Hardcase


Dan Simmons - 2001
    Now Kurtz needs a job, and the price is going to be higher. Out of prison, out of touch, Kurtz signs on with the Byron Farino, Don of a Mob family whose son Kurtz had been protecting on the inside. Farino enlists Kurtz's help to track down the Family's missing accountant -- a man with too much knowledge of Family business to have on the loose. But someone doesn't want the accountant found -- and with enemies inside the Family vying for his throne, and turf warfare just around the corner, Farino needs an outsider like Kurtz to flush out who's really behind this latest affront. As the story twists and turns and the body count rises, Kurtz no longer knows who he can trust. Everyone seems to be after something, from the mob boss's sultry yet dangerous daughter, to a hit man named The Dane, an albino killer who is good with a knife, and a dwarf who is armed to the teeth and hell-bent on revenge. Kurtz has always been an ace investigator. Now he's about to discover that to get at the truth, sometimes you have to go after it -- hard.

Galveston


Nic Pizzolatto - 2010
    On the same day that Roy Cady is diagnosed with a terminal illness, he senses that his boss, a dangerous loan-sharking bar-owner, wants him dead. Known “without affection” to members of the boss’s crew as “Big Country” on account of his long hair, beard, and cowboy boots, Roy is alert to the possibility that a routine assignment could be a deathtrap. Which it is. Yet what the would-be killers do to Roy Cady is not the same as what he does to them, which is to say that after a smoking spasm of violence, they are mostly dead and he is mostly alive.Before Roy makes his getaway, he realizes there are two women in the apartment, one of them still breathing, and he sees something in her frightened, defiant eyes that causes a fateful decision. He takes her with him as he goes on the run from New Orleans to Galveston, Texas—an action as ill-advised as it is inescapable. The girl’s name is Rocky, and she is too young, too tough, too sexy—and far too much trouble. Roy, Rocky, and her sister hide in the battered seascape of Galveston’s country-western bars and fleabag hotels, a world of treacherous drifters, pickup trucks, and ashed-out hopes. Any chance that they will find safety there is soon lost. Rocky is a girl with quite a story to tell, one that will pursue and damage Roy for a very long time to come in this powerful and atmospheric thriller, impossible to put down. Constructed with maximum tension and haunting aftereffect, written in darkly beautiful prose, Galveston announces the arrival of a major new literary talent.

The Drop


Dennis Lehane - 2014
    As their relationship grows, they cross paths with the Chechen mafia; a man grown dangerous with age and thwarted hopes; two hapless stick-up artists; a very curious cop; and the original owner of the puppy, who wants his dog back. . . .

Fatale


Jean-Patrick Manchette - 1977
    Now she’s set her eyes on a backwater burg—where, while posing as an innocent (albeit drop-dead gorgeous) newcomer to town, she means to sniff out old grudges and engineer new opportunities, deftly playing different people and different interests against each other the better, as always, to make a killing. But then something snaps: the master manipulator falls prey to a pure and wayward passion.Aimée has become the avenging angel of her own nihilism, exacting the destruction of a whole society of destroyers. An unholy original, Jean-Patrick Manchette transformed the modern detective novel into a weapon of gleeful satire and anarchic fun. In Fatale he mixes equal measures of farce, mayhem, and madness to prepare a rare literary cocktail that packs a devastating punch.

The Crosskiller


Marcel Montecino - 1988
    But when the self-proclaimed Aryan begins to act out his murderous fantasies, the city is gripped by fear of The Crosskiller!

Songbird (Daniel Trokic, #3)


Inger Wolf - 2018
    From an international best-selling and award winning author. On an early morning in May, the police find the heavily beaten body of Maja Nielsen in a public park in central Aarhus in Denmark.She has fallen from a great height and her right arm has been cut repeatedly. Everything points to a suicide, and as the police dig deeper into the world of Maja, they discover a young woman plagued by paranoia and violent nightmares. Something was tormenting her. The investigation leads Daniel Trokic and his team to a distinct blood profile with traces of an unknown drug, a tattooed Colombian, and a particularly uncompromising animal rights activist who has been run over in a hit-and-run accident. SONGBIRD is the third book in the bestselling Scandinavian mystery series about Police Inspector Daniel Trokic, his colleague Lisa Kornelius, and the rest of the investigative unit at Århus Police station. If you like Stieg Larsson and Scandinavian mysteries, then you’ll love Inger Wolf’s spine-chilling who-done-it. Buy SONGBIRD to guess the chilling plot today!

Hand Me a Fig Leaf


James Hadley Chase - 1981
    As they prove to be uninterested, he turns instead to Colonel Parnell of the Parnell Detective Agency. It seems at first to be a simple case of a missing person but they soon find themselves in the middle of a complicated web of deceit, intrigue and murder.

The Last Good Kiss


James Crumley - 1978
    Sughrue, a Montana investigator who kills time by working at a topless bar. Hired to track down a derelict author, he ends up on the trail of a girl missing in Haight-Ashbury for a decade. The tense hunt becomes obsessive as Sughrue takes a haunting journey through the underbelly of America's sleaziest nightmares.

What Is Mine


Anne Holt - 2001
    Her father finds the backpack from her late mother, that would never be abandoned willingly. A week later, a five-year-old boy goes missing. And then another child. Meanwhile, Johanne Vik, a former FBI profiler with a troubled past and a difficult young daughter, tries to overturn a decades-old false murder conviction. Police Commissioner Stubo lost his wife and daughter, has only his grandson left, and needs to solve the case. Johanna resists helping until the bodies return to their homes with notes "You got what you deserved".

The Kill-Off


Jim Thompson - 1957
    All her neighbors in the declining seaside resort town of Manduwoc want her dead. Some, like her young husband Ralph and his girlfriend Danny, want the thousands of dollars she keeps hidden under the mattress she spends her days resting on. Others want her to stop her malicious gossip--some of which could ruin lives.Told from multiple perspectives, The Kill-Off tells the story of a woman not long for this earth--but who will finally take matters into their own hands, and when? THE KILL-OFF was the basis of Maggie Greenwald's critically acclaimed film of the same name.

Red Harvest


Dashiell Hammett - 1929
    "Red Harvest" is more than a superb crime novel: it is a classic exploration of corruption and violence in the American grain.The Op was in Personville, derogatory nickname aside, as the result of a letter to the Continental Detective Agency in San Francisco from Donald Willsson, publisher of the local paper, asking for an agent to visit. No other information. As soon as the OP arrives, the body count begins. It starts with his client!

The Delta Factor


Mickey Spillane - 1967
    A fist-slamming, sex-snarling thriller by the creator of Mike Hammer and Tiger Mann. Mickey Spillane slings Morgan the raider, super-crook turned U.S. Agent, into a one-man mission against the hoodlum army of a Latin dictator. His target: a dungeon cell of a torture place; his sidekick, a scorching babe who says no if it kills her...Watch Morgan: the new, gut-slugging, gutter-rough hero as only MICKEY makes 'em.

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?

Creepy Crawly (DI Jake Sawyer, #1)


Andrew Lowe - 2018
    Sharp, tough and pathologically fearless.Now he’s quit the capital and returned to his home town in England’s Peak District, to investigate the savage murder of his mother, thirty years earlier.When the body of a teenage boy is found in a shallow grave, close to woodland where Sawyer used to play as a child, he’s called in to help decode the killer’s nightmarish methods.But as the victims stack up and the case takes an unexpected turn, Sawyer must risk his own life to hunt the hunter and save an innocent. Creepy Crawly is Book One in the DI Jake Sawyer series. Dive in now and discover a new breed of detective, with stories that reveal the dark side of one of England's brightest beauty spots. Praise for Andrew Lowe:"Prose that gets under your flesh and into your bones.""Taut and compelling. Not a wasted word.""Plot and character perfectly intertwined.""Keeps you reading through the night.""Poetic and utterly gripping."(Amazon reviews).

Hot Sinatra


Axel Howerton - 2013
    He’s smart, talented, sometimes even charming. You’d think he could find a better gig than carrying on his grandfather’s legacy as a ‘Private Dick.’Cole is out of money, out of ideas, and out of his league. That’s why he’s stuck looking for a stolen Sinatra record… a record that may be just a figment of an old man’s imagination.Of course, if that were true, Moss wouldn’t have so many people busting down his door.A vivacious redhead, a foul-mouthed Irish rock star, and a whip-smart little girl only complicate the job, when all Cole wants is a good cup of coffee and some Hot Sinatra.If only he can stay alive—and in one piece—long enough to find it. Advance Praise for HOT SINATRA:“Axel Howerton is one of the best new crime fiction writers out there—hell, one of the best writers, period. Do yourself a favor and settle into Axel’s groove.” – Scott S. Phillips, Author of Squirrel Eyes and Tales of Misery & Imagination, and Writer/Director of Stink of Flesh and Gimme Skelter“Moss Cole sizzles hotter than bacon.” – Red Tash, Author of Troll, Or Derby and This Brilliant Darkness