Comedy Crime Fiction

No one is more surprised than Lem Altick when it turns out he's actually good at peddling encyclopedias door to door. He hates the predatory world of sales, but he needs the money to pay for college. Then things go horribly wrong. In a sweltering trailer in rural Florida, a couple Lem has spent hours pitching to is shot dead before his eyes, and the unassuming young man is suddenly pulled into the dark world of conspiracy and murder.

Questo racconto in due parti (il cui titolo originale era "La cedola di Mitja") fu scritto non prima del 1904, e fu pubblicato postumo nel 1911. E' stato giudicato una requisitoria contro il denaro, inteso come strumento di corruzione individuale e sociale. In realtà è molto più di questo: è la continuazione ideale del suo ultimo grande romanzo, Resurrezione, che si conclude con l'affermazione del potere di redenzione del Vangelo.

Phoebe has a dream - a very modest dream. She wants to own a Sno-Cone truck at the beach in Key West. Nicky, her would-be boyfriend, also dreams small. All he wants is a decent gig as a guitar player in a bar. Doesn't seem like too much to ask of life, does it? So why do things keep going so dreadfully wrong for Phoebe and Nicky? Is it just plain bad luck? Or is it the decidedly bad intentions of a sleazy local cheat, a Miami gangster desperate to stay in business, and a murderous Cuban smuggler looking for a fall guy?

A vigilante is stalking the streets of Kansas City administering his own brand of justice when the justice system fails. Criminals are being executed right under the noses of the police department. In Lady Justice and the Vigilante, a new recruit to the City Retiree Action Patrol steps up to help Walt and Ox bring to an end his reign of terror. But not everyone wants the vigilante stopped.

It's 1998. The Internet age is still in its infancy. Google has just been founded. Eighteen-year-old supermarket shelf-stacker Nigel Carmelite has decided that he's going to become a vigilante. There are a few problems: how is he going to even find crime to fight on the streets of Derbyshire? How will he create a superhero costume - and an arsenal of crime-fighting weaponry - on a shoestring budget?

Genuinely Dangerous follows the nightmarish yet hilarious journey of Jasper Tripp, a down-and-out filmmaker who embeds himself in a crew of wild and mysterious criminals so he can film a documentary that'll land him back in the Hollywood fast lane.

What do you do if you witness a murder...but no one believes you? When Kate sees a horrific murder streamed live on her laptop, she calls the police in a state of shock. But when they arrive, the video has disappeared - and she can't prove anything. Desperate to be believed, Kate tries to find out who the girl in the video could be - and who her killer is.

Medium Dead is a fun urban fantasy chronicling the crime fighting adventures of Brenda - a reluctant medium - and Brian - a vigilante demon with an impish sense of humour. Think Stephanie Plum with magic and a dash of Carl Hiaasen. Brenda Steele is smart, funny and out of her depth. A Vigilante Demon called Brian wants her to find murdered spirits and help him track down their killers. But Brian doesn't just catch criminals, he likes to play with them first, and make the punishment fit the crime.

The landscape of contemporary Paris, replete with the best restaurants, the trendiest bars and clubs, is usually filled with the wealthy, the famous, and le rake or le rou, the charming, educated sophisticate with little or no conscience. Into this cushy world bursts Dr. Crandall Taylor - or rather the actor who plays him, the star of a dated American soap opera that is now one of the hottest prime-time shows in France. And this newfound fame, as enriching as it is unexpected, is not wasted on Crandall, eager to put his dark and often violent American past behind him and enjoy all the fruits and the women that Paris and fame have to offer him.

Cookbook author Mattie Carrington, Pine County's one and only celebrity, narrowly escapes being burned to a crisp when her kitchen explodes. Then someone tries to poison her. Luckily, Sheriff Cas Larkin is on the case. But when Cas visits the secluded cabin Mattie rented to finish her next book, he finds her nearly dead. With no signs of foul play and just as many clues, Cas is getting more "help" than he needs from the eagle-eyed locals as he tracks an experienced killer with the patience and skill to watch... and wait.

True believer Murray Whelan makes his debut in Shane Maloney's first thriller set among the ethnic feuds, union machinations, and sexual politics of his city's working-class heartland. The fiddle at the Pacific Pastoral meat-packing works was a nice little earner for all concerned until Herb Gardiner reported finding a body in number 3 chiller. Enter Murray Whelan, minder, fixer, and general dogsbody for the Minister of Industry. Between playing off party factions and pursuing the kohl-eyed Ayisha, it's all in a day's work for Murray to hose down the situation at Pacific Pastoral.

What happens when a reactionary, retired British brigadier general comes to Los Angeles looking for his missing goddaughter? Comic chaos, that's what, with California beach babes, Jamaican drug gangs, and other colorful characters feuding, fighting, but not quite fornicating, in a mad search and rescue operation.

Caleb Rush, aka Crush, is the toughest, coolest bodyguard/bouncer in Los Angeles, a man who lives strictly by his own moral code, which doesn't exactly hew to the standards of US law. When Amelia Trask, the wild daughter of a scruples-free billionaire tycoon, comes to Crush for help, his quiet life roars into overdrive, and he has to use his wits, brawn, martial-arts training, and knowledge of the Russian Mafia to stay alive and clean up the mess that young Amelia has created.

Ian Bridges works as a hitman and is on permanent stand-by for West End gangster John Broad. He does maybe three or four jobs a year and spends the rest of his life desperately trying to find Mrs Right so he can settle down, but can't and it feels like the world is conspiring against him. He's about to find out he's right.

In his career, Dave Barry has done just about everything - written bestselling nonfiction, won a Pulitzer Prize, seen his life turned into a television series. And now, at last, he has joined the long list of literary figures from Jane Austen to Tolstoy who have made the transition from humor columnist to novelist - and done it with a style and inventiveness that establishes that, yes, he is very good at that, too.

It's 1942, and war is raging in Europe and in the Pacific. The Japanese army is on Australia's doorstep, and the small coastal Queensland town of Maryborough is on full war footing. What they are not prepared for is the arrival in the town of a troupe of incompetent actors whose unjustifiably self-confident leader, William Power, is determined to bring his daring production of Titus Andronicus to the barbarians of rural Australia. Unfortunately for the Power Players, the only gift William Power has is a capacity for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Bobby Clark is just 16 when he drops out of school to follow his big brother, Jim, into the jewelry business. Bobby idolizes Jim and is in awe of Jim's girlfriend, Lisa, the best saleswoman at the Fort Worth Deluxe Diamond Exchange. What follows is the story of a young man's education in two of the oldest human passions, love and money

Which is more powerful: romance or revenge? Mafia princess Angelina Amaro has only ever loved one man - and even that lone affair was never consummated. Why not? Because her would-be lover, Sal Martucci, fled into the Witness Protection Program after ratting out Big Paul, Angelina's father. But when Sal is discovered, a decade later, working as a bartender in Key West, the wildly dysfunctional Amaro clan heads south - one member with love on her mind, the others with murder in their hearts.

Courting Death finds Melanie Wilkerson (from Cotton, book two of the Clarkeston Chronicles) and Arthur Hughes working uncomfortably together in the chambers of a famous federal judge. While Melanie neglects her duties as a law clerk to investigate the mysterious death of a young woman in the courthouse five years earlier, Arthur wades through the horrific habeas corpus appeals of two prisoners: an infamous serial killer and a pathetic child murderer.

When the palace of Arabesque's aide d'camp, a cat named the Tremblees, stumbles upon a translation of an ancient language that reveals the existence of a fabled stone, he vows to find it for reasons of greed and vengeance. With a dead dog stuck to a car bonnet, some burst luggage, a blind bus driver, and an enormous number of olives, it becomes a race for Oscar, his colleague Meesha, and the Tieress of Arabesque to prevent the Tremblees plunging Arabesque back into the Era of Bedlam.