Noir Fiction

A young man with Down's syndrome has been convicted of burning down his care home and killing five people, but a fellow inmate at his secure psychiatric unit has hired Thora to prove Jakob is innocent. If he didn't do it, who did? And how is the multiple murder connected to the death of Magga, killed in a hit and run on her way to babysit?

An escapee from a Spanish prison hunts for his best friend's killer in New York. For more than a year, Kit McKittrick languishes in a Fascist prison, his days spent in darkness and his nights tortured by fear of his limping jailer, whose name he never learns. He escapes Spain with the help of Louie Lepetino, a childhood friend who came with him to fight on behalf of the Republican cause.

Bombay's communal riots of 1992 - in which Hindus were alleged to be the primary perpetrators - were followed by retaliatory bomb blasts in 1993, masterminded by the Muslim-dominated underworld. Over a thousand citizens lost their lives in these internecine bouts of violence and thousands more became refugees in their own city. In a matter of months, Bombay ceased to be the cosmopolitan, wholesome, and middle-class bastion it had been for decades.

Nightmare Alley is American author William Lindsay Gresham’s first and best-known work. The novel - most admired by noir fiction fans - was published in 1946, adapted into a film in 1947 starring Tyrone Power and subsequently printed as a graphic novel by Spain Rodriquez. During the 1940s Gresham worked as an editor for a genuine crime pulp magazine in New York, during which period he wrote this book; characters range from hustlers to Machiavellian femme fatales in a dark world of show business.

The body of a young Russian woman washes up on an Icelandic shore. After a cursory investigation, the death is declared a suicide and the case is quietly closed. Over a year later Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdóttir of the Reykjavík police is forced into early retirement at 64. She dreads the loneliness, and the memories of her dark past that threaten to come back to haunt her. But before she leaves she is given two weeks to solve a single cold case of her choice.

Welcome to the Misfit Mob... It's where Police Scotland dumps the officers it can't get rid of but wants to: the outcasts, the troublemakers, the compromised. Officers like DC Callum MacGregor, lumbered with all the boring go-nowhere cases. So when an ancient mummy turns up at the Oldcastle tip, it's his job to find out which museum it's been stolen from. But then Callum uncovers links between his ancient corpse and three missing young men, and life starts to get a lot more interesting.

Tous les novices de la Guilde des magiciens viennent de familles puissantes... sauf Sonea. Mais elle sait bien qu'elle peut se tourner vers ses maîtres Dannyl et Rothen pour leur demander de l'aide. En tout cas, jusqu'à ce que d'infâmes rumeurs commencent à courir sur elle - et qu'Akkarin, le haut seigneur, intervienne.

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.

Shortlisted for the Anthony, Nebula, Edgar, Shamus, and Gold Dagger Awards, best-selling author James Sallis is a master of the gritty crime drama. The Killer Is Dying tracks the fortunes of three men of vastly different ages, backgrounds, and ambitions. Though they never meet, a hired killer on his last job, a burned out detective, and a young boy plagued by nightmares have their lives intersect in compelling ways in the scorching metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona.

When Detective Kim Stone is called to a local business, what she sees leaves her speechless. The photo on the driving license bears little resemblance to the man laid out before her, and she knows she’s up against the most twisted killer she has ever encountered. But as she breaks the devastating news to the victim’s wife, Diane Phipps, Kim can’t help feeling that something isn’t quite right about the woman’s reaction.

When a prominent Manhattan lawyer is murdered, two estranged sisters - one the dead man’s widow, the other his ex - must set aside mistrust and old resentments...but can they escape their past?

Joe Kurtz, former investigator and convicted felon, is on parole. But the years he spent in Attica didn't make his old haunts any safer. Back on the streets of Buffalo, he's already marked by a local Mafia don.

Freddy Otash was the man in the know and the man to know in '50s LA. He was a rogue cop, a sleazoid private eye, a shakedown artist, a pimp - and, most notably, the head strong-arm goon for Confidential magazine. Confidential presaged the idiot internet - and delivered the dirt, the dish, the insidious ink, and the scurrilous skank.

They thought they were safe. They were wrong. The murder of a young prostitute and a baby found abandoned on the same winter night signals the start of a disturbing investigation for Detective Kim Stone - one which brings her face to face with someone from her own horrific childhood. As more sex workers are murdered in quick succession, each death more violent than the last, Kim and her team realize that the initial killing was no one-off frenzied attack, but a twisted serial killer preying on the vulnerable.

Marlowe is back...and he's married to a rich, beautiful society lady who wants him to settle down in the posh desert community of Poodle Springs. Marlowe may have married rich, but old habits die hard: he's hired to recover a gambling debt and soon finds himself in a case involving bigamy, pornography and murder. The first four chapters of this final Marlowe mystery were written by noir master Raymond Chandler at the end of his life. Robert B. Parker was chosen by Chandler's estate to complete his last work.

A brilliant reporter, haunted by her husband's death....A disgraced cop, tangled in a web of lies....Two unlikely heroes, brought together by one unthinkable crime....

A serial killer stalks women in rural Ohio. He is deranged but brilliant, known only by the grotesque nickname the media has given him - The Doll Parts Killer. The name is apt. He dismembers his victims and leaves them in garbage bags in public places. A residential neighborhood. Next to a roller rink. Behind a Burger King. The investigation is a disaster. No physical evidence. Unreliable witnesses. To make matters worse, the FBI has lost contact with the star profiler working the case.

Condamné pour un meurtre qu'il n'a pas commis, Max Ender a été jeté en pâture à ses codétenus par ceux-là mêmes censés assurer l'ordre et la discipline au sein de la prison. Lorsqu'il est reconnu innocent et libéré, ce n'est plus le même homme. Il n'a désormais plus qu'une seule idée en tête : se venger de cette société qu'il hait par-dessus tout. Pour frapper ses bourreaux au cœur, il va enlever leurs enfants et, méthodiquement, au fil des ans, faire de ces petits anges des bêtes féroces.

Il est des hommes est un roman noir, au sens où il ambitionne de dire quelque chose du monde social, de sa dureté, de sa folie, de sa barbarie. Un roman qui se confronte aux forces du mal, qui raconte l'enfance dévastée, l'injustice, le sida, la drogue, la violence dans une cité de Marseille entre les années 80 et 2000.

David Trevellyan, a Royal Navy intelligence operative, takes a late-night walk to his New York City hotel. A huddled shape in an alley catches his eye - a homeless man has been shot to death. Trevellyan steps forward and a cop car arrives. A split second too late, Trevellyan realizes he's been set up. Obliged to clear his name, and with no idea who's a friend and who's a foe, he penetrates deep into a huge international conspiracy.