Noir Fiction

He's a self-described beach bum who won his houseboat in a card game. He's also a knight errant who's wary of credit cards, retirement benefits, political parties, mortgages, and television. He only works when his cash runs out, and his rule is simple: he'll help you find whatever was taken from you, as long as he can keep half.

We were an hour from Vegas when the plane began to shake. Something is rotten in the little town of Dillard, NV. And Mike Romeo is right in the middle of it. After the plane he's on has to land in the desert, Romeo tries to check on the woman who was sitting next to him. But the hospital gives him a strange runaround. A local tough tries to lean on him. Then he runs afoul of the sheriff. That's when things turn ugly. Which is the wrong way to turn things on Mike Romeo. Because when he's pushed, he takes a stand. And that means some very bad people are going to have to take a fall. Another ...

When McGee picks up the phone and hears a voice from the past, he can't help it. He has to meddle. Especially when he has the chance to reunite Sam Taggart, a reckless, restless man like himself, with the woman who's still waiting for him. But what begins as a simple matchmaking scheme soon becomes a bloody chase that takes McGee to Mexico, a beautiful country - and one from which he hopes to return alive.

A dying millionaire hires private eye Philip Marlowe to handle the blackmailer of one of his two troublesome daughters, and Marlowe finds himself involved with more than extortion. Kidnapping, pornography, seduction, and murder are just a few of the complications he gets caught up in.

By all accounts, Carl and Roy Opgard are doing quite well for themselves. Or at least they’re doing as well as can be expected in a small town like Os. Carl manages the area’s swanky and successful spa and hotel, while Roy runs a nearby gas station and harbors grand plans to build it out into an entire amusement park, complete with a roller coaster. But when news breaks about a new highway to be built nearby, bypassing Os and leaving the town cutoff and isolated, it’s clear that something has to be done . . . even if the methods are bound to be dirty.

When Amos Walker was a teen, he had a poster of Gail Hope on his wall. A 60s bombshell in the beach-blanket tradition, she has fallen hard since her glory days as one of the dying studio system’s final starlets. But when she calls on Amos Walker she remains as lovely as ever: an elegant beauty with a $750,000 problem.

Il est 4 heures du matin au pied des falaises d'Aci Castello, au nord de Catane, quand deux amis qui s'adonnent à la pêche au lamparo voient un homme se débarrasser d'une valise. Un peu plus tard dans la matinée, on signale à la commissaire Vanina Guarrasi qu'une femme aurait été assassinée au cours de la nuit dans une villa du bord de mer occupée par une certaine Lorenza Iannino. La valise, une fois récupérée, est vide... seulement tachée du sang de Lorenza.

Isaiah Hightower has everything a forty-nine-year-old man could want: respect as a high school principal; admiration as a leader in the black community; and a wife who would do anything for him.Despite his shining public image, Isaiah's life is plagued with indiscretions. When these threaten to unravel his world, he silences the threat by any means necessary.When his wife, Yvette, witnesses her husband's greatest sin, her life is about to change forever. But it doesn't have to. One lie will protect her lifestyle and save her husband's reputation.

When Darl Moody went hunting after a monster buck he's chased for years, he never expected he'd accidentally shoot a man digging ginseng. Worse yet, he's killed a Brewer, a family notorious for vengeance and violence. With nowhere to turn, Darl calls on the help of the only man he knows will answer, his best friend, Calvin Hooper. But when Dwayne Brewer comes looking for his missing brother and stumbles onto a blood trail leading straight back to Darl and Calvin, a nightmare of revenge rips apart their world.

It was the standard blackmail scheme. For years, sultry Lysa Dean's name on a movie had meant a bonanza at the box office. Now a set of pictures could mean the end of her career.When first approached for help by lovely Dana Holtzer, Lysa's personal secretary, Travis McGee is thoroughly turned off by the tacky details. But being low on cash, and tenderly attracted by the star's intriguingly remote secretary, McGee sets out to locate his suspects -- only to find that they start turning up dead!

Rita Conway, a young movie starlet, claims she is being blackmailed and has been receiving threatening phone calls every night at midnight. She believes the calls are coming from her ex-husband. The only problem is, Harry Conway has been dead for two years.

Scarlett Clark is an exceptional English professor. But she’s even better at getting away with murder. Every year, Dr. Clark searches for the worst man at Gorman University - professor, student, or otherwise - and plots his well-deserved demise. Thanks to her meticulous planning, she’s avoided drawing attention to herself…but as she’s preparing for her biggest kill yet, the school starts probing into the growing body count on campus.

The Assistant Registrar Emily Price, from the London Archives commits a crime of passion. Or is it? A man falls from the balcony. Was he pushed? And what is Emily Price hiding? Chief Police Inspector Ralph McGinniss from Scotland Yard investigates. He calls in his newly appointed assistant for help. Claire Lane is a Professor of Mathematics at London’s prestigious St Anne's University. Her speciality-scientific study of probability. In other words, the likelihood that an event will reoccur. She takes on the challenge until she discovers there is more to this story. A birth certificate ...

Eddie Gato Wolfe is a young, impetuous member of the Wolfe clan of Texas outlaws, gun-runners, and bootleggers, which goes back generations. Increasingly unfulfilled by his minor role in the family's operations and eager to strike out on his own, Eddie crosses the border to work security for a major Mexican drug cartel run by the ruthless La Navaja. At a party thrown by La Navaja, Eddie falls for a beautiful woman named Miranda, whom he learns too late is the girlfriend of El Segundo, La Navaja's only living brother. When El Segundo finds Eddie and Miranda together, Eddie is forced to kill El Segundo, forcing the two young lovers to escape the cartel.

Set in 1991, just as Star Trek: The Next Generation has rocketed the cast to global fame, the young and impressionable actor Brent Spiner receives a mysterious package and a series of disturbing letters, that take him on a terrifying and bizarre journey that enlists Paramount Security, the LAPD, and even the FBI in putting a stop to the danger that has his life and career hanging in the balance.

The stars are right. They are coming. From the rain drenched metropolis of New Seattle to the vibrant urban sprawl of Bangkok, datarunners burn each other out in digital war zones even as enhanced cyborgs shoot and slash each other into oblivion on the mean streets. In this frenzied future of neon and chrome, the data cold war pits corporations and cults against each other, allowing something much darker to fester in secret. Hex is a brilliant datarunner, and when a routine hack turns violent, she and her lover, a beautiful and deadly razor girl named Brida, must go on the run from the ...

Seventeen years ago, Criminal Inspector Ewert Grens was called to the scene of a brutal crime. A family had been murdered, and the only survivor - and witness - was the five-year-old daughter. The girl was placed in the witness protection program, and the case went cold, but years later, Grens is still haunted by the seemingly random slaying and the little girl who was spared. So when he learns that the apartment where the crime occurred is now the scene of a mysterious break-in, Grens immediately fears that someone is intent on silencing the only witness.

Murder isn’t uncommon in a big city, but when young women start turning up dead next to mysterious symbols painted in their blood, the police turn to Alex Lockerby to find the killer. Unfortunately, the bloody symbols aren’t any form of magic Alex knows, leaving him precious little to work with and a nagging feeling that he’d better stop this madman before he finishes whatever spell he’s attempting.

High on a hill above the small Victorian town of Carrabeen, 300 wind turbines constantly spin. Except one is now deadly still - a body hanging from its huge white blade. Detective Sergeants Belinda Burney and Will Lovell are shocked to discover the dead man is Geordie Pritchard, a rich local philanthropist and owner of the wind energy farm. Suicide at first seems the likely explanation, until Geordie's widow Lucinda insists her husband was murdered - and she has the death threats to prove it.

Wealthy American expat Glenn Murray Cohen, a former criminal defense lawyer, is celebrating his birthday in Bangkok for the thirteenth year in a row. It’s been four years since his last tangle with danger, when he and his NJA Club friends battled North Koreans and an American traitor. Since then, Glenn’s been stuck in a rut, managing the career of Phil Funston, Bangkok’s most talented guitarist and most obnoxious foreign resident. Glenn’s sense of honor won’t let him abandon Phil until he finds a replacement. His enigmatic friend, the General, offers to find one if Glenn will ...