Book picks similar to
The Complete Short Stories of Raffles--The Amateur Cracksman by E.W. Hornung
short-stories
fiction
mystery
crime
The Friends of Eddie Coyle
George V. Higgins - 1970
But a cop named Foley is on to Eddie and he's leaning on him to finger Scalisi, a gang leader with a lot to hide. And then there's Dillon-a full-time bartender and part-time contract killer--pretending to be Eddie's friend. Wheeling, dealing, chasing, and stealing--that's Eddie, and he's got lots of friends.
Where Eagles Dare
Alistair MacLean - 1967
A team of British Special Forces commandos parachutes into the high peaks of the Austrian Alps with the mission of stealing into an invulnerable alpine castle—accessible only by aerial gondola—the headquarters of Nazi intelligence. Supposedly sent in to rescue one of their own, their real mission turns out to be a lot more complicated—and the tension climbs as team members start to die off, one by one. Written by Alistair Maclean, author of the Guns of Navarone, this is the novel that set the pace for the modern action thriller (the film version, with Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood, also helped), and it still packs twice the punch of most contemporary best-selling thrillers. What's more, the cast of spooks, turncoats, and commandos who drive this story are more relevant than ever in our new era of special forces, black ops, and unpredictable alliances.
A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away
Christopher Brookmyre - 2001
In both their cases, it was to be rock stars. Fifteen years later, their mid-thirties are bearing down fast, and just like everybody else, they're having to accept the less glamorous hands reality has dealt them. Nervous new father Ray takes refuge from his responsibilities by living a virtual existence in online games. People say he needs to grow up, but everybody has to find their own way of coping. For some it's affairs, for others it's the bottle, and for Simon it's serial murder, mass slaughter and professional assassination.
Bullitt
Robert L. Pike - 1963
It is Lieutenant Clancy's job to see that he stays alive to do it. It may not sound too difficult when you have two loyal detectives like Sergeants Kaproski and Stanton to help you keep a round-the-clock watch on the hoodlum, but it proves almost beyond them.Part of the "NFT/BFI Film Classics" series, this novel was made into a film starring Steve McQueen, featuring one of the most memorable car chase scenes in film, through the streets of San Francisco.
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories That Scared Even Me
Alfred HitchcockMargaret St. Clair - 1967
It includes the entire text of John Wyndham's novel of alien invasion, Out of the Deeps, and 24 short stories by American or British authors, all written in the 20th century. Authors represented include T. H. White, Donald E. Westlake, Theodore Sturgeon, Thomas M. Disch, Ellis Peters, E. Phillips Oppenheim, Margaret St. Clair, Algis Budrys, and Gerald Kersh.
The Complete Adventures of Feluda, Vol. 1
Satyajit Ray - 2000
Mitter, AKA Feluda. The plots involve murder, mystery and adventure, most of the times in exotic locations, narrated in a racy, humorous style by the detective's cousin-cum-assistant Topeshranjan Mitter AKA Topshe, and in most cases, accompanied by the funny Lalmohan Ganguly AKA Jatayu, who himself was a famous crime writer. All of this makes for enormously entertaining fare - and it is no wonder that each Feluda book has been a best-seller. All the stories are now available together in this two volume omnibus. For the first time ever, the stories are arranged in chronological order of composition, and one can note Feluda's development from an unknown amateur detective to a famous investigator. This first volume contains some of the best Feluda stories ever written.
Cul-de-Sac
David Lozell Martin - 1997
Here, David Martin brings back his most engaging hero: retired Detective Teddy Camel--a.k.a. " The Human Lie Detector" --on his last case.
Mycroft Holmes
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - 2015
Yet this most British of civil servants has strong ties to the faraway island of Trinidad, the birthplace of his best friend, Cyrus Douglas, a man of African descent, and where his fiancée Georgiana Sutton was raised.Mycroft’s comfortable existence is overturned when Douglas receives troubling reports from home. There are rumors of mysterious disappearances, strange footprints in the sand, and spirits enticing children to their deaths, their bodies found drained of blood. Upon hearing the news, Georgiana abruptly departs for Trinidad. Near panic, Mycroft convinces Douglas that they should follow her, drawing the two men into a web of dark secrets that grows more treacherous with each step they take...Written by NBA superstar Kareem Abdul- Jabbar and screenwriter Anna Waterhouse, Mycroft Holmes reveals the untold story of Sherlock’s older brother. This harrowing adventure changed his life, and set the stage for the man Mycroft would become: founder of the famous Diogenes Club and the hidden power behind the British government.
The Onion Field
Joseph Wambaugh - 1973
This is the frighteningly true story of two young cops and two young robbers whose separate destinies fatally cross one March night in a bizarre execution in a deserted Los Angeles field.
The Strings of Murder
Oscar de Muriel - 2015
A virtuoso violinist is brutally killed in his home. Black magic symbols cover the walls. The dead man's maid swears she heard three musicians playing before the murder.But with no way in or out of the locked practice room, the puzzle makes no sense...Fearing a national panic over a copycat Ripper, Scotland Yard sends Inspector Ian Frey to investigate under the cover of a fake department specializing in the occult. However, Frey's new boss - Detective 'Nine-Nails' McGray - actually believes in such nonsense.McGray's tragic past has driven him to superstition, but even Frey must admit that this case seems beyond reason. And once someone loses all reason, who knows what they will lose next...
Gravity
Tess Gerritsen - 1999
The cells begin to infect the crew with deadly results. Emma Watson struggles to contain the deadly microbe while her husband and NASA try to retrieve her from space, before it's too late.
Sherlock Holmes Short Stories
Clare West - 1989
He sits in his room, and smokes his pipe. He listens, and watches, and thinks. He listens to the steps coming up the stairs; he watches the door opening - and he knows what question the stranger will ask. In these three of his best stories, Holmes has three visitors to the famous flat in Baker Street - visitors who bring their troubles to the only man in the world who can help them.
The Skull Mantra
Eliot Pattison - 1999
Winner of the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, author Elliot Pattison masterfully scales the heights of the genre, taking readers to the top of the world while he chills us to the bone in... The Skull Mantra.The corpse is missing its head and is dressed in American clothes. Found by a Tibetan prison work gang on a windy cliff, the grisly remains clearly belong to someone too important for Chinese authorities to bury and forget. So the case is handed to veteran police inspector Shan Tao Yun. Methodical, clever Shan is the best man for the job, but he too is a prisoner, deported to Tibet for offending Beijing. Granted a temporary release, Shan is soon pulled into the Tibetan people's desperate fight for its sacred mountains and the Chinese regime's blood-soaked policies. Then, a Buddhist priest is arrested, a man Shan knows is innocent. Now time is running out for Shan to find the real killer...in an astonishing, emotionally charged story that will change the way you think about Tibet—and freedom—forever.
Killing Hope
Keith Houghton - 2011
"Celebrity Cop" Gabe Quinn is back working Robbery-Homicide after a personal tragedy has left him emotionally bare. He's raw, but resolved to catch a serial killer stalking the streets of two major cities.With cryptic clues left at each crime scene, Gabe is faced with the seemingly impossible task of piecing together the bizarre puzzle - following signs that point toward a killer whose motive questions everything he believes in ... 'If you could save a million lives by taking one ... would you?'
Crimes in Southern Indiana: Stories
Frank Bill - 2011
Frank Bill delivers what is both a wake-up call and a gut punch. Welcome to heartland America circa right about now, when the union jobs and family farms that kept the white on the picket fences have given way to meth labs, backwoods gunrunners, and bare-knuckle brawling.Bill's people are pressed to the brink--and beyond. There is Scoot McCutchen, whose beloved wife falls terminally ill, leaving him with nothing to live for--which doesn't quite explain why he brutally murders her and her doctor and flees, or why, after years of running, he decides to turn himself in. In the title story, a man who has devolved from breeding hounds for hunting to training them for dog-fighting crosses paths with a Salvadoran gangbanger tasked with taking over the rural drug trade, but who mostly wants to grow old in peace. As Crimes in Sourthern Indiana unfolds, we witness the unspeakable, yet are compelled to find sympathy for the depraved.Bill's southern Indiana is haunted with the deep, authentic sense of place that recalls the best of Southern fiction, but the interconnected stories bristle with the urban energy of a Chuck Palahniuk or a latter-day Nelson Algren and rush with the slam-bang plotting of pulp-noir crime writing a la Jim Thompson. Bill's prose is gritty yet literary, shocking, and impossible to put down. A dark evocation of the survivalist spirit of the working class, this is a brilliant debut by an important new voice.