters, in two fully dramatized "theater-of-the-mind" audio adventures. "Dangerous Days" and "Oil and Water." "Dangerous Days" - When Hammer rescues a crazed young woman clad only in a medical gown, he's flung into the shadowy world of secret ops and international terrorism. New York is the target, and Mike Hammer is the only man who can prevent a massive catastrophe. But will he find out who the real enemy is before it's too late? "Oil and Water" - The one woman Mike Hammer might have married is back in town. But when she's murdered after making an appointment with her ex-lover, Mike winds up investigating a massive conspiracy involving a powerful oil company. Hammer thinks he's close to the truth, but has he been played for a sucker all along? Narrated by Stacy Keach, the acclaimed actor who starred in the original Mike Hammer TV series, these new mysteries are written by the writers of that show and enhanced with a full supporting cast, sound effects, and music. Even the show's jazzy theme song is back to set the gritty tone for each episode.

    We're talking over a hundred print pages of pure pulp perfection that'll cost you less than the paper it ain't printed on.Includes the Spinetingler-Award-winning "Seven Days of Rain," Derringer-Award finalist "The Big Score," and "The World Behind," which originally appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.Also included are "A Better Life," "The Well," "A Simple Kindness," "Eight Pounds," and "The Toll Collectors."

    The oldest of four kids, she tried to protect them from their violent father until one day he murdered their mother and got sent down.What was left of the family rattled through the care system, bouncing from foster placement to care home. Liberty would have probably ended up on drugs, or dead, or worse if it hadn't been for a ballsy solicitor who told her to get her act together.So that's what she did. She kept her nose clean, got an education.And look at her now. New name, new accent, new town. The past is far behind her and she's concentrating on her own legal career. She has a Porsche, a house in Hampstead... and then one morning her boss asks her to do a favour. He wants her to go to Leeds, to get an important client's son off an assault charge.But Leeds is in Liberty's past. And once she hits town, the past slaps her in the face... and pulls her back into what she worked so hard to leave behind.

    Everything I did, I did for her..."When Regan Pen discovers that her long-term boyfriend has been cheating on her with over eight women, she packs her bags and leaves the sunny island in Spain that she had called home for a year. She returns to South Africa where she is given the chance to start over in life. Reassemble herself. Now is her time to be selfish. Find a new career, get a home of her own. Become whoever she wants to be... but when her best friend, Peyton, is brutally murdered, Regan is forced to put her life on hold to take responsibility for her friends thirteen year old daughter, Harley. As the police battle to solve the murder of Peyton and her unborn child, Regan becomes convinced that her Godchild is not the sweet, innocent little girl everyone seems to think she is. Could Harley have been so consumed by her jealousy and fear of not being the epicenter of her mothers universe that it lead to murder? If so, is Regan safe in her own home?

    Few know these characters—and their creators—better than Sarah Weinman. One of today’s preeminent authorities on crime fiction, Weinman asks: Where would bestselling authors like Gillian Flynn, Sue Grafton, or Tana French be without the women writers who came before them? In Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives, Weinman brings together fourteen hair-raising tales by women who—from the 1940s through the mid-1970s—took a scalpel to contemporary society and sliced away to reveal its dark essence. Lovers of crime fiction from any era will welcome this deliciously dark tribute to a largely forgotten generation of women writers.

    Belkin must begin each day with the task he calls The Service: visiting Christian chat-rooms to reply to users innocent questions with mocking answers. “Why do they call the taking of the communion ‘Mass?’”? Belkin124 responds: “They call it the Mass because after Jesus was crucified, a mass of people rushed forward to the cross and ate him. Now they eat the wafer to remember it.” At forty-seven, balding, and mildly agoraphobic, Belkin is a man without direction. He rarely leaves his apartment (he refers to the outside world as The Pounding), and when he must leave, he meticulously recounts the day in his Thunder Book; a journal where he lists all that repulsed him that day.But everything changes the day Belkin returns to his apartment to find the building ablaze along with the suspected murder of the apartment building’s maintenance man. As police question him, Belkin meets the mysterious Pernice Balfour, the alluring, religiously obsessed neighbor accused of the crime. Soon, Belkin has no choice but to come out of his shell (and his apartment) to try to clear her name. But the more Belkin investigates, the muddier things become. Wandering through San Francisco’s seedy Tenderloin district, Belkin begins to unravel the truth behind the murder, and encounters a bizarre series of characters and situations: "pansexual" crime-scene photographer, an idiot detective, and an all-knowing government operative.Whispering Bodies is comical offbeat exploration of the wisdom found in madness and the madness found in conventional life, all brought together in a classic tale of who-done-it.

    Now that peace has come, he is being haunted day and night by twelve ghosts: a mother and infant, a schoolboy, a butcher, an RUC constable, and seven other of his innocent victims. In order to appease them, he’s going to have to kill the men who gave him orders. As he’s working his way down the list he encounters a woman who may offer him redemption; she has borne a child to an RUC officer and is an outsider too. Now he has given Fate—and his quarry—a hostage. Is this Fegan’s ultimate mistake?CollusionWhen Detective Inspector Jack Lennon tries to track down his former lover, Marie McKenna, and their daughter, his superiors tell him to back off. But now an assassin stalks Belfast, tying up loose ends for a vengeance-driven old man. As Lennon unravels a conspiracy that links his daughter to a killer named Fegan, the line between friend and enemy blurs.

    

    When he is offered easy money to tail someone, and even more easy money to dispose of him, it's more tempting than you might think. Until you realize that you've been led up the garden path the whole way. King of the Ants is dark, disturbing, and violently comic.

    Others might refer to him as a criminal or a pimp or an extortionist or all of these things, if they knew what he was doing at night. His income is derived from a number of brothels and gambling parlors that are secreted behind iron doors in what appear to be typical apartment buildings. The police—whom he refers to as “the machos”—are oblivious of his enterprises, but he was incarcerated years ago and is uncommonly careful. When Tasking cannot convince someone to do something he wants, he alters that person’s life—elaborately and maliciously—until that person yields to his wishes. He is oblique and autonomous, and he is successful. Daily, his plots, parlors, and prostitutes bring him closer to the large dollar amount that is his ultimate career goal. Things start to change when he walks into the Cherry Red strip club for the first time and meets the dancer, Erin Green. . . .

    The death of a new born child. Every day for her is a living battle. She is recovering slowly, but the brutal murder of a woman close to her home rocks her peaceful world. Another woman is killed in the same way. Kirsty now makes a terrifying discovery – the murders of both these women point to her husband, Jake. He is the local doctor and knew both women well. Piece by piece, the jigsaw falls into place, and Kirsty is spellbound as she realises what her husband is capable of. Then she finds the evidence that could utterly destroy her: Did Jake kill her baby son? As her life unravels, Jake becomes more suspicious. Soon, Kirsty knows her life is in danger, and she has to act fast to make the police believe her. But by then, it might be too late…

    He has a fractured skull, broken wrist, and numerous other injuries. Recovering in hospital, Tommy has no recollection of the past. He doesn’t even recognize his own family.After returning home, Tommy suffers severe headaches and acute depression. Desperate to help him, his father puts him into the care of a private therapist. But Tommy soon learns his troubles are far from over. As the past is slowly unlocked, it becomes increasingly clear that Tommy has suffered an ordeal so horrendous it beggars belief. And those responsible are determined to silence him by any means possible.Can Tommy find out what really happened to him and bring those responsible to justice?Or will the past finally catch up with him and finish him off for good?

    When forensic psychologist Elizabeth Monroe crosses the midpoint on the bridge in search of her daughter’s killer, there is no turning back. WRATH

    Raphael, Amazon Vine Reviewer. "Souza takes his considerable talents to the next level in Unpaved Surfaces, delivering an emotionally charged, exquisitely tuned suspense story."--Steve Konkoly, bestselling author of The Perseid Collapse Series. Enter into the life of an ideal family--Auggie is a happy nine-year-old boy whose father, Keith, loves him more than anything. Keith's life seems ideal--until one day Auggie vanishes. A year has passed since Keith's son disappeared, and he's haunted by glimpses of his son appearing in his small Maine town. With the investigation at a dead end and his family paralyzed with grief, Keith worries that he's losing his mind. In a thrilling twist, the case turns in a new direction--a direction that could either heal his family or tear them, and the rest of the town, apart.

    Containing many "lost" pieces, it is a compendium of suspense from the pulp magazines of the '20s to his last efforts in the '70s. Fine.