Noir Fiction

It’s not going well for NE Division: half the force is off sick, all leave’s been cancelled, someone’s firebombed a migrant hostel and there’s a massive climate change protest march happening this Saturday. With officers dropping like flies, Detective Inspector Logan McRae has to kick off a major murder investigation with a skeleton staff of misfits, idiots and malingerers – AKA: DS Steel’s team – until the top brass can arrange backup from other divisions.

Joyce Carol Oates, a queenpin of the noir genre, has brought her keen and discerning eye to the curation of an outstanding anthology of brand-new top-shelf short stories (and poems by Margaret Atwood!). While bad men are not always the victims in these tales, they get their due often enough to satisfy listeners who are sick of the gendered status quo, or who just want to have a little bit of fun at the expense of a crumbling patriarchal society. This stylistically diverse collection will make you squirm in your seat, stay up at night, laugh out loud, and inevitably wish for more.

What do Jeffrey Dahmer's murderous glove, a brick from Lizzy Borden's fireplace, a girl missing for over a decade, and an old mob boss have in common? That’s what PI Jim Bean must find out to solve his next case. When Irving Silverland hires him to find some missing murderabilia objects from his museum, Jim Bean struggles to find a motive behind the strange theft. But when one of the exhibit’s employees is bludgeoned to death with the stolen brick that came from Lizzie Borden’s fireplace, the bigger picture behind the crimes begins to take shape.

After years of struggling in the Chicago theater scene, ambitious actress Kira Rascher finally lands the role of a lifetime. The catch? The mercurial Malcolm Mercer is the director, and he’s known for pushing his performers past their limits - on stage and off. Kira’s convinced she can handle Malcolm, but the theater’s cofounder, Joanna Cuyler, is another story.

Everything seems picture-perfect in the town of Fairview, Connecticut, until one night the unthinkable happens: a young woman, Jenny Kramer, is brutally attacked at a local party. In the hours immediately thereafter, Jenny is given a controversial drug to medically erase her memory of the violent assault. But in the weeks and months that follow, as she heals from her physical wounds, she wrestles with her raging emotional memory.

Santana Sokolov might be the one person who ties together all the mysteries of Atlantica. Which will probably get her killed. The woman has a penchant for the ancient. When Santana is approached by two enemy factions looking for the same legendary item, she partners with old friend Dick Chambers to enter the wilderness and unlock the mystery.

"Tu vas promener Bello à cette heure ? demanda Monika, surprise. - Oui, juste une petite promenade. - Vas-y avec Janus. Je n'aime pas te savoir toute seule. Il se fait tard. - Non, je n'ai pas envie d'y aller avec Janus. Il est trop bête !"

"La Tulipe noire" est un des romans les plus connus d'Alexandre Dumas. On y trouve tous les thèmes chers à l'auteur : l'aventure, le courage, la grande histoire qui se mêle à la petite... Pourtant ici, Cornélius van Baerle n'a pas d'ambition militaire ou sociale, il veut avant tout créer et faire pousser une tulipe noire. Hélas, ses projets seront contrariés car notre héros n'est autre que le neveu du chef de l'État hollandais, Corneille de Witt, qui vient d'être renversé.

Local girls' soccer coach Sven-Gunnar Erlandsson is practically a saint in the community, known for his good works and volunteering. So when his body is found in Stockholm's beautiful Herräng forest, shot at close range in the back of the neck while walking home from a late-night poker game, the police struggle to find a motive. Nothing has been taken from his pockets except his cell phone, and the only other clues left behind are a cryptic handwritten note and a handful of playing cards.

La collection «Asphalte Noir» revient en France et, après Paris, explore Marseille, de l'Estaque au Vieux-Port, de la Joliette à la Plaine, de la Belle de Mai au stade Vélodrome, en passant par le Panier ou les îles du Frioul... Marseille dans toute sa diversité, toutes ses communautés, toutes ses contradictions. Des nouvelles noires inédites, écrites spécialement pour ce recueil, par des auteurs marseillais de naissance ou d'adoption, œuvrant aussi bien dans le polar que la littérature générale.

The small community of Akranes is devastated after a young man dies in a mysterious house fire. When Detective Elma and her colleagues from West Iceland CID discover the fire was arson, they become embroiled in an increasingly perplexing case. For the dead man's final online search raises fears that they could be investigating not one murder, but two.

Fighting wildfires is dangerous as hell, but it's still the best damn job in the world. And women? They practically line up to slide down my pole. I never did like repeating myself. Not since she broke my heart into a thousand pieces, anyway. Clementine's that ex. The one I haven't seen in eight years. The one I thought I was going to marry until she dumped my ass while I was on active duty in Afghanistan.

Happy Doll is a charming, if occasionally inexpert, private detective living just one sheer cliff drop beneath the Hollywood sign with his beloved half-Chihuahua half-Terrier, George. A veteran of both the Navy and LAPD, Doll supplements his meager income as a P.I. by working through the night at a local Thai spa that offers its clients a number of special services. Armed with his 16-inch steel telescopic baton, biting dry humor, and just a bit of a hero complex, the ex-cop sets out to protect the women who work there from clients who have trouble understanding the word "no".

Everyone who lives at 23 Beulah Grove has a secret. If they didn't, they wouldn't be renting rooms in a dodgy old building for cash - no credit check, no lease. It's the kind of place you end up when you you've run out of other options.The six residents mostly keep to themselves, but one unbearably hot summer night, a terrible accident pushes them into an uneasy alliance. What they don't know is that one of them is a killer. He's already chosen his next victim, and he'll do anything to protect his secret.

Thousands of girls go missing every year in Las Vegas. Taken. Bought and sold. Or worse. These lost girls summon FBI Profiler Violet Darger to Sin City. There are fresh dead to sort through - two bodies burned beyond recognition in the trunk of a sedan - and there’s reason to believe there are missing girls waiting to be saved. Rumors swirl that a legendary killer is responsible for these crimes: an escaped prisoner with a personal grudge against Darger. One who disappeared for 20 years. If Darger finds the killer in time, the girls will live. If not...

John McFetridge takes us deep inside the gray zone on the Canadian and American border, delivering up-to-the-minute twists and edgy action.... Vernard "Get" McGetty is back from serving in Afghanistan, back dealing drugs in Detroit and looking to move up with his buddy JT, a guy he met in Kandahar who also happens to be the leader of the Saints of Hell—a notorious Ontario biker gang currently in the process of taking over all north-of-the-border drug traffic.

When Óttar Karlsson, a wealthy and respected government official and businessman, is found murdered, after failing to turn up at his own surprise birthday party, the police are at a loss. It isn't until young police officer Sigurdís finds a well-hidden safe in his impersonal luxury apartment that clues start emerging. As Óttar's shady business dealings become clear, a second unexpected line of enquiry emerges, when Sigurdís finds a US phone number in the safe, along with papers showing regular money transfers to an American account.

Running from a world which wants him dead, ex-detective Sergeant Jake Pettman journeys to the isolated town of Blue Falls, Maine, home of his infamous, murderous ancestors. But Jake struggles to hide from who he is, and when a child disappears, he finds himself drawn into an investigation that shares no parallels to anything he has ever seen before. Held back by a chief of police plagued and tormented by his own secrets, Jake fights for the truth. All the way to the door of Jotham MacLeoid. An insidious megalomaniac who feeds his victims to a killing pit.

The eighth book of this dark urban fantasy series follows necromancer Eric Carter through a world of vengeful gods and goddesses, mysterious murders, and restless ghosts.

Fred Underhill is a young cop on the rise in Los Angeles in the early 1950s - a town blinded to its own grime by Hollywood glitter; a society nourished by newspaper lies that wants its heroes all-American and squeaky clean. A chance to lead on a possible serial killing is all it takes to fuel Underhill's reckless ambition - and it propels him into a dangerous alliance with certain mad and unstable elements of the law enforcement hierarchy. When the case implodes with disastrous consequences, it is Fred Underhill who takes the fall. His life is in ruins, his promising future suddenly a dream of the past.