The Hunter


Richard Stark - 1962
    The thriller that introduces Parker. “A brilliant invention”. Played by Lee Marvin in the John Boorman movie. “The funnies call it the syndicate. The goons and hustlers call it the Outfit. You call it the Organization. But I don’t care if you call yourselves the Red Cross, you owe me forty-five thousand dollars and you’ll pay me back whether you like it or not.”This novel was originally titled The Hunter, later retitled Point Blank because of the movie, later retitled Payback because of the other movie.

The Last Kind Words


Tom Piccirilli - 2012
    Upon the razor-thin edge between love and violence lives a pair of brothers, their bonds frayed by betrayals and guilt, their loyalty to each other their last salvation.Raised to pick a pocket before he could walk, Terry Rand cut free from his family after his older brother, Collie, went on a senseless killing spree that left eight dead. Five years later, only days before his scheduled execution, Collie contacts Terry and asks him to return home. Collie claims he wasn’t responsible for one of the murders—and insists that the real killer is still on the loose.Dogged by his own demons, Terry is swept back into the schemes and scams of his family: His father, Pinsch, a retired cat burglar, brokenhearted because of his two sons. His card-sharp uncles, Mal and Grey, who’ve incurred the anger of the local mob. His grandfather, Shep, whose mind is failing but whose fingers can still slip out a wallet  from across the room. His teenage sister, Dale, who’s flirting dangerously with the lure of the family business. And Kimmie, the woman Terry abandoned, who’s now raising a child with Terry’s former best friend.  Terry pieces together the day his brother turned rabid, delving into a blood history that reveals the Rand family tree is rotten to the roots, and the secrets his ancestors buried are now coming furious and vengeful to the surface.A meditation on how love can confine a person just as easily as it can free him, juxtaposing shocking violence and sly humor, The Last Kind Words is the brilliantly inventive family saga that only a singular talent like Tom Piccirilli could conjure.

Her Last Call to Louis MacNeice


Ken Bruen - 1998
    I guess it all began with Cassie.? Cooper had done his time for GBH. Now he was on the outside, he?d set up a legit business with Doc whom he?d met in prison. They called themselves ?Righteous Repo? and they even had an accountant. The Repo firm did good business but lacked a certain je ne sais quoi. And it wasn?t anywhere near as exhilarating as the bank jobs they did on the side. Cooper gets more excitement than he bargained for when Cassie walks into his life. Cassie likes poetry, guns and money, but more importantly she likes Cooper, and nothing and nobody is going to stand in the way of her getting what she wants. Just as with his acclaimed debut, Rilke on Black, Ken Bruen takes the reader on a one-way ride ? straight to the bitter end.

To Live & Die in L. A.


Gerald Petievich - 1984
    For one thing, one of his dealers, Max ("the Money Man") Waxman, has just ripped him off. For another, his partner, Carmine Falcone, is in jail and threatening to cooperate with the government unless Masters gets him out fast.Then there are the Feds who have been trying to nail Masters for years. Two Treasury agents, John Vukovich and Richard Chance, are breathing down his neck. Chance is a reckless hotshot who doesn't believe in playing by the rules; he'll get evidence anyway he can. If he catches Masters and makes it stick, he's a hero. But if Chance is caught he's finished - unless he's willing to sacrifice Vukovich to save himself.

Ride the Pink Horse


Dorothy B. Hughes - 1946
    He is looking for someone, his boss, 'Sen' - a crooked, 'weasel-faced' Senator, who has set up the murder of his wealthy wife and made it look like a bungled robbery. Sailor is the only person who can finger Sen for the crime, and he intends to make the senator pay a hefty sum for his silence. In a hypnotic style that is pure, unsentimental noir, Hughes builds tension relentlessly and the fates of Sailor and Sen are played out against the increasing fervour of the town's festivities.

Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye


Horace McCoy - 1948
    A Phi Beta Kappa scholar succeds in turning himself into a vicious and completely immoral criminal - a man whose contempt for law, order, and human life drives him relentlessly into a career of unrelieved evil. He escapes from a chain gang to join a pack of gangsters and a millionaire?s daughter falls in love with him, but eventually his past overtakes him. Kiss Tomorrrow Goodbye is McCoy?s most ambitious work and the basis for one of the great gangster movies, starring James Cagney.

Rear Window


Cornell Woolrich - 1942
    His name represents steamy, suspenseful fiction, chilling encounters on the dark and sultry landscape of urban America in the 1930s and 1940s. Here, in this special collection, are his classic thrilers, including 'Rear Window', the story of Hal Jeffries who, trapped in his apartment because of a broken leg, takes to watching his neighbours through his rear window, and becomes certain that one of those neighbours is a murderer. Also included are such haunting, heart-stopping tales as those involving a man who finds his wife buried alive; a girl trapped with a deranged murderer who likes to knife his victims while dancing; and a woman seizing her chance to escape a sadistic husband, only to find her dream go terrifyingly wrong.Rear window --I won't take a minute --Speak to me of death --The dancing detective --The light in the window --The corpse next door --You'll never see me again --The screaming laugh --Dead on her feet --Waltz --The book that squealed --Death escapes the eye --For the rest of her life

He Died With His Eyes Open


Derek Raymond - 1984
    Our narrator must piece together the history of his blighted existence and discover the agents of its cruel end. What he doesn’t expect is that digging for the truth will demand plenty of lying.

The Double Take


Roy Huggins - 1946
    Bailey investigates the woman in an attempt to stop the extortion, and as the story unfolds, there are many twists and turns. Following The Double Take, Huggins turned his attention to creating memorable TV shows such as “Maverick,” “The Fugitive,” “City of Angels,” and “The Rockford Files.” Huggins passed away in 2002 at age 87.

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.

The Hot Spot


Charles Williams - 1953
    Merciless in its suspense, flawless in its grasp of the ways in which ordinary people hurtle over the edge, The Hot Spot is a superb example of fifties roman noir.

Get Carter


Ted Lewis - 1970
    Frank's car was found at the bottom of a cliff, with him inside. Jack thinks that Frank's death is suspicious, so he decides to talk to a few people. Frank was a mild man and did as he was told, but Jack's not a bit like that.

I Wake Up Screaming


Steve Fisher - 1941
    The classic novel of sexual obsession and murder amid the star-making machinery of Hollywood in the 1950s."She was as white as marble, but she looked lovely.  Her hair was splayed out in fine strands of gold, and her lips were bright, rich red, and there was a green eyeshadow on her eyelids.  You could see that because her eyes were closed and she was lying very still.  She was lying still and she wasn't breathing."With its portraits of washed-up directors, jaded leading men, and a ruthless cop whose one-track mind leads straight to a cyanide pellet, I Wake Up Screaming is a magnificent thriller by a Hollywood insider whose screenplays included Lady in the Lake and I, Mobster.

You Were Never Really Here


Jonathan Ames - 2013
    Solitary and haunted, he prefers to be invisible. He doesn't allow himself friends or lovers and makes a living rescuing young girls from the deadly clutches of the sex trade. But when a high-ranking New York politician hires him to extricate his teenage daughter from a Manhattan brothel, Joe uncovers a web of corruption that even he may not be able to unravel. When the men on his trail take the only person left in the world who matters to him, he forsakes his pledge to do no harm. If anyone can kill his way to the truth, it's Joe...Novelist, essayist, creator of the beloved TV series Bored to Death and Blunt Talk, Jonathan Ames is celebrated not only for his comic sensibilities and devotion to the absurd but for his lurid attraction to inner demons. In this shocking and suspenseful thriller, the author goes darker than noir, with an ass-kicking and psychologically tormented guardian angel who rescues others but refuses to save himself.

The Butcher's Boy


Thomas Perry - 1982
    Back in print by popular demand, this spectacular debut, from a writer of “infernal ingenuity” (The New York Times Book Review), includes a new Introduction by bestselling author Michael Connelly.Murder has always been easy for the Butcher’s Boy—it’s what he was raised to do. But when he kills the senior senator from Colorado and arrives in Las Vegas to pick up his fee, he learns that he has become a liability to his shadowy employers. His actions attract the attention of police specialists who watch the world of organized crime, but though everyone knows that something big is going on, only Elizabeth Waring, a bright young analyst in the Justice Department, works her way closer to the truth, and to the frightening man behind it.