Nothing more has been heard of him. Gerry Kells, the antihero of his shocking, brutal novel, is equally mysterious. A loner with a reputation but without a visible past, Kells simply appears, arranges the lives of the Los Angeles underworld, and then is heard no more.Only the strong prosper in the world of the depression. Seemingly amoral, Kells does prosper. He strikes to survive, kills without conscience, with­out time for conscience. But he never becomes a mere killing machine. His integrity, his humanity, abides in a code demanding that he pay for all services: those rendered for him, those rendered against him.Fast paced and very readable, the novel limns a true character who should take his place in our national literature, if only for his representation of the individual will to survive in one of the toughest times in American life.

    Two delinquents and a girl encounter real trouble when professionals take over their planned robbery.The novel was adapted by Jean-Luc Godard for his film Bande à part (Band of Outsiders, 1964).

    Cassidy had two. One was Mildred, the wife who kept him chained with ties of fear and jealousy and paralyzing sexual need. The other was Doris, a frail angel with a 100-proof halo and a bottle instead of a harp. With those two, Cassidy found that the ride to hell could be twice as fast.Cassidy's Girl has all the traits that made its author a virtuoso of the hard-boiled: a fiercely compelling ploy; characters who self-destruct in spectacularly unpredictable ways; and an insider's knowledge of all the routes to the bottom.

    Living in Nevada, bothered by nobody, he runs a little gas station, gets in a lot of fishing, and might even be falling for a local girl. Then, out of the blue, his past comes back to haunt him. Blackmailed into doing just one more job, he's forced to revisit the life he fled—in particular, the seductive Mumsie McGonigle. It's not long before Bailey realizes that a trap has been set for him. The novel, scripted by the author, went on in the hands of Jacques Tourneur to become the cinema's most celebrated work of "film noir," starring Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas, and Jane Greer.The Film Ink series presents the novels that inspired the work of some of the most celebrated directors of our time. While each novel is first and foremost a classic in its own right, these books offer the dedicated cinephile a richer understanding of the most illustrious films of American and European cinema.

    He’s waiting for Dorothy, his fiancée, and tonight is the last night they’ll be meeting here, for it’s May 31st, and June 1st marks their wedding day. But she’s late, and Johnny soon learns of a horrible accident—an accident involving a group of drunken men, a low-flying charter plane, and an empty liquor bottle. In one short moment Johnny loses all that matters to him and his life is shattered. He vows to take from these men exactly what they took from him. After years of planning, Johnny begins his quest for revenge, and on May 31st of each year—always on May 31st—wives, lovers, and daughters are suddenly no longer safe.

    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.

    Eddie Miller is an airline pilot who's studying to get his real estate license. Don Luchessi is a silver salesman who's separated from his wife but too Catholic to get a divorce. Hank Norton is a drug company rep who gets four times as many dames as any of the other guys. They are all regular guys who like to drink, play cards, meet broads, and shoot a little pool. But when a friendly bet goes horribly awry, they find themselves with two dead bodies on their hands and a homicidal husband in the wings—and acting more like hardened criminals than upstanding citizens.

    In the crowded train car she meets happy newlyweds Patrice Hazzard, also expecting, and Hugh. They are on their way to visit Hugh’s parents, whom Patrice is meeting for the first time. After Patrice hands Helen her wedding band so she can wash her hands in the rest room, the train crashes, killing the Hazzards, but Helen survives. When she regains consciousness in the hospital, she discovers she has been mistaken for Patrice. Patrice’s wealthy in-laws send for Helen, and she decides for the sake of her son to go along with the misunderstanding. They welcome her into the fold and her “brother-in-law” Bill even shows signs of romantic interest. But when her husband tracks her down and threatens her with blackmail, her dream turns into a nightmare.

    After all, there's nothing wrong with being a bellboy at a respectable hotel like the Manton -- that is, until she came along. Marcia Hillis. The perfect woman. Beautiful. Experienced. Older and wiser. The only woman to ever measure up to that other her -- the one whose painful rejection Dusty can't quite put from his mind. But while Dusty has designs on Marcia, Marcia has an agenda of her own. One that threatens to pull the Manton inside-out, use Dusty up for all he's worth and leave him reeling and on the run, the whole world at his heels. A richly-imagined crime narrative of the Oedipal and betrayal, A Swell-Looking Babe is Thompson at his very best -- a cornerstone in Thompson's enduring legacy as the Dimestore Dostoyevsky of American fiction.

    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.

    in the heyday of Henry Luce. One day, before heading home to his wife in the suburbs, Stroud has a drink with Pauline, the beautiful girlfriend of his boss, Earl Janoth. Things happen. The next day Stroud escorts Pauline home, leaving her off at the corner just as Janoth returns from a trip. The day after that, Pauline is found murdered in her apartment.Janoth knows there was one witness to his entry into Pauline’s apartment on the night of the murder; he knows that man must have been the man Pauline was with before he got back; but he doesn’t know who he was. Janoth badly wants to get his hands on that man, and he picks one of his most trusted employees to track him down: George Stroud, who else?How does a man escape from himself? No book has ever dramatized that question to more perfect effect than The Big Clock, a masterpiece of American noir.

    Here is Frederic Brown's tale of geometrically multiplying homicides and of a foolproof murder whose aftershocks keep spreading to consume an infinite series of fresh victims.

    No man could resist her charms—not even the hardboiled NYPD detective sent to find out who turned her into a faceless corpse. As this tough cop probes the mystery of Laura's death, he becomes obsessed with her strange power. Soon he realizes he's been seduced by a dead woman—or has he? Laura won lasting renown as an Academy Award-nominated 1944 film, the greatest noir romance of all time. Vera Caspary's equally haunting novel is remarkable for its stylish, hardboiled writing, its electrifying plot twists, and its darkly complex characters—including a woman who stands as the ultimate femme fatale.

    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.

    First published in 1935, this novel reaffirmed James M. Cain as a virtuoso of the roman noir.