Dead Skip


Joe Gores - 1972
    P.I. Bart Heslip, a former boxer, is in a coma after being brutally beaten. Now it's up to his coworkers at DKA to sift through his current cases to discover the culprit--before it's too late. Ties in with the Mysterious Press hardcover release of Gores' 32 Cadillacs, the next DKA novel. Previous publisher: Ballantine.

East of A (Payton Sherwood #1)


Russell Atwood - 1999
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Pyres


Derek Nikitas - 2007
    In PYRES, 15 year old Lucia Moberg lifts a CD out of a store in a shopping mall—and when she and her dad get into their car, there is a tap at the window.  The next second her father's brains are on the dashboard.  So begins the story of the ruin of her mother, whose home life is shrouded in darkness, a mysterious and menacing motorcycle gang, the real-to-life female cop out to crack the case, who is facing her own family's collapse, and the struggle for Lucia to piece together some semblance of a normal teenage life.  The writing is hard and crisp, and wholly multi-dimensional, while the story moves along at a nail-biting pace with twists, turns, literary allusions, and the engaging plight of several fascinating, memorable, and fully rounded characters.

Santa Cruz Noir


Susie BrightPeggy Townsend - 2018
    Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.Featuring brand-new stories by: Tommy Moore, Jessica Breheny, Naomi Hirahara, Calvin McMillin, Liza Monroy, Elizabeth McKenzie, Jill Wolfson, Ariel Gore, Jon Bailiff, Maceo Montoya, Micah Perks, Seana Graham, Vinnie Hansen, Peggy Townsend, Margaret Elysia Garcia, Lou Mathews, Lee Quarnstrom, Dillon Kaiser, Beth Lisick, and Wallace Baine.From the introduction by Susie Bright:Every town has its noir-ville. It’s easy to find in Santa Cruz. We live in what’s called “paradise,” where you can wake up in a pool of blood with the first pink rays of the sunrise peeking out over our mountain range. The dewy mist lifts from the bay. Don’t hate us because we’re beautiful—we were made that way, like Venus rising off the foam with a brick in her hand. We can’t help it if you fall for it every time . . .“If I lived in a place like this,” visitors often say, “I’d wake up with a smile every day.”Oh, we do, thank you for that. There’s no beauty like a merciless beauty—and like every crepuscular predator, it thrives at dawn and dusk. You’re just the innocent we’ve been waiting for, with your big paper cone of sugar-shark cotton, whipped out of pure nothing. We have just the ride for you, the longest tunnel ever. Santa Cruz is everything you ever dreamed, and everything you ever screamed, in one long drop you’ll never forget.

Eighteen


Jan Burke - 2002
    This positively addictive anthology is full of surprises -- a patchwork of settings and characters not soon forgotten, and mysterious twists and revelations not quickly shaken! 18 includes: "Devotion" Agatha Award nominee for Best Short Story "Unharmed" Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Award and Macavity Award winner "The Man in the Civil Suit" Agatha Award winner "The Abbey Ghosts" Edgar Award nominee ...and also features her first Irene Kelly story, "A Fine Set of Teeth."

Witness to Myself (Hard Case Crime #19)


Seymour Shubin - 2006
    When he was a teenager, his family rented a camper for a few weeks during a summer vacation and traveled to Cape Cod. During that brief stay on a quiet stretch of sandy beach, Alan -- whose adolescent life was characterized by "bewilderment and self-loathing" -- stumbled across a young girl trying to get a kite out of a tree. But instead of helping the girl, he sexually assaulted her. When the girl started screaming, he panicked and silenced her with an act of violence. He ran back to his family's camper, and they eventually returned home as if nothing had happened. Now Alan is assailed by guilt: Did he kill the girl or not? He has to know More than a half century after Shubin's crime fiction classic Anyone's My Name (1953), this novel takes a decidedly restrained look at pulp mystery. The brutal sexual crime -- which is the linchpin for the whole story -- is quickly glossed over in a few paragraphs and hardly ever mentioned again. As a result, the story line loses much of its knuckles-to-jawbone intensity, and instead of developing into an adrenaline-fueled whodunit, Witness to Myself becomes more of a psychological study in guilt, paranoia, and, ultimately, redemption -- a rare bullet-free Hard Case Crime release that is as melancholic as it is disturbing. Paul Goat Allen

Killer Swell


Jeff Shelby - 2005
    Noah Braddock has a six-pack in the fridge, a solid beach view, and a killer past that's come knocking. The snobby mother of Kate, his old high school girlfriend, claims that her daughter is missing, and mom thinks Noah can find her for old time's sake. But what Noah discovers about Kate is hardly the stuff of bittersweet reunions. In fact, it's murder.

I, the Jury


Mickey Spillane - 1947
    It's a tough-guy mystery to please even the most bloodthirsty of fans!

Keller in Dallas


Lawrence Block - 2009
    A phone call and an economic downturn is all it takes to put him back in business.Keller in Dallas, a Kindle bestseller, serves too as the opening episode of Lawrence Block's brand-new bestseller, Hit Me.

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 Lime Pit


Jonathan Valin - 1980
    His latest hopeless cause is Cindy Ann, a teenage hooker. She's not very pretty or bright or engaging . . . she doesn't have much to offer at all, in fact, and somehow that makes her disappearance all the more disturbing for Stoner who knows what can happen to girls that nobody wants. And he's got a sick hunch that it happened to Cindy Ann, right across the Cincinnati border. Stoner's hunches are almost always on the money, and they rarely feature happy endings. But while the story may be ugly, in Valin's hands it has the brutal grace of a world-class boxing match.

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...

Still River


Harry Hunsicker - 2005
    Lee Henry Oswald,a Special Forces veteran of the Gulf War whose work begins where legal options end…He bears a killer's name…Lee H. "Hank" Oswald inherited more from his bull-headed father than just a name. It's not that he looks for trouble; he just can't seem to keep out of its way. Fortunately being named Oswald in Dallas makes a man tough enough to get the job done, no matter what side of the law he's forced to walk… He seeks a missing brotherThings get even rougher for Hank when he agrees to help an old friend find her troubled brother. She swears Charlie's quit the drugs for good, now that he's got a job in real estate. But Hank's barely taken the case when he discovers that the Dallas real estate wars can be as vicious and dirty as anything he'd encountered on the battlefield. He's found three suspects--and a hundred ways to die…Before long, three prime suspects emerge: a ruthless Dallas dealmaker; a rising young real estate developer and community activist; and one of the city's most notorious, and deadly, drug lords. Digging through the muck to find something to tie these three together--and to Charlie--Hank comes to one unmistakable truth: For the right price, a man might do anything.

The Twenty-Year Death


Ariel S. Winter - 2012
       1931— The body found in the gutter in France led the police inspector to the dead man’s beautiful daughter—and to her hot-tempered American husband.   1941— A hardboiled private eye hired to keep a movie studio’s leading lady happy uncovers the truth behind the brutal slaying of a Hollywood starlet.   1951— A desperate man pursuing his last chance at redemption finds himself with blood on his hands and the police on his trail...   Three complete novels that, taken together, tell a single epic story, about an author whose life is shattered when violence and tragedy consume the people closest to him. It is an ingenious and emotionally powerful debut performance from literary detective and former bookseller Ariel S. Winter, one that establishes this talented newcomer as a storyteller of the highest caliber.

The Chicago Way


Michael Harvey - 2007
    When Gibbons turns up dead on Navy Pier, Kelly enlists a team of his savviest colleagues to connect the dots between the recent murder and the cold case it revived: Diane Lindsay, a television reporter whose relationship with Kelly is not strictly professional; his best friend from childhood, Nicole Andrews, a forensic DNA expert; Nicole’s boyfriend, Vince Rodriguez, a detective with a special interest in rape cases; and Bennett Davis from the DA’s office, a friend since Kelly’s days on the force. To close the case, Kelly will have to face the mob, a serial killer, his own double-crossing friends, and the mean streets of the city he loves.Ferociously plotted and crackling with wit, The Chicago Way is first-rate suspense steeped in the glorious, gritty atmosphere of a great city: a marvelous debut.