Classic Thrillers

"Im Jahr 1878 hatte ich meinen Doktor an der Medizinischen Fakultät der Universität London gemacht und im Royal Victoria Military Hospital Netley die für Militärärzte vorgeschriebene medizinische Spezialausbildung absolviert." So beginnt ein Mythos. Sir Arthur Conan Doyles Detektivgeschichten wurden oft kopiert, vielfach verfilmt und mehr als einmal fürs Fernsehen adaptiert. Aber woher rührt eigentlich die Faszination für den kühlen Logiker Holmes? Der erste Roman wurde 1887 in Beeton's Christmas Annual veröffentlicht, Doyle trat für läppische 25 Pfund die Rechte ab.

A grisly collection of despicable crimes told by some of the world's best writers.

The first season focuses on the short story tradition, and B. J. Harrison has selected some of the most prominent representatives of the genre. As far as the thematic aspect is concerned, the stories cover crime and mystery episodes like Arthur Conan Doyle’s "The Speckled Band", or revenge-driven ones like Shakespeare’s "Hamlet". There are also supernatural and horror classics such as Hawthorne’s "The Devil and Tom Walker" and W. W. Jacobs’ masterpiece "The Monkey’s Paw".

Jack Kerouac tells the story of Jack Duluoz, a French-Canadian boy growing up in Kerouac’s own birthplace, the dingy factory town of Lowell, Massachusetts. There, Doctor Sax, with his flowing cape, slouched hat, and insinuating leer, is chief among the many ghosts and demons that populate Jack’s fantasy world. Deftly mingling memory and dream, Kerouac captures the accents and textures of his boyhood in Lowell in this novel of a cryptic, apocalyptic hipster phantom.

Two teenagers fresh out of stir set their sights on what looks like easy money in Dolores Hitchens' Fools' Gold (1958) - and get a painful education in how quickly and drastically a simple plan can spin out of control. The basis for Jean-Luc Godard's film Band of Outsiders, Fools' Gold is a sharply told tale distinguished by its nuanced portrait of a sheltered young woman who becomes a reluctant accomplice and fugitive.

Madame Maigret takes the lead in a disturbing investigation in this new translation, book 34 of the Maigret series. Inspector Maigret's wife turns sleuth after a strange encounter in a Paris square leads her on the trail of a woman in a white hat and towards a grisly tale of deception and greed.

The story involves a huge diamond, the moonstone, originally stolen from an Indian shrine. The gem is given to an English girl on her 18th birthday but disappears that same night. What follows is a spellbinding mystery that to this day has the power to draw the listener into its world of danger, suspense, and surprise.

Albert Trebla, Wiener Journalist und im Ersten Weltkrieg Jagdflieger, flieht im Frühjahr 1938 mit seiner Frau aus dem von deutschen Truppen besetzten Österreich auf Umwegen ins Engadin. Aber für den Verfolgten gibt es in der vermeintlich freien Schweizer Bergwelt keine Zuflucht. Trebla fühlt sich durch eine Serie rätselhafter Todesfälle bedroht und immer mehr in die Enge getrieben. Wie ein Murmeltier versucht er, in Deckung zu gehen, aber wo er auch hinkommt, wird er in äußerst merkwürdige Geschichten verstrickt. Mit "Murmeljagd" wird einer der großen Romane der deutschen Literatur wieder zugänglich.

Pierce Ambrose. That was the name of the man I'd been sent to kill. The man I'd failed to kill. I have one day left to make good on my contract before the thugs holding my sister and her son start sending me pieces of them. Pierce Ambrose. A man with a secret I didn't uncover until it was too late to turn back, too late to give up on trying to kill him. Now, if I want to see my sister and nephew again, I have to try one last time. My name is Mac Brennan, and this time I'm playing for keeps.

A Girl of the Limberlost, a novel by the writer and naturalist Gene Stratton-Porter, was published in 1909 as the sequel to her earlier novel Freckles. The tale unfolds in and around the Limberlost Swamp of north-eastern Indiana and in the nearby town of Onabasha. The main character, Elnora Comstock, lives with her widowed mother, Katharine Comstock, on the edge of the wetlands. The embittered Katharine blames her daughter for the death of her husband, who was swallowed by quicksand.

It’s not the people in this town you have to watch out for. It’s the buildings. Monster hunter and part-time centaur Todd Crane didn’t ask to be sheriff of Deadwood. For one thing, he’s never had an easy time staying on the right side of the law. For another, he’s too busy trying to find a dangerous sorcerer who nearly destroyed the United States of Neverica. But some men - and centaurs - have greatness thrust upon them.

"La folie et le désespoir ! Qu'on me donne cela comme levier, et je ferai bouger le monde". Verloc, espion infiltrant le milieu anarchiste, se voit sommé de commettre un attentat retentissant, sous peine de se voir retirer ses rétributions. Mais personne dans son entourage, à commencer par sa femme, ne sait rien de ses activités parallèles. Tout se gâte réellement lorsque Stevie, le frère attardé mental de la femme de M. Verloc, s'intéresse aux agissements de son beau-frère.

When her employer suddenly disappears, young Grace Kirkstall finds herself accepting a new job at a new company in the same building - an oasis of tranquility off the streets of London. Ben and Helen Brown’s start-up company’s pitch is that, for a small consideration, they will help people out of their major and minor fixes. Their first big commission initiates Ben into the gentle art of housebreaking, and Helen into the mysteries of the Society for Progressive Rehabilitation.... But for Grace, it will plunge her into more danger than she could ever have imagined.

Los temas de estas doce nuevas aventuras, recopiladas bajo el título de "Las memorias de Sherlock Holmes" en 1894 son variados: "La Gloria Scott", "El jorobado" y "El paciente interno" tratan de dilucidar crímenes ocurridos en el pasado; El tratado naval es una historia de espionaje; Los hacendados de Reigate y El intérprete griego nos hablan de la avaricia; o El oficinista del corredor de bolsa, que trata de un timo cometido por motivos inconfesables.

El archivo de Sherlock Holmes (título original: The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes) es un conjunto de cuentos breves escritos por Arthur Conan Doyle, cuyo protagonista es Sherlock Holmes. La mayoría de los cuentos están relatados por el doctor Watson, el fiel compañero de Holmes.

Wide Is the Gate followed the 1943 Pulitzer Prize-winning Dragon’s Teeth and introduces Lanny as a secret double agent fighting the Nazis as a supporter of the resistance in Germany. Lanny is living in England with his wife of almost five years, Irma Barnes, the twenty-three-million-dollar heiress. But Lanny is conflicted continuously in his heart and soul for the workers and social justice. He attempts to commit to Irma, to “behave” himself and lead a normal aristocratic life.

Acclaimed as one of Joseph Conrad's finest literary achievements, this gripping novel deftly depicts the political turmoil of nineteenth-century Russia and follows the dramatic developments in the life of a student, Razumov, as he prepares for a career in the czarist bureaucracy. In a plot that twists and turns, Razumov unwittingly becomes embroiled in a revolutionary conspiracy when he gives refuge to a fellow student who assassinated a public official. Increasingly enmeshed in the radical's political intrigue, he betrays the anarchist who had placed blind faith in him.

Adolf Verloc is a secret agent who provides information and takes care of arriving undercover agents of an un-named government through their embassy. He also runs a shady business selling pornography, comic books, contraceptives, and the like. As well as this, he’s a confidential informant to Chief Inspector Heat of the London police. His family consists of his wife, Winnie, her Mother, and his (presumably) autistic brother-in-law, Stevie.

Жарким днем 1919 года молодой солдат, спасая свою жизнь, убивает преследующего его всадника на белом коне. От этой встречи без свидетелей останутся лишь болезненное воспоминание и образ, всю жизнь преследующий героя, пока спустя годы, работая в Париже журналистом, он не прочитает рассказ, в деталях воспроизводящий историю с точки зрения жертвы. Так начинаются поиски неуловимого Александра Вольфа, в результате которых рассказчик оказывается вовлеченным в серию странных встреч и событий, заставляющих его размышлять о жизни, смерти, роковых совпадениях и неизбежности судьбы.

Mr. Richard Dodsley, owner of a fine second-hand bookshop on Charing Cross Road, has been found murdered in the cold hours of the morning. Shot in his own office, few clues remain besides three cigarette ends, two spent matches and a few books on the shelves which have been rearranged. In an investigation spanning the second-hand bookshops of London and the Houses of Parliament - since an MP's new crime novel Death at the Desk appears to have some bearing on the case - John Ferguson's series sleuth MacNab is at hand to assist Scotland Yard in an atmospheric fair-play bibliomystery.