Dashiell Hammett and William Vollmann are just two treats in this stellar sequel to the smash-hit original volume of San Francisco Noir, which captures the dark mythology of a world-class locale.

Abducted by a shadowy figure he never sees, chloroformed and taken to a remote mountain cabin, the Nameless Detective is told by that figure before he is deserted, that the mission is one of revenge. Nameless has destroyed his mysterious abductor’s life and now his life in turn will be destroyed.Chained with a limited supply of food and water and just enough room in the shackles to allow him to feed himself, Nameless knows that the abductor must be a component of one of his old cases… someone who he has tracked and caught for the police, someone who has served prison time and, released, wants Nameless to suffer in turn. But the detective cannot deduce who that abductor may be and, as his ordeal begins, he understands that his efforts must be more directed toward survival and escape; if he does not find a way free of the shackles he will die. Freeing himself of the shackles will involve more than an act of physical escape; Nameless must come to understand the entirety of his own life and the nature of a profession which has caused him and those he loves risk at the highest level.Through the Walpurgisnacht of that confinement and escape, Nameless does indeed come to understand himself and in a shocking, complex, surprising but inevitable ending, Nameless comes to understand as well the nature of entrapment and purgation, and how a rite of passage must crucially take place internally as well as externally. The denouement of the novel is resonant and shattering: it is unforgettable.

Shaken after a hair’s-breadth escape from death, Nameless has made changes in his professional life, but he’s not put himself out to pasture. Again he enters San Francisco’s shadowy underworld, this time in a search for the identity of a gentle, mentally disturbed homeless man who has been found dead in an alley doorway. Clues are few, but eventually they bring the Nameless Detective to the small California town that drove the nameless victim tragically to murder and madness.

Two missing bodies and two separate investigations take Carpenter and Quincannon from the heights above San Francisco Bay to the depths of Chinatown’s opium dens.For John Quincannon, this is a first: searching a Chinatown opium den for his client’s husband, missing in the middle of a brewing tong war set to ignite over the stolen corpse of Bing Ah Kee.Meanwhile, his partner, Sabina Carpenter, unsure of the dark secrets her suitor might be concealing, searches for the corpse of a millionaire, stolen from a sealed family crypt and currently being held for ransom.With the threat of a tong war hanging over the city (a war perhaps being spurred on by corrupt officials), Carpenter and Quincannon have no time to lose in solving their cases. Is there a connection between the two body snatchers? Or is simple greed the answer to this one?And why is the enigmatic Englishman who calls himself Sherlock Holmes watching so carefully from the shadows?

Before he created Perry Mason, Erle Stanley Gardner (1889–1970) was one of the most popular writers for the mystery and adventure pulp magazines, with their sensational covers, two-fisted heroes, and non-stop action.Among his toughest characters was Sidney Zoom, wealthy yacht-owner who prowls at night to help the downtrodden in the days of the Great Depression. “The weak and the helpless found in him a haven of refuge, a gigantic wall of strength. The oppressor found in him a grim enemy, tireless uncompromising, letting no man-made law stand between him and his prey.” “His soul craved combat,” Gardner writes, “as the soul of many men craves strong drink.”The Casebook of Sidney Zoom is the first book-collection of the Zoom stories, and they show Gardner’s pulp style at it hard-hitting best.

Jordan Wise is a mild-mannered accountant with a large San Francisco engineering firm in the late 1970s. By his own admission, the first thirty-four years of his life were dull, empty. But that all changes when he meets and falls in love with Annalise Bonner, an ambitious young woman who craves excitement, a life on the edge. With her as the catalyst, Wise concocts and executes a meticulous plan to steal more than half a million dollars from his firm. They escape to the Virgin Islands, but their plans to live a life of quiet luxury are beset by unexpected pitfalls -- and Wise is forced to carry out two more ingenious schemes as a result. All three of his crimes are perfect -- or are they? THE CRIMES OF JORDAN WISE is a classic tale of love, greed, betrayal, and violence told with Bill Pronzini's characteristic twists and turns and his special brand of suspense. It is also a powerful psychological examination of a man, a woman, and the wages of sin.

Crippen & Landru is proud to publish a collection of never previously reprinted stories from pulps, slicks and digests by Erle Stanley Gardner (1889–1970) the great creator of Perry Mason. Here we meet such Gardner characters as Snowy Shane, an unorthodox P.I.; Slicker Williams, an ex-convict who uses the tricks of crookery to rescue a damsel in distress; Major Copely Brane, a freelance diplomat; George Brokay, wealthy man-about-town, who becomes a gentleman burglar — with unanticipated results; and others who show Gardner’s mastery of unusual situations, lighting-paced prose, and ingenious gimmicks and plot twists.

For the firm of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, stopping extortionists is not only grand, but excitingly lucrative.A pleasant afternoon’s bicycling through Golden Gate Park with a friend ends with the revelation of threatening letters, followed by a gunshot in a mansion garden, Sabina Carpenter knows this is a case that demands her immediate and undivided attention.The questions her partner John Quincannon has to unravel are not difficult: Wrixton, a wealthy banker, has met his extortionist’s first demand, but the order to pay another five thousand dollars is too much to face. The banker’s real problem is something he doesn’t want to reveal. That’s was fine with the detective — all he needs to know is that some private letters were involved and Wrixton absolutely needed them back. As with so many of San Francisco’s elite, the bedroom doors never seemed to stay shut.Far more difficult is the matter of the dead courier, murdered most foully in a locked room within a locked room, creating a trail that will take John Quincannon through most of San Francisco’s less savory places and end with a riverboat trip that is anything but a relaxing cruise.

A series of seemingly random murders along a fifty-mile stretch of the rugged northern California coast, committed by an unknown dubbed by the media the Coastline Killer. A young couple with marital problems, Shelby and Jay Macklin, who decide to spend the week between Christmas and New Year's at a friend's remote coastal cottage. Two couples in a neighboring home whose relationships are thick with festering menace. A fierce winter storm that leads to a night of unrelenting terror. These are the main ingredients in Bill Pronzini's chilling and twist-filled tale about the hidden nature of crime and its motives.

Anticipating a peaceful and relaxing year in which to write and illustrate a book, college professor Jan Ryerson and his artist wife Alix move to the isolated Cape Despair Lighthouse on a desolate stretch of Oregon coast. But their well-laid plans are twisted awry shortly after their arrival. Jan experiences several terrifying blackouts, but conceals them from his wife, fearing that she will leave him if she knows that he will soon be blind. The villagers, suspicious of the couple from the start, become increasingly hostile and resentful. And when the murdered body of a young woman is discovered, they are quick to blame the stranger in town…“…one of America’s Fines writers of any genre. Muller is must reading for all mystery fans.”— Cleveland Plain Dealer“Pronzini makes people and events so real that you're living those explosive days of terror.”— Robert Ludlum“Pronzini is the master of the shivery, spine-tingling it-could-happen suspense story.”—Publishers Weekly

An anthology of storiesA new anthology of twenty-nine short stories features an array of baffling locked-room mysteries by Michael Collins, Bill Pronzini, Susanna Gregory, H. R. F. Keating, Peter Lovesey, Kate Ellis, and Lawrence Block, among others.

From the likes of Robert Randisi, Peter Crowther, and Max Rittenberg, these 30 stories of bizarre and impossible crimes will fascinate and intrigue the reader who grapples with their intricate puzzles. A man alone in an all-glass phone booth, visible on CCTV and with no one near him, is killed by an ice pick. A man sitting alone in a room is shot by a bullet fired only once – over 200 years ago. A man enters a cable-car alone, and is visible for the entire journey, only to be found dead when he reaches the bottom. A man receives mail in response to letters apparently written by him – after his death. The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries is a stunning collection of brand new and previously unpublished stories, as well as many stories from rare mystery journals appearing for the first time in book form.