Noir Fiction

Southern Brooklyn, July 1996. Fire hydrants are open and spraying water on the sizzling blacktop. Punk kids have to make their own fun. Bobby Santovasco and his pal Zeke like to throw rocks at cars getting off the Belt Parkway. They think it's dumb and harmless until it's too late to think otherwise. Then there's Jack Cornacchia, a widower who lives with his high school age daughter Amelia and reads meters for Con Ed but also has a secret life as a vigilante, righting neighbourhood wrongs through acts of violence.

The Pale Criminal brings back Bernie Gunther, an ex-policeman who thought he'd seen everything on the streets of 1930s Berlin - until he turned freelance, and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Nazi subculture. Hard-hitting, fast-paced, and richly detailed, The Pale Criminal is noir writing at its blackest and best.

On the 12th floor of the Acme Building, on a cold February day in St. Paul, Guy Noir looks down the barrel of a loaded revolver in the hands of geezer gangster Joey Roast Beef, who is demanding to hear what lucrative scheme Guy is cooking up with stripper-turned-women's-studies-professor Naomi Fallopian. Everyone wants to know, and Guy faces them one by one, as he and Naomi pursue a dream of earning gazillions by selling a surefire method of dramatic weight loss.

Deux âmes pour un seul corps, ombre et lumière... Telle est la malédiction du prince Alexandre, qui doit lutter pour ne pas succomber à l'Esprit du chaos, comme a déjà succombé son père Philippe de Macédoine. Lancés à sa recherche après son enlèvement par les serviteurs du Dieu noir, le général Parménion et l'assassin Attalos poursuivent leur quête jusqu'au royaume des dieux et des héros... Saga en deux tomes : "Le Lion de Macédoine" et "Le Prince noir".

Jun Nakayama was a silent-film star in the early days of Hollywood. By 1964, he is living in complete obscurity, until a young writer, Nick Bellinger, tracks him down for an interview. When Bellinger reveals that he has written a screenplay with Nakayama in mind, Jun is intrigued by the possibility of returning to movies. But he begins to worry that someone might delve too deeply into the past and uncover the events that abruptly ended his career in 1922. Like the changing social and racial tides in California - and the unsolved murder of his favorite director.

Tragiquement connue pour son histoire violente et chaotique ainsi que pour la catastrophe qui l’a frappé en 2010, Haïti est le pays le plus pauvre des Amériques - et l’un des plus riches sur le plan littéraire. Cette anthologie de dix-huit nouvelles, projet lancé avant le tremblement de terre, réaffirme le talent des auteurs contemporains haïtiens, aussi bien francophones qu’anglophones, qu’ils vivent sur place ou qu’ils soient issus de la diaspora, sur un terrain où ils ne sont pas forcément attendus : le genre noir.

Angelo DiNoto is the most powerful crime lord in New Jersey, his empire sustained by pure heroin from the poppies of an old Turkish farmer. That is, until a $5 million dollar shipment goes missing. Richard Mundi, a shady developer, sees the lost heroin as capital infusion for his failing business. His daughter, Gloria, literally in bed with would-be revolutionaries, thinks it's her ticket out. "Mailman", a long-time postal clerk dying of cancer, believes finding the heroin would be perfect ending to a failed life....

Paul Edgecombe, ancien gardien-chef d'un pénitencier dans les années 1930, entreprend d'écrire ses mémoires. Il revient sur l'affaire John Caffey - ce grand Noir au regard absent, condamné à mort pour le viol et le meurtre de deux fillettes - qui défraya la chronique en 1932. "La Ligne verte" décrit un univers étouffant et brutal, où la défiance est la règle. Personne ne sort indemne de ce bâtiment coupé du monde, où cohabitent une étrange souris apprivoisée par un Cajun pyromane, le sadique Percy Wetmore, et Caffey, prisonnier sans problème.

After getting a note demanding his presence, Federal Agent Aaron Falk arrives in his hometown for the first time in decades to attend the funeral of his best friend, Luke. Twenty years ago when Falk was accused of murder, Luke was his alibi. Falk and his father fled under a cloud of suspicion, saved from prosecution only because of Luke’s steadfast claim that the boys had been together at the time of the crime. But now, more than one person knows they didn’t tell the truth back then, and Luke is dead.

Laurence Shames’ funny, elegantly written, and hip thrillers have topped best-seller lists across the country, and earned him a leading role as a writer of “Florida noir” with Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen. When Island Frigate advertising rep Suki Sperakis decides to write an exposé on the Key West black market, she is strangled and left for dead in the trunk of a car sinking slowly into the Gulf of Mexico.

Some cases never leave you. For John Rebus, 40 years may have passed, but the death of beautiful, promiscuous Maria Turquand still preys on his mind. She was murdered in her hotel room on the night a famous rock star and his entourage were staying there, and Maria's killer has never been found. Meanwhile, the dark heart of Edinburgh remains up for grabs.

In The Lady in the Lake, hard-boiled crime-fiction master Raymond Chandler brings us the story of a couple of missing wives - one a rich man's and one a poor man's - who have become the objects of Philip Marlowe's investigation. One of them may have gotten a Mexican divorce and married a gigolo, and the other may be dead. Marlowe's not sure he cares about either one, but he's not paid to care.

Entre suspense effréné et humour décapant, un des tous premiers thrillers du créateur de frissons. Une série d'ores et déjà culte sur les drôles d'aventures de Zack Walker, le plus attachant des antihéros. Son épouse et ses ados respirent, Zack Walker a trouvé un job. Lui, l'angoissé chronique, l'obsédé de la sécurité, a renoncé à son rôle d'homme au foyer/écrivain de science-fiction pour entrer à la rédaction du journal local.

Still reeling from a brutal dismemberment, detective Kline is forcibly recruited to solve a murder inside a religious cult that takes literally the New Testament idea that you should cut off your hand if it offends you. Armed only with his gun, his wits, and a gift for self-preservation, Kline must navigate a gauntlet of lies, threats, and misinformation. All too soon he discovers that the stakes are higher than he thought and that his survival depends on an act of sheer will.

You should never fall in love with a flyer. You should only be in love with flight. That's the rule that Roxy Loewen - aviatrix and protege of the great Amelia Earhart -always lives by. Until she falls hard for fellow pilot Jocco Zomack, and he leads her into a whole heap of trouble. From African skies to a hot cellar in Madrid, from the Berlin Olympics to the last flight of the Hindenburg, from gunrunning to the heist of the century, Roxy is just one step ahead of the Nazis - and one loop-de-loop from disaster.

In the field of country noir—the dark side of rural and small-town America—Lansdale staked his claim to East Texas with The Nightrunners. A '66 Chevy bears down on the countryside, with a carful of vicious teenagers and evil of Biblical proportions, in this terrifying morality tale of sex and violence.

A macabre grave is found at the foot of the Italian Dolomites. The body is found to be Roberto Lorenzoni's, only son and heir of one Venice's oldest, most aristocratic families. Commissario Guido Brunetti must move in the highest circles of power and corruption to unravel the mystery behind the young man's disappearance and murder.

Après le siège d'Ildakar, le général Utros et son armée sèment la terreur dans l'Ancien Monde. Bravant la faim et le doute, les antiques guerriers fondent sur les villes côtières, où ils comptent se ravitailler... et faire un massacre. Prisonnier de Calvaire, le roi des Norukai, Bannon est rejoint par Lila sur la galère où il est contraint de ramer jusqu'à l'épuisement. Ensemble, le jeune escrimeur et la Mora-Zith découvrent le plan dévastateur des esclavagistes : lancer sur les cités déjà menacées par Utros la plus grande armada de l'histoire.

La petite ville de Promise Falls est sous le choc : les Langley viennent d'être sauvagement assassinés. Qui pouvait en vouloir à cette famille en apparence tranquille ? Qui a bien pu commettre cet acte aussi barbare que gratuit ? Les rues de cette banlieue réputée paisible sont-elles encore sûres ? Seul témoin du drame : Derek Cutter, dix-sept ans, qui n'aurait jamais dû se trouver là.

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.