Noir Fiction

Humans have always been fascinated by darkness. Especially the darkness of a city at night, when the black sky is made ever more inky by the pools of illumination dropped under streetlights. Whether the mean streets be in an alternate past charmed with dark magic or the dirty alleyways of futuristic crowded space stations, the city—and its darkened streets—will always fascinate us. Here then, an anthology of all new stories of science fiction and fantasy with a hardboiled noir twist that acknowledge that the city is a living, breathing entity...and it isn’t always on our side.

No one but Stephen King could tell this story about the darkness at the heart of the unknown and our compulsion to investigate the unexplained. With echoes of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon and the work of Graham Greene, one of the world's great storytellers presents a surprising tale that explores the nature of mystery itself.

The island city-state of Singapore harbors unique customs and traditions largely unknown to the West. A booming economy and embrace of conformity overshadow its gambling dens, red-light districts, and a collective passion for ghostly and gory tales. Now, in Singapore Noir, some of its best contemporary authors delve into its seedy side.

A wealthy couple is found brutally murdered. Their young son is missing. And one detective is about to be dragged back into a past he thought he'd buried. Detective Sergeant Conal Brophy is struggling to stay afloat—personally and professionally. When a high-profile double murder shakes the quiet Irish town of Woodstown, Brophy is handed the case that could either redeem his career—or destroy it. But nothing about the crime scene adds up. No witnesses. No motive. And the missing boy, Sean, has vanished without a trace. As Brophy digs deeper, a familiar name from an old, unsolved case ...

Rudolf Sebestyen is missing, and Marianne Smalls is involved in an illicit affair with the shady Jonas Schmitt. Both cases converge when Dora Urban, Rudolf's beautiful and mysterious half-sister, and Lamont Smalls, Marianne's suspicious husband, hire Jack Mitchell, a hard-drinking, chain-smoking private investigator. Dora wants Jack to uncover what happened to her brother, while Lamont seeks proof of his wife's infidelity. But Dora is a vampire, in a city teeming with creatures of the night. As Jack dives deeper, he discovers that both cases are linked to vepratoga.

Two years ago, my whole world was ripped apart when my husband and best friend were killed in a car accident in Norfolk. Since then, I've struggled to come to terms with my overwhelming grief and to understand why they were together in Charlie’s car that fateful night. Following a friend’s advice, I sign up to a reputable dating site, IntoYou. She tells me it’s the perfect way to meet someone, and when I quickly get a match, I believe she is right. I am surprised how easy this is. But it seems I have a lot to learn.

Desperate to complete the last chapter of his law thesis on workplace dynamics for women to secure his tenure, Professor Stanley Hopkins stumbles on an old close college friend, Donald Johansson, who has plenty of female employees. The problem is that Donald is a porn video king. Taking his wife to California’s seedy city of Burbank to help with taping interviews, Stanley realizes he is in way over his head the moment a leading porn star is brutally killed in Donald’s office during a party.

Trapped in a world of sin and sexy alpha angels. Forever defined by my black wings. My father, King of the Nora, sent me to Noir Reformatory to atone for crimes I didn't commit. So, what's a girl to do? Escape, obviously. Except I need allies to accomplish that feat, and no one wants anything to do with King Sefid's daughter. If anything, my claim to the throne has only made running that much harder, and worse, I'm stuck with two hot angels standing in my way.

Someone is selling fake luxury handbags so perfect that even the real manufacturers can’t always tell they are knockoffs. When a bumbling private eye from America visits the NJA Club on behalf of undisclosed clients, US expat lawyer Glenn Murray Cohen and his friends are drawn into the intrigue. Glenn’s friend, the General, a retired Thai military man, was hired by the real manufacturers to find the fakers, and he understands the American visitor can lead him to his prey. He relies on the information Glenn obtained from Glenn’s interrogation of the visitor. When the private eye goes ...

Late one winter afternoon in upstate New York, George Clare comes home to find his wife killed and their three-year-old daughter alone—for how many hours?—in her room across the hall. He had recently, begrudgingly, taken a position at a nearby private college (far too expensive for local kids to attend) teaching art history, and moved his family into a tight-knit, impoverished town that has lately been discovered by wealthy outsiders in search of a rural idyll.

Summer, 1968. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy are dead. The assassination conspiracies have begun to unravel. A dirty-tricks squad is getting ready to deploy at the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Black militants are warring in southside L.A. The Feds are concocting draconian countermeasures. And fate has placed three men at the vortex of History.

In the seedy depths of Angel City a new kind of scum is taking root. Working girls are going missing and when they show back up again it's bad news. The pervs and freaks seem to be winning but the deal is they never counted on Mel Thompson. Not just any shamus or private dick, Mel has a certain, shall we say, connection to another place down under but it's not Australia. The clock is ticking for Mel to solve the case because the deeper he gets into it, the better the odds that he's going to get his block knocked off, and then it's not just curtains, but a one-way ticket back to Hell for the...

When old bones are discovered buried beside an A road, it becomes clear that Leon Martin—dubbed "The Ken Doll Killer" by the tabloid press—may not have taken his life 21 years ago. As Boyd investigates the old case file, it becomes clear that there may be new bodies buried at lay-bys around the country—more than that, something incredible was overlooked by the original investigating team.

Everyone knew the kind of girl Jean Timberlake was: wild, looking for trouble. But she certainly wasn't looking for murder. She was found dead on the beach 17 years ago, and an ex-boyfriend named Bailey Fowler was convicted of her murder and imprisoned, and then escaped. Now private eye Kinsey Millhone steps into a case that should have never been closed, in a town where there's no such thing as a private investigation.

Semi-finalist, Publisher's Weekly Booklife Prize Can a conspiracy be uncovered before the Death Count rises? Forensic accountant Kat Munro fights corporate fraud during the day and kickboxes her demons at night while trying to ignore the nightmares that have plagued her since a car accident changed her life forever. DS Adam Jackson is haunted by the mysterious disappearance of a friend two years ago. When the partner of a successful London Investment fund dies in suspicious circumstances, Kat joins forces with Adam to investigate the firm. As they gather evidence of a crime with ...

FBI agent Rachel Walling finally gets the call she's dreaded for years, the one that tells her the Poet has surfaced. She has never forgotten the serial killer who wove lines of poetry in his hideous crimes - and apparently he has not forgotten her. Former LAPD detective Harry Bosch gets a call, too - from the widow of an old friend. Her husband's death seems natural, but his ties to the hunt for the Poet make Bosch dig deep.

A fresh-faced newcomer arrives in an isolated, gang-run town and soon finds herself taking a job nobody else wants: bodyguard to a ghoul. Not just your average mindless, half-rotted shuffler, though. Lucille is a dancer who can still put on her own lipstick and whose shows are half burlesque, half gladiator match. But the stranger is no stranger to this particular ghoul. Both women are undercover in their own way. And both have something to lose if their connection comes to light.

A rural Welsh community is beset by a series of cruel murders... Putting his wedding plans on hold, Detective Winter Meadows resolves to unmask the serial killer on his patch. The only connection between the victims is the stick dolls left by their bodies. That and the fact they don’t seem to have been particularly popular. People are ruffled. Scared. Meadows must isolate the killer fast but the evidence is brittle. The key to unravelling the mystery is in the stone church, in the creaking homes, and in the slowly thawing fields.

Cal Sounder is a detective working for the police on certain very sensitive cases. So when he’s called in to investigate a homicide at a local apartment, he’s surprised by the routineness of it all. But when he arrives on scene, Cal soon learns that the victim—Roddy Tebbit, an otherwise milquetoast techie—is well over seven feet tall. And although he doesn’t look a day over thirty, he is ninety-one years old. Tebbit is a Titan—one of this dystopian, near-future society’s genetically altered elites. And this case is definitely Cal’s thing.

Oslo, 2018. Former long-distance runner Sonja Nordstrøm never shows at the launch of her controversial autobiography, Always Number One. When celebrity blogger Emma Ramm visits Nordstrøm’s home later that day, she finds the door unlocked and signs of a struggle inside. A bib with the number one has been pinned to the TV. Police officer Alexander Blix is appointed to head up the missing-persons investigation, but he still bears the emotional scars of a hostage situation 19 years earlier, when he killed the father of a five-year-old girl.