Book picks similar to
Piggyback by Tom Pitts
crime
noir
p
ripping-yarns
Money Shot
Christa Faust - 2008
THEY THOUGHT WRONG.It all began with the phone call asking former porn star Angel Dare to do one more movie. Before she knew it, she'd been shot and left for dead in the trunk of a car. But Angel is a survivor. And that means she'll get to the bottom of what's been done to her even if she has to leave a trail of bodies along the way...
The Simple Art of Murder
Raymond Chandler - 1944
Contains Chandler's essay on the art of detective stories and a collection of 8 classic Chandler mysteries.
The Winter of Frankie Machine
Don Winslow - 2006
and The Power of the Dog now gives us a fierce and funny new novel—and a blistering new take on the Mafia story.Frank Machianno is a late-middle-aged ex–surf bum who runs a bait shack on the San Diego waterfront when he’s not juggling any of his other three part-time jobs or trying to get a quick set in on his longboard. He’s a stand-up businessman, a devoted father to his daughter, and a beloved fixture in the community.Frank’s also a hit man. Specifically: a retired hit man. Back in the day, when he was one of the most feared members of the West Coast Mafia, he was known as Frankie Machine. Years ago Frank consigned his Mob ties to the past, which is where he wants them to stay. But a favor being called in now by the local boss is one Frank can’t refuse, and soon he’s sucked back into the treacherous currents of his former life. Someone from the past wants him dead. He has to figure out who, and why, and he has to do it fast.The problem is that the list of candidates is about the size of his local phone book and Frank’s rapidly running out of time.And then things go really bad.
Dig Two Graves
Kim Powers - 2015
After a hushed-up scandal over his Olympics win and the death of his wife in a car accident five years ago, Ethan wants nothing more than to forget his past. Skip is not only the light of Ethan's life--she is his life. Then, Skip is kidnapped. A series of bizarre ransom demands start coming in that stretch Ethan's athletic prowess to its limits, and he realizes with growing horror that they are modern versions of the Twelve Labors of Hercules, demanded in tricky, rhyming clues by someone who seems to have followed every step of Ethan's career.
Bangkok 8
John Burdett - 2003
Among the witnesses are the only two cops in the city not on the take, but within moments one is murdered and his partner, Sonchai Jitpleecheep—a devout Buddhist and the son of a Thai bar girl and a long-gone Vietnam War G.I.—is hell-bent on wreaking revenge. On a vigilante mission to capture his partner’s murderer, Sonchai is begrudgingly paired with a beautiful FBI agent named Jones and captures her heart in the process. In a city fueled by illicit drugs and infinite corruption, prostitution and priceless art, Sonchai’s quest for vengeance takes him into a world much more sinister than he could have ever imagined.
Suicide Squeeze
Victor Gischler - 2004
The high spot of Teddy Folger's life was the day in 1954 that he got an autographed baseball card from Joe DiMaggio himself. It's been downhill ever since. Which is why he just unloaded his freeloading wife and torched his own comic-book store–in one of the stupidest insurance scams in history. Enter Conner Samson. The down-on-his-luck repo man has just been hired to repossess Teddy's boat. Little does he know there's a baseball card on board that some men are willing to kill for. Thus begins a rip-roaring cross-country odyssey–and with bodies piling up, the squeeze is on for the penultimate piece of Americana. And Conner will be lucky if he ends up back where he started: broke and (still) breathing.From the Hardcover edition.
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.
Two-Way Split
Allan Guthrie - 2004
Robin plans the ultimate revenge, but things go from bad to worse when the gang bungles a post office robbery, leaving carnage in their wake. Suddenly they are stalked by the police, sleazy private eyes, and a cold-blooded killer who may be the only one not looking for a cut of the money.
Hard Bite
Anonymous-9 - 2012
Now a paraplegic, Dean Drayhart unleashes payback on suspected hit-and-runners in Los Angeles with helper-monkey Sid as his deadly assistant. Dean's gentle, doting nurse knows nothing about what he's up to. When Sid tears out the throat of a Mexican Mafia member, Marcie gets kidnapped in order to force Dean's surrender. Armed with nothing but his wits, Sid, and a sympathetic streetwalker named Cinda, Dean manipulates drug-cartel carnales and the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department in a David-against-Goliath plot that twists and turns to a heart-pounding showdown.
Killing Suki Flood
Robert Leininger - 1991
The moment Frank Limosin sees gorgeous eighteen-year-old Suki Flood sitting on the rear deck of the red Trans Am in the hot empty desert, he feels trouble in the air. The Trans Am has a flat tire. They're over ten miles from the nearest highway. And Suki, dressed in short shorts and a tiny halter top, doesn't know how to change a tire. Against Suki's will, Frank gives her a lesson in tire changing, then he thinks that's it, he'll never see her again. How wrong can one man be? Because Suki turns out to be fifty times more trouble than Frank ever dreamed possible. He saved her once. Now he has to save her again and again and again . . .
The Trailer Park Princess and the Power of Bacon
Kim Hunt Harris - 2013
Well, this is actually a case of dognapping. At least the reward is real... but is it enough to face the gun-toting dognapper? Armed with the strongest weapon available, Salem and Viv save the day once again, using an age-old magnet that has an attraction few can resist, BACON!
Swag
Elmore Leonard - 1976
figures his luck's about to change when Detroit used-car salesman Frank Ryan catches him trying to boost a ride from Ryan's lot. Frank's got some surefire schemes for getting rich quick--all of them involving guns--and all Stickley has to do is follow "Ryan's Rules" to share the wealth.But sometimes rules need to be bent, maybe even broken to succeed in the world of crime, especially when the "brains" of the operation knows less than nothing.
Outsourced
Dave Zeltserman - 2010
Desperate, and seeing their middle-class lives crumbling apart, they come up with a brilliant plan to use their computing skills to rob a bank. But not even a systems analyst can foresee every eventuality, so the group falls afoul of the Russian Mafia...Movie rights have been sold for Outsourced, and the film will be produced by the team behind the hugely successful Resident Evil films.
Trailer Park Noir
Ray Garton - 2011
Marcus Reznick watched the love of his life blow her brains out and then dove to the bottom of a bottle of vodka. Now he's living in Riverside Mobile Home Park and trying to pull his life together...until a powerful temptation comes his way. Steve Regent is an internet pornographer who has moved to Riverside Mobile Home Park to work on a new website-Trailer Park Girls. He's looking for beautiful women...but instead, he finds something very ugly. Sherry Manning is a drug addict living in the trailer park with her boyfriend, Andy Winchell, who's a dealer. When a friend of a friend ODs in their trailer and turns out to be the son of a powerful politician, the truth about his death is covered up in the media. But Sherry and Andy know that truth...and she fears what might be done to silence them. Anna Dunfy is trying to make ends meet by doing temp jobs and stripping at night to support her mentally handicapped daughter, Kendra...an astonishingly beautiful girl with a woman's body, a child's mind, and a dangerous urge to do something naughty. It's a run-down little trailer park in northern California, but it could be anywhere in the United States. It is unassuming, unremarkable and looks like a million other trailer parks. But don't let the sleepy appearance fool you. It's a nest of dark secrets, boiling lusts and murder waiting to happen.
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.