Рассказ третьего выпуска сборника «Таящийся ужас».

Коллекция детективных рассказов, опубликованных в газете «Совершенно СЕКРЕТНО» с декабря 1997 года по июль 2012 года.

Коллекция детективных рассказов, опубликованных в газете «Совершенно СЕКРЕТНО» с декабря 1997 года по декабрь 2012 года включительно.

Маленький сборник фантастических рассказов, печатавшийся как 16-страничное приложение в журнале «Огонек» (1993, № 11).

Билл Пронзини. Привет — здорово, лиловая корова

How Now Purple Cow

(1969)

Уолт Лайбшер. Инопланетянский рог изобилия

Alien Cornucopia

(1959)

Эдвард Д. Хоч. Зоопарк

Zoo

(1958)

Эдвард Д. Хоч. Последний парадокс

The Last Paradox

(1958)

Хайфорд Пирс. Могущество почты

Mail Supremacy

(1975)

Аллан Э. Нурс. До полного слияния

The Compleat Consumators

(1964)

Джеймс Э. Томпсон. Принцип синхронности

Synchronicity

(1978)

Рэй Брэдбери. Чикагская бездна

To the Chicago Abyss (1963)

Перевод В. Мисюченко, В. Артемова.

Рисунки Ольги Разиной.

В третьем выпуске сборника «Таящийся ужас» представлены повести писателя Владимира Гринькова, а также рассказы английских и американских писателей.Все произведения написаны в жанре, соединяющем в себе элементы «страшного» рассказа и психологического триллера.Публикуется впервые.Для широкого круга читателей.

К частному детективу обращается вдова профессионального взломщика, убитого при ограблении магазина. Она уверена, что ее муж не имел никакого отношения к кражам, в которых его обвинили.

Given its extraordinary span, its international scope, and its variant styles and groundbreaking stylists, A Century of Great Suspense Stories is a singular achievement. A bestselling master of suspense himself Jeffery Deaver had the enviable task of selecting from the thousands of stories written over the past one hundred years those which best represented the classic form, as well as the justly celebrated authors whose ironic twists and stunning payoffs left a lasting, vivid, and unnerving impression. The result is a triumph.

In this ambitious anthology you’ll revel in the sardonic, overtly amoral plotting of Patricia Highsmith. You’ll rediscover the strangely poignant and surprising turns of Stanley Ellin, and the profoundly underrated Margaret Millar, a genius who mixed savage social satire with brooding horror. You’ll be treated to Stephen King at his chilling best. You’ll find yourself on the violent urban streets of Ross Macdonald and Mickey Spillane, and seeped in the ominous regional flavor of Sharyn McCrumb and Tony Hillerman. You’ll marvel at the cunning webs spun by Lawrence Block, Ruth Rendell, Anthony Boucher, and Sara Paretsky, all of whom defy expectations as they reinvent the genre. And you’ll understand the awesome reputations of those authors who set the standard, such as the legendary Harlan Ellison, Fredric Brown, the master of the twist ending, and James M. Cain, uncannily skilled at knowing what went on between men and women behind closed doors. (The darker the room the better.)

Delivering everything from the one-two punch of the detective story to the ingeniously precise trappings of the police procedural, from the disquieting corners of the criminal mind to sheer dread-inducing horror, A Century of Great Suspense Stories is a rich anthology of this popular literary genre, a stunning tribute to the art of storytelling, and to the men and women who have done it best.

A stunning psychological study of a man’s obsession and search for the truth, and a brilliant mystery that moves from San Francisco to a small, insular desert community in Nevada, Blue Lonesome is a masterful novel of suspense written by an author at the peak of his storytelling powers.

Jim Messenger is a CPA who hates his job, loves jazz, and can’t forget the woman he’s seen eating at the Harmony Café. She goes by the name Janet Mitchell and her only comment when he introduces himself is, “It won’t do you any good.”

When she commits suicide, Messenger has to learn why. From one slender clue he begins a search that is both a hunt for answers and a rite of passage. The name Janet Mitchell is only the first of the lies Messenger uncovers; in “historic Beulah,” Nevada, he discovers secrets coiled like rattlesnakes ready to strike and suffering chat lies like a suffocating blanket over lives put on hold.

By the time his search is over there will have been many changed lives, a horrible murder brought to light, and a quiet, little town torn apart. And all the while Jim Messenger was evolving into a genuine hero.

What are the ingredients of a hard-boiled detective story? “Savagery, style, sophistication, sleuthing, and sex,” said Ellery Queen. Often a desperate blond, a jealous husband, and, of course, a tough-but-tender P.I. the likes of Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. Perhaps Raymond Chandler summed it up best in his description of Dashiell Hammett’s style: “Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it... He put these people down on paper as they were, and he made them talk and think in the language they customarily used for these purposes.”

Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories is the largest and most comprehensive collection of its kind, with over half of the stories never published before in book form. Included are thirty-six sublimely suspenseful stories that chronicle the evolution of this quintessentially American art form, from its earliest beginnings during the golden age of the legendary pulp magazine Black Mask in the 1920s, to the arrival of the tough digest Manhunt in the 1950s, and finally leading up to present-day hard-boiled stories by such writers as James Ellroy. Here are eight decades worth of the best writing about betrayal, murder, and mayhem: from Hammett’s 1925 tour de force “The Scorched Face,” in which the disappearance of two sisters leads Hammett’s never-named detective, the Continental Op, straight into a web of sexual blackmail amidst the West Coast elite, to Ed Gorman’s 1992 “The Long Silence After,” a gripping and powerful rendezvous involving a middle class insurance executive, a Chicago streetwalker, and a loaded .38. Other delectable contributions include “Brush Fire” by James M. Cain, author of The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raymond Chandler’s “I’ll Be Waiting,” where, for once, the femme fatale is not blond but a redhead, a Ross Macdonald mystery starring Macdonald’s most famous creator, the cryptic Lew Archer, and “The Screen Test of Mike Hammer” by the one and only Mickey Spillane. The hard-boiled cult has more in common with the legendary lawmen of the Wild West than with the gentleman and lady sleuths of traditional drawing room mysteries, and this direct line of descent is on brilliant display in two of the most subtle and tautly written stories in the collection, Elmore Leonard’s “3:10 to Yuma” and John D. MacDonald’s “Nor Iron Bars.” Other contributors include Evan Hunter (better known as Ed McBain), Jim Thompson, Helen Nielsen, Margaret Maron, Andrew Vachss, Faye Kellerman, and Lawrence Block.

Compellingly and compulsively readable, Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories is a page-turner no mystery lover will want to be without. Containing many notable rarities, it celebrates a genre that has profoundly shaped not only American literature and film, but how we see our heroes and ourselves.

Jack Hollis had finally steeled himself for what had to be done: When a man is threatening your daughter and grandson, when reason can’t stop it, when restraining orders don’t work and the police can’t help, then a father’s choices are limited. David Rakubian was vicious, abusive, powerful, deadly — and Angela’s husband. Everyone Hollis knew, the members of his family, his friends, all wanted to help save Angela. But this was something Jack had to do himself: Failure would be costly; success just as risky. Now he waited across the road from Rakubian’s house, hoping he’d get home quickly, before he lost his nerve.

But Rakubian never got there, and the distraught father came up with another plan, something foolproof. Promising Rakubian a meeting with Angela so they could discuss their problems, he arranged for them to be somewhere isolated, somewhere a body could be easily disposed of, somewhere that would offer a perfect alibi.

But Rakubian never got there, either. And when Hollis finally tracks him down, he discovers that someone may have done his job for him. Now he doesn’t know who to protect: There are too many people who’d wanted to help Angela, too many suspects (including himself); so many people and no one saying a word.

One of the true masters of the short story, Bill Pronzini delights in thrilling, mystifying, amusing and terrifying his readers as the spirit moves him. In this collection, you’ll find virtually every kind of crime story there is. There’s stolen gold on a passenger ship for “Fergus O’Hara, Detective” and his wife, Hattie, to investigate, and untraceable money to tempt vice cops in “Opportunity.”

In “Chip,” a mob boss must deal with his problem son, and in “One of Those Cases,” the nameless Detective’s assignment to follow a client’s husband leads to murder. A hack paperback writer who’s never had an idea of his own has “A Craving for Originality.”

In “Quicker than the Eye,” a department store magician must help solve an impossible murder and the theft of a very valuable stamp. And when the traveling medicine wagon comes to town, an “Angel of Mercy” offers girls “in trouble” a sympathetic ear and a cure which might be worse than the disease.

A varied collection of stories by Shamus Award-winner Bill Pronzini.

Rich in character, incident, and exceptional storytelling, this collection of Oddments is the best evidence of why the Private Eye Writers of America honored Bill Pronzini with their Lifetime Achievement Award. The fourteen selections include “The Highbinders,” where 1890’s detectives Quincannon and Carpenter venture deep into Chinatown’s opium dens to solve the murder of a client. And a man gets involved in the “Wishful Thinking” of his neighbor, who has a habit of confessing to killing his wife.

Trailing suspense from the depths of the ocean to the planet Venus and on to Death Row. Pronzini rounds out the collection with a trio of twisty tales: A penchant for a harmless bar game called “Liar’s Dice” leads to danger for the narrator: an incorrigible prankster plays the ultimate joke in “The Dispatching of George Ferris,” only to find the joke is on him: and the Nameless Detective manages to turn the tables on a blackmailer in “The Big Bite.”

Jack Lennox is broke and fleeing both himself and the wrath of his ex-wife. He is traveling on an interstate bus, and when the driver finds that he is riding on an expired ticket, he is put off at Del’s Oasis, a way stop in the middle of a great southwestern desert area, Lennox has had nothing to eat in two days, so the offer of odd-job work by Al Perrins, the owner of the Oasis, is a godsend. He accepts it.

Next morning he witnesses the cold blooded murder by contract of Perrins by two well-dressed men.

Lennox manages to escape into the surrounding desert, but is seen by the assassins.

In the midst of his flight, Lennox stumbles upon Jana Hennessey, a writer of children’s books. Jana has made a mistake in her life which has destroyed all her inner peace, and she has come to the desert ostensibly to research her latest book. Lennox convinces her to give him a lift to the small nearby town of Cuenca Seco. He doesn’t know that it has become an ambush arranged by Harry Vollyer, the coldly methodical and deadly leader of the assassin team.

Lennox and Jana barely manage to survive as they run still deeper into the desert. Dehydrating heat, desolate terrain, lack of food and water — and the relentless pursuit of Vollyer and his partner — combine to make escape seem impossible. And yet, unknown to the runners, there is in Cuenca Seco a deputy sheriff, Andy Brackeen, whose former big-city training refuses to allow him to ignore various clues and hunches connected with the murder of the Oasis owner.

The novel moves inevitably toward the confrontation among the five principals in Panic! The climax is brutal, in keeping with the harsh natural elements in which it takes place. And yet it forces Jana and Lennox and Brackeen to come to terms with their own weaknesses and fears. Panic! is a story of survival, terror and individual revelation. It will be a completely satisfactory reading experience for all Pronzini fans.