English Detective Noir

Los Angeles, August 4, 1962. The city broils through a midsummer heat wave. Marilyn Monroe ODs. A B-movie starlet is kidnapped. The overhyped LAPD overreacts. Chief Bill Parker’s looking for some getback. The Monroe deal looks like a moneymaker. He calls in Freddy Otash. The freewheeling Freddy O: tainted ex-cop, defrocked private eye, dope fiend, and freelance extortionist. A man who lives by the maxim “Opportunity is love.” Freddy gets to work. He dimly perceives Marilyn Monroe’s death and the kidnapped starlet to be a poisonous riddle that only he has the guts and the brains to untangle

When the body of a man is found dead in his remote, isolated home, DI Tom Janssen and his team struggle to understand what motive there could be to murder such an inoffensive, seemingly placid local character. The man lived alone and was well known in the community, but kept his distance from others, leading a haphazard way of life almost entirely off the grid. What secrets did he hide in his private life that might be worth killing for? As the team are about to understand, even the most nondescript of people can exist in a world darker than most of us will ever see....

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.

The boy studied the bruise turning yellow at the base of his neck. With quick fingers his mother tightened his tie and pulled his collar high above it. Her eyes alone said, We will not speak of this.... Years later a man is found shot dead in a local park. On his phone is a draft text: I can’t keep this secret any longer. The recipient is unnamed. Detective Robyn Carter knows this secret is the key to the case, but his friends and family don’t offer any clues, and all her team have to go on is a size-ten footprint.

Philip Marlowe's about to give up on a completely routine case when he finds himself in the wrong place at the right time to get caught up in a murder that leads to a ring of jewel thieves, another murder, a fortune-teller, a couple more murders, and more corruption than your average graveyard.

This collection by crime fiction master Raymond Chandler features four long stories in which private eye Philip Marlowe is hired to protect a rich old guy from a gold digger, runs afoul of crooked politicos, gets a line on some stolen jewels with a reward attached, and stumbles across a murder victim who may have been an extortionist.

A wealthy Pasadena widow with a mean streak, a missing daughter-in-law with a past, and a gold coin worth a small fortune - the elements don't quite add up until Marlowe discovers evidence of murder, rape, blackmail, and the worst kind of human exploitation.

Sixteen-year-old Emily had everything to live for, a bright, beautiful teenager with a promising future ahead of her. But in one night her life is cut short. The police say it’s an accident, but her parents think she was murdered. When Detective Rachel Prince is called in to investigate the shocking death at the height of the Edinburgh Festival, her instincts tell her that things are not as they first appear. Something is very wrong. Rachel discovers a chilling link with the suspicious death of another international student, who stayed in the same house as Emily two years earlier.

After narrowly escaping with his life at the hands of a murderous Hollywood pimp, detective Happy Doll, bullet-ridden but healing, has landed on a remote Mexican beach. In a humble shack and with his dog for company, Doll settles into a peaceful idyll of Buddhist study. But then trouble, as it always does, comes to paradise. Doll is the witness to a murder for which he is framed, and now, with an expired passport and the Mexican authorities on his tail, he must sneak across the border back to L.A. by any means necessary, with the goal of bringing the true murderer to justice.

Hard-boiled detective Sam Spade is hired to locate a client's sister by tailing the sister's companion. Spade's partner Miles Archer takes on the assignment, and quickly both Archer and the man he was shadowing are murdered. As Spade pursues the mystery of his partner's death, he is drawn into a circle of colorful characters, and they are all after a legendary statuette of a falcon that had long ago been made for King Charles of Spain. Encrusted with jewels, it is worth a fortune.

Freelance private detective Thomas "Ravn" Ravnsholdt is attempting to move on with his life following the murder of his girlfriend. But when wealthy business mogul Ferdinand Mesmer enlists his help finding his son, Ravn reluctantly takes on what he thinks will be a straightforward missing person case. A decade ago, Jacob Mesmer founded the mysterious and scandal-scarred religious sect "God's Chosen." Now he's vanished without a trace. As Ravn digs deeper, he discovers the previous private eye assigned to the case has also disappeared.

When Cockney private detective George Harley saves a young girl's life on a dark London night in 1929, he doesn't realize it marks the beginning of an investigation which will change his life forever. The incendiary novel which inspired the girl's abduction also seems to be linked to a series of grisly murders that are taking place on Harley's patch, and though he's delighted to be asked by Scotland Yard to help find the killer before they strike again, he could do without the local razor- and cosh-wielding mobsters thinking he's a police informant.

In noir master Raymond Chandler's Playback, Philip Marlowe is hired by an influential lawyer he's never heard of to tail a gorgeous redhead but then decides he'd rather help out the redhead. She's been acquitted of her alcoholic husband's murder, but her father-in-law prefers not to take the court's word for it.

In 1930, young Archie Goodwin comes to New York City hoping for a bit of excitement. In his third week working as a night watchman, he stops two burglars in their tracks - with a pair of hot lead slugs. Dismissed from his job for being “trigger-happy”, he parlays his newfound notoriety into a job as a detective’s assistant, helping honest sleuth Del Bascom solve cases like the Morningside Piano Heist, the Rive Gauche Art Gallery Swindle, and the Sumner-Hayes Burglary. But it’s the kidnapping of Tommie Williamson that introduces Goodwin to the man who will change his life.

Sorenson, Wisconsin's deputy coroner, Mattie Winston, is back on the job...in a nursing home examining the body of Bernie Chase - the now former president of the Twilight Home's board of directors - who is covered in a powder used to turn liquids to solids. The home's residents are certain Bernie was offing the patients who cost him too much...and the patient who found him can't remember a thing.

Ex-detective superintendent Brandt has turned against society. The first kill was a stab in the dark, but now he's got a real taste for it. But his pursuer, DCI Stella Johnson, has rankled him. She has leaked to the press the idea he is impotent, and it has taken hold. Brandt wants to prove himself. Who better a victim than the woman who has embarrassed him? Johnson's strategy backfires, and she is in trouble with her superiors. Yet she now has a very personal reason to hunt down Brandt. Will going solo put her at even greater risk than before? And just what has he in mind for her?

North Yorkshire, England. Detective Chief Inspector Harry Grimm is reluctantly easing into life in the dales. As he gradually acclimatizes to the slower pace of the countryside while he awaits a return to the city, he’s called out to inspect a farmer’s crushed body. And despite the doctor on site declaring it a tragic mishap, the seasoned police officer rolls up his sleeves when evidence points to foul play. With a mysterious clue the only connection and the not-so-quiet village in self-imposed lockdown, the city-bred cop hunts for a link lethal enough to lead to murder.

Lawyer Bobby Carter did a lot of work for the wrong type of people. Now he’s dead and it was no accident. Besides a distraught family and a heap of powerful friends, Carter’s left behind his share of enemies. So, who dealt the fatal blow? DC Jack Laidlaw’s reputation precedes him. He’s not a team player, but he’s got a sixth sense for what’s happening on the streets. His boss chalks the violence up to the usual rivalries, but is it that simple? As two Glasgow gangs go to war, Laidlaw needs to find out who got Carter before the whole city explodes.

Few know the city of Los Angeles the way number one best-selling author and acclaimed suspense master Jonathan Kellerman does. His thrilling novels of psychological drama and criminal detection make the capital of dreams a living, breathing character in all its glamour and infamy. That storied history of fame, seduction, scandal, and murder looms large in Mystery, as Alex Delaware finds himself drawn into a twisting, shadowy whodunit that’s pure LA noir - and vintage Kellerman.

Phoebe Siegler first meets Charles Heist in a shabby trailer on the eastern edge of Los Angeles. She’s looking for her friend’s missing daughter, Arabella, and hires Heist to help. A laconic loner who keeps his pet opossum in a desk drawer, Heist intrigues the sarcastic and garrulous Phoebe. Reluctantly, he agrees to help. The unlikely pair navigates the enclaves of desert-dwelling vagabonds and finds Arabella is in serious trouble - caught in the middle of a violent standoff that only Heist, mysteriously, can end.