Urban Crime Fiction

The two parts of being a paranormal private investigator I could really do without are being forced to eat bananas by an animated statue with a potassium fixation, and being put on trial for murder by a self-appointed council of vampire oligarchs. To be fair, I did kind of do it (the murder, not the bananas). But I was kind of saving my girlfriend, who is kind of one of them. On top of this, I've also wound up with a primordial queen of the damned trying to strangle me in my dreams.

In 2001, a woman’s skeleton was found in the woods overlooking Montreal’s Royal Victoria Hospital. Despite an audit of the hospital’s patient records, a forensic reconstruction of the woman’s face, missing-person appeals, and DNA tests that revealed not only where she had lived but how she ate, the woman was never identified. Assigned the name Madame Victoria, her remains were placed in a box in an evidence room and eventually forgotten. But not by Catherine Leroux, who constructs in her form-bending Madame Victoria 12 different histories for the unknown woman.

A propulsive and ambitious novel as electrifying as The Wire, from a writer hailed as the West Coast's Richard Price—a mesmerizing epic of crime and opportunity, race, revenge, and loyalty, set in the chaotic streets of South Central LA in the wake of one of the most notorious and incendiary trials of the 1990s. At 3:15 p.m. on April 29, 1992, a jury acquitted three white Los Angeles Police Department officers charged with using excessive force to subdue a black man named Rodney King and failed to reach a verdict on the same charges involving a fourth officer. Less than two hours later, the city exploded in violence that lasted six days. In nearly 121 hours, fifty-three lives were lost. But there were even more deaths unaccounted for: violence that occurred outside of active rioting sites by those who used the chaos to viciously settle old scores.

Holed up in prison, Mike Regan is offered a deal - his freedom in exchange for his firm taking down the gang that is supplying a new dangerous drug that has hit the streets. What starts as a game soon becomes a shocking revelation with devastating consequences. Meanwhile, Mike’s fiancé, Zara Ezra, has her own firm to run. But when the so-called Governor is out to take her down, she has her own decision to make - either fight, run, or write her own rule book....

Gideon Sable—master thief, con artist and self-proclaimed vigilante—faces a challenge he can't refuse. His client, the former Head of the British Rocketry Group, Professor Neil Sharpe, wants him to break into the Preserve. Once inside, Gideon and his crew of supernatural misfits can get any mystical artefact they desire out of the Preserve's collection. The catch? To reach it, they must go through the treacherous Box Tunnel complex and not only face trained guards and booby traps but steal something that can't normally be stolen—a ghost!

Nate Colgan: a violent man; 'smart muscle' for the Jamieson organization. Someone to be afraid of. But now, with its most powerful individuals either dead or behind bars, things within the Jamieson organization are beginning to shift. When Nate, long working on the fringes of the business, is reluctantly appointed its new 'security consultant', he can little imagine how things are about to unravel....

Nobody's better at taking out bodies than Larry Jackson, aka "Daddy Cool." Long as he's paid in full, he'll pull the trigger or stick a knife deep, whatever it takes to get the job done. No questions asked. Nobody's better. Nothing knocks him off his game-except his own family. Dead ass. He's got two stepsons wasting space and a wife he almost forgot about. But his daughter is another story.

When honorable ex-con Jack attempts to repay an unstable criminal who saved his life, he finds himself and his new girlfriend caught in the middle of a mob war.

After five years’ hard time, ex-soldier Hugh Marlowe emerges into the free world ready to fight anyone who stands in his way. Rough justice is all he knows. But when a beautiful, vulnerable woman asks for his help, Marlowe quickly finds himself a world away from the London gangland that he knows in a different life with its own problems.

Judi Rifkin is one of the world’s most successful collectors of the weird and unnatural. In a London underworld filled with criminals with very special talents, Judi is a force to be reckoned with. And Gideon Sable—thief, rogue, and chancer—owes her a very large favor. Judi makes him an offer he can’t refuse: steal her the legendary Masque of Ra, kept safe in a Las Vegas casino, and she’ll wipe the slate clean. This isn’t Gideon’s first heist. But with old grudges, an unpredictable crew, and a formidable supernatural security team, this job might be a gamble too far.

Most people think when you say, "I do" all problems come to an end. When happily ever after seems impossible, three women transform from good girls to bad women. Just when they think they've made it out of the grimy streets to a more ideal lifestyle in the suburbs, their lavish lives turn sour. Unfortunately, for the sexy threesome, they are all suddenly faced with financial hardships that land them between a rock and a hard place.

A young journalism student named Coffee is granted the opportunity of a lifetime. During her spring break, she has to follow Mickey Royal around day and night in order to do a report on The Pimp Game. As Coffee accompanies Mickey Royal throughout his daily life, she embarks on an adventure like no other. She immerses herself into the underbelly of the shadow world and learns lessons she won't soon forget.

She broke the rules. Now he sets the consequences. Lera crossed the line when she disobeyed River’s orders and went over the Academy wall. Now River wants Lera gone - and Coal is just the officer to make her quit. For Coal, disciplining a wayward cadet is a matter of routine - but he may be in over his head with this fiery student. Leralynn is far stronger than she looks, and with her eerily familiar chocolate eyes and maddening curves, she’s bringing demons to the surface...demons that Coal thought long buried.

H is a boxer past his prime. Haunted by the memory of the fight that should have made him great, he is chasing his dream through the seedier side of the London boxing circuit, losing fights against his untalented opponents, his wife and, ultimately, himself. When a gunfight at an illegal gambling shebeen drags him down into a multicultural underworld of violence and extortion, H finds himself in debt to the sinister sociopath, White Alan.

No stranger to fear since meeting the unhuman Inspector Hobbes, Andy Caplet fears getting fired from his reporting job (again). His main concern, though, is a shady property developer who has designs on Sorenchester Common, and more annoyingly on his wife. Perhaps a trip to the mountains will help him relax, but this proves even more perilous with foul weather, inedible food, brigands, and a terrifying cruise. Fortunately, mountain leopards, Yetis and Flossy, the yak, take a shine to Andy.

The self-appointed saviour of Lagos' sex workers, Amaka may have bitten off more than she can chew this time as she finds herself embroiled in a political scandal. When a plane crash kills the state gubernatorial candidate, the party picks a replacement who is assured of winning the election: Chief Ojo. But Amaka knows the skeletons that lurk in Chief Ojo's closet, including what took place at the Harem, the secret sex club on the outskirts of Lagos that he frequents.

Dr Cat Lupo aches for another child despite the psychosis which marked her first pregnancy. So when Ruby Winter, a small girl in need of help, arrives in the middle of the night, it seems like fate. But as the events behind Ruby's arrival emerge - her mother's death, her connection to Cat - Cat questions whether her decision to help Ruby has put her own daughter at risk.

There's nothing so terrifying as money.... Two friends, Alex Glass and Oliver Peterkinney, look for work and for escape from their lives spent growing up on Glasgow's most desperate fringes. Soon they will become involved in one of the city's darkest and most dangerous trades. But while one rises quickly up the ranks, the other will fall prey to the industry's addictive lifestyle and ever-spiralling debts.

Yesterday John Fontanelli was just a pizza delivery guy in New York City. One day later, he's the richest man in the world. One trillion dollars - one million times one million - $1,000,000,000,000: more money than anyone could imagine. For generations the Vacchis, an old Italian family of lawyers and asset managers, had supervised the fortune as it grew over five hundred years, until one particular date that the benefactor had stipulated in his will.

Seth Morgan’s frenzied, addictive walk on the wild side of 1980s San Francisco. When strip-joint barker Joe Speaker unwittingly steals a 69-carat blue diamond, he becomes enmeshed in a blackmail-and-murder conspiracy that begins with the savage slaying of high-priced call girl Gloria Monday. Suddenly Joe’s a wanted man. Hunted by a murderous pimp known as Baby Jewels Moses and a relentless homicide cop named Tarzon, Joe ends up taking the rap and getting sentenced to three years.