Book picks similar to
Darkness At Dawn by Cornell Woolrich
short-stories
fiction
noir
mystery
The McBain Brief
Ed McBain - 1982
First Offense2. Skin Flick3. The Prisoner4. Every Morning5. One Down6. Kiss Me, Dudley7. Chinese Puzzle8. The Interview9. Accident Report10. Hot Cars11. Eye Witness12. Chalk13. Still Life14. A Very Merry Christmas15. Small Homicide16. Hot17. Kid Kill18. Death Flight19. The Confession20. The Last Spin
The Spider Strikes!
R.T.M. Scott - 1933
Originally published in the October, 1933 issue of The Spider.
Black Wings Has My Angel
Elliott Chaze - 1953
The one book Black Lizard never published, it's the dream-like tale of a man after a jailbreak, who meets up with the woman of his dreams... and his nightmares. Phenomenal work of the period, ranking with the best efforts of Thompson, Woolrich, Goodis et al.
Journey Into Fear
Eric Ambler - 1940
What follows is a nightmare of intrigue for the English armaments engineer as he makes his way home aboard an Italian freighter. Among the passengers are a couple of Nazi assassins intent on preventing his returning to England with plans for a Turkish defense system, the seductive cabaret dancer and her manager husband, and a number of surprising allies. Thrilling, intense, and masterfully plotted, Journey Into Fear is a classic suspense tale from one of the founders of the genre.
The Wheelman
Duane Swierczynski - 2006
Betrayed, his money stolen and his battered carcass left for dead, Lennon is on a one-way mission to find out who is responsible--and to get back his loot. But the robbery has sent a violent ripple effect through the streets of Philadelphia. And now a dirty cop, the Russian and Italian mobs, the mayor's hired gun, and a keyboard player in a college rock band maneuver for position as this adrenaline-fueled novel twists and turns its way toward its explosive conclusion.One thing's for sure: This cast of characters wakes up in a much different world by novel's end--if they wake up at all, in Duane Swierczynski's The Wheelman.
The Floating Admiral
The Detection ClubAnthony Berkeley - 1931
But when an old sailor lands a rowing boat containing a fresh corpse with a stab wound to the chest, the Inspector's investigation immediately comes up against several obstacles. The vicar, whose boat the body was found in, is clearly withholding information, and the victim's niece has disappeared. There is clearly more to this case than meets the eye - even the identity of the victim is called into doubt. Inspector Rudge begins to wonder just how many people have contributed to this extraordinary crime and whether he will ever unravel it. . .In 1931 Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and 10 other crime writers from the newly formed Detection Club collaborated in publishing a unique crime novel. In a literary game of consequences, each author would write one chapter, leaving G.K. Chesterton to write a typically paradoxical prologue and Anthony Berkeley to tie up all the loose ends. In addition, all of the authors provided their own solutions in sealed envelopes, all of which appeared at the end of the book, with Agatha Christie's ingenious conclusion acknowledged at the time to be 'enough to make the book worth buying on its own'. The authors of this novel are G.K. Chesterton, Canon Victor Whitechurch, G.D.H. Cole and Margaret Cole, Henry Wade, Agatha Christie, John Rhode, Milward Kennedy, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ronald Knox, Freeman Wills Crofts, Edgar Jepson, Clemence Dane and Anthony Berkeley.©1931, 2011 The Detection Club (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
Queen's Bureau of Investigation
Ellery Queen - 1954
B is for Brothers, three of that name, who skewered one morning the fourth Brother's dame. On through the files of Q.B.I., from Bacon to Kidnap to a Poisoner's try. The victims are many, the killers are, too, and only Ellery Queen can find out who's who! * BLACKMAIL DEPT. -- Money Talks (This Week, 4/2/50 as "The Sound of Blackmail" reprinted in EQMM 08/52) * FIX DEPT. -- A Matter of Seconds (This Week, 8/9/53 reprinted in EQMM 01/57) * IMPOSSIBLE CRIME DEPT. -- The Three Widows (This Week, 1/29/50 as "Murder Without Clues"; reprinted in EQMM, 2/53,) * RARE BOOK DEPT. -- "My Queer Dean!" (This Week, 3/8/53, reprinted in EQMM, 11/56) * MURDER DEPT. -- Driver's Seat (This Week, 3/25/51 as "Lady, You're Dead") * PARK PATROL DEPT. -- A Lump of Sugar (This Week, 7/9/50 as"The Mystery of the 3 Dawn Riders" reprinted in EQMM, 2/53 and in EQMM, 03/69 as "Murder in the Park") * OPEN FILE DEPT. -- Cold Money (This Week, 30/03/52 and EQMM, 01/56) * EMBEZZLEMENT DEPT. -- The Myna Birds (as "The Myna Bird Mystery"in This Week, 12/28/52 reprinted in EQMM, 9/56 as "Cut, Cut, Cut!" ) * SUICIDE DEPT. -- A Question of Honor (This Week, 9/13/53 reprinted in EQMM 05/58) * HOLDUP DEPT. -- The Robber of Wrightsville (in Today's Family, 2/53 as "The Accused" and in EQMM, 12/54) * SWINDLE DEPT. -- Double Your Money (This Week, 9/29/51 as "The Vanishing Wizard" reprinted in EQMM, 9/55) * BURIED TREASURE DEPT. -- Miser's Gold (This Week, 6/18/50 as "Love Hunts a Hidden Treasure"; The Sunday Herald 07/16/50 as "Love Hunts a Hidden Treasure"; reprinted in EQMM, 4/54; as "Death of a Pawnbroker" EQMM 11/71) * MAGIC DEPT. -- Snowball in July (This Week, 8/31/52 as "The Phantom Train" reprinted in EQMM 07/56) * FALSE CLAIMANT DEPT. -- The Witch of Times Square (This Week, 11/5/50 reprinted in EQMM, 5/53) * RACKET DEPT. -- The Gamblers' Club (This Week, 1/7/51 reprinted in EQMM, 3/55) * DYING MESSAGE DEPT. -- GI Story (EQMM, 8/54) * NARCOTICS DEPT. -- The Black Ledger (This Week, 01/05/52 as "The Mysterious Black Ledger"- in Woman's Day, 03/31/52 and reprinted in EQMM 12/55) * KIDNAPPING DEPT. -- Child Missing! (This Week, 7/7/51 as "Kidnaped!", reprinted in EQMM, 6/58)All short stories,except were noted, are © 1949 to 1954. All are copyright to the United Newspaper Magazine Corporation and were apparently published in This Week.
Beast In View
Margaret Millar - 1955
What starts with a crank call from an old school chum sets the lonely, aloof, financially comfortable Miss Helen Clarvoe on a path as predictable only as madness. Lured from her rooms in a second-rate residential Hollywood hotel, she finds herself stranded in the more perilous terrain of extortion, pornography, vengeance, and ultimately murder.
The Gutter and the Grave
Curt Cannon - 1958
But that was before he caught his wife cheating on him with one of his operatives and took it out on the man with the butt end of a .45. Now Matt makes his home on the streets of New York and his only companions are the city’s bartenders. But trouble still knows how to find him, and when Johnny Bridges shows up from the old neighborhood, begging for Matt’s help, Cordell finds himself drawn into a case full of beautiful women and bloody murder. It’s just like the old days – only this time, when the beatings come, he may wind up on the receiving end...
The Detection Collection
The Detection Club - 2005
The founding and early members were amongst the most famous and best loved figures in the golden age - Agatha Christie, G. K. Chesteron, Dorothy Sayers, John Dickson Carr (the only American ever to be a member) among others - and membership remains by invitation only.
Now to celebrate the impending seventy-fifth anniversary of The Detection Club, its members have produced The Detection Collection - a collection of eleven new stories from the best and the brightest in the British crime field. This original volume includes never-before-published stories from Lindsey Davis, P.D. James, Robert Barnard, Colin Dexter, John Harvey, Reginald Hill, Peter Lovesey, and others, as well as an introduction and history of the Detection Club from the current Club president Simon Brett. This outstanding collection is a true must-have volume for mystery lovers around the world.
The Spotted Cat and Other Mysteries from Inspector Cockrill's Casebook
Christianna Brand - 2002
The wizened, bird-like Inspector Cockrill of the Kent police starred in Green for Danger, one of the greatest detective novels to emerge from World War II, but The Spotted Cat is the first collection of all of the short stories about him. Five of the stories have never previously appeared in a Brand volume, and one of them is published here for the first time. The book also includes a genuine find -- a previously unpublished three-act detective drama featuring Cockrill.
Killing Suki Flood
Robert Leininger - 1991
The moment Frank Limosin sees gorgeous eighteen-year-old Suki Flood sitting on the rear deck of the red Trans Am in the hot empty desert, he feels trouble in the air. The Trans Am has a flat tire. They're over ten miles from the nearest highway. And Suki, dressed in short shorts and a tiny halter top, doesn't know how to change a tire. Against Suki's will, Frank gives her a lesson in tire changing, then he thinks that's it, he'll never see her again. How wrong can one man be? Because Suki turns out to be fifty times more trouble than Frank ever dreamed possible. He saved her once. Now he has to save her again and again and again . . .
Little Girl Lost
Richard Aleas - 2004
So how did she wind up shot to death on the roof of New York s seediest strip club? It s up to detective John Blake to uncover his ex-girlfriend s secret life as a striptease queen. But the deeper he digs, the darker the secrets he uncovers, until a shattering face-off in an East Village tenement changes his life forever. First time in paperback--a stunning debut novel from an author whose stories have been selected for BEST MYSTERY STORIES OF THE YEAR and THE YEAR S BEST HORROR STORIES, as well as short-listed for the Shamus Award by the Private Eye Writers of America.
The Pistol Poets
Victor Gischler - 2004
Here Victor Gischler draws us into a wild and wicked world, where tenured professors are busy burying bodies, cash-up-front P.I.’s hunt for missing coeds and one desperate street-tough has to decide which he’d rather be: a live poet or a dead criminal.An unlucky grad student just got himself killed in a robbery gone bad. And as lowly drug lieutenant Harold Jenks races with the killer out of the alley, a light goes off in his head: He’ll steal the dead kid’s identity. Now Jenks, who once lorded it over seven square blocks in East St. Louis, is headed due west. With a .32 in his pocket, a 9mm Glock taped across his back, and a rap sheet nearly as long as Finnegans Wake, he’s cruising the halls of academia as Eastern Oklahoma U’s newest grad student, looking for action and hoping he can stay one couplet ahead of his violent past. While this new bad boy on campus makes mincemeat of his metaphors, across campus visiting professor Jay Morgan has a more pressing problem: What to do about the dead coed in his bed. The professor’s no killer, but try telling that to private eye Deke Stubbs. With the professor on the lam and Stubbs hot on his trail, more trouble blows into town. Now, as St. Louis drug boss Red Zach and his minions converge on Fumbee, Oklahoma, looking for a consignment of missing cocaine, the bullets start flying faster than the zingers at a faculty hate fest. For Morgan and Jenks, now desperate fugitives from poetic justice, survival means learning new skills—and learning fast. Because if they find out they’re bottom-of-the-class, that means they’re already dead. Featuring the sleaziest, sorriest, and most captivating group of criminal lowlifes, sexed-up academics, poets, and rappers ever to collide in one crime novel, The Pistol Poets speeds deliriously to its electrifying payoff.From the Hardcover edition.