В 1986 году на каждого жителя Белокаменной приходилось по 0,07 автомобиля. Специалистами было заявлено, что если количество личного транспорта превысит 170 автомобилей на 1000 москвичей, то в городе наступит коллапс. Сейчас в Москве на 1000 человек 250 машин. Коллапс давно торжествует, причем его тоже заклинило в какой-то безнадежной мертвой точке. Но в один прекрасный день эта точка была сбита бампером «Porsche Cayenne» стоимостью в несколько миллионов. И по принципу домино все поехало – как, собственно, и мозги тех, кто выезжает по утрам на МКАД, чтобы по собственному желанию оказаться в круге первом… Этот роман про Дорогу длиною в сто девять километров, не имеющую начала и конца, где смерть – привычное дело, а ложь, предательство и жестокость выходят за рамки человеческого понимания.

A small-town sheriff investigates a bizarre disappearance.

Nobody could blame Charley Crompton for wanting to kill his wife. For years she’s made his life hell, but poor old Charley has always been too meek to stand up for himself. One night they have a terrible fight, loud enough for Mrs. Williams next door to hear every word, and the argument is followed by eerie silence. The next thing Mrs. Williams knows, Charley is digging up the peach tree in his backyard and burying it again. When Mrs. Crompton doesn’t reappear, Mrs. Williams has only one thought on her mind: Mrs. Crompton has been murdered.

When the local sheriff knocks on the Cromptons’ door, Charley answers holding a bloody ax. As the circumstantial evidence piles up, the police are forced to decide: Is Charley Crompton a cold-blooded killer? Or has he simply lost his mind?

“Moonlight Gardener” was awarded the Edgar for Best Short Story in 1972.

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.

While best known for his twenty-four novels, Jeffery Deaver is also a short story master — he is a three-time recipient of the Ellery Queen Reader’s Award for Best Short Story, and he won the Short Story Dagger from the Crime Writers Association for a piece that appeared in his first short story collection, Twisted. The New York Times said of that book: “A mystery hit for those who like their intrigue short and sweet... [The stories] feature tight, bare-bones plotting and the sneaky tricks that Mr. Deaver’s title promises.” The sneaky tricks are here in spades, and Deaver even gives his fans a new Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs story.Deaver is back with sixteen stories in the tradition of O. Henry and Edgar Allan Poe. His subjects range from a Westchester commuter to a brilliant Victorian England caper. With these intricately plotted, bone-chilling stories, Jeffery Deaver is at the top of his crime-writing game.

Collins provides a vivid portrait of college-town life in the Vietnam years as Nolan does a favor for an old-time Mafia friend and tries to find out how his daughter was killed. Was it really a suicide like the police say? Or was she involved somehow in the circle of drugs that was so pervasive in the college scene? Nolan risks his life investigating a Mafia family's involvement in the girl's death to help out his old pal.

There’s a price no man should pay ex-con Quinn learned — even to rub out a... deathhouse dolly.

Nero Wolfe, the brilliant orchid-growing gourmet detective, and his inimitable confidential assistant, Archie Goodwin, are America’s most beloved detection team. Now they are back in a splendid new murder mystery that takes up where Rex Stout left off. In the perfect Stout tradition, author Robert Goldsborough has ingeniously rendered every detail of character and place with such uncanny accuracy that fans will savor every page to its surprising and immensely satisfying conclusion.

Threatening notes have been sent to Milan Stevens, celebrated conductor of the New York Symphony. His niece, Maria, fears for her uncle’s life and travels to the Thirty-fifth Street brownstone of Nero Wolfe. Archie can barely conceal his surprise when Wolfe agrees to investigate — Archie has just spent two spectacularly unsuccessful years trying to pry his employer out of retirement. But Wolfe has his own reasons for taking the case, reasons that have nothing to do with helping a pretty young woman in distress. For while the world knows Milan Stevens as a brilliant conductor, Wolfe knows him as Milos Stefanovic, the brave freedom fighter who saved Wolfe’s life many years ago. It is a debt that must be paid.

But Maria has come to the big detective too late. Milan Stevens is soon found dead, and Maria’s musician boyfriend, Gerald, is in police custody. Despite Maria’s cries that Gerald could not have possibly committed such a bloody act, there are plenty of witnesses who overheard Stevens screaming at Gerald that marrying his niece was out of the question. To make matters worse, Gerald also happened to be the only person seen entering Stevens’s apartment on the night when the final curtain was pulled on his brilliant life.

The juicy public scandal of it all enthralls the city, which is anxious for the next development and the climax of the case. With precious little to go on, and not sold on Gerald’s guilt, Wolfe and Archie begin compiling a list of suspects, discovering very soon that the problem isn’t where to start — it s where to stop. But when the scanty clues finally arrange themselves like notes on a score, Wolfe recognizes a dark melody that only a talented murderer could perform.

Who’d ever think that things would reach such a pass in Miami that Mike Shayne would come to the rescue of his arch-enemy, Peter Painter?

Well, that’s the situation in the Redhead’s 40th case. The dapper chief of detectives of Miami Beach plays things just a little too close to his chest this time, concealing vital information that might clear a convicted murderer until the very last moment before his execution to cash in on the publicity value; and then getting himself kidnapped by a ruthless gang of killers who are determined to keep him out of circulation until an innocent man is electrocuted.

Mike Shayne really doesn’t care whether Peter Painter comes out of it alive or not — though he does realize that life would lose some of its savor if there were no Peter Painter for him to needle. But he is concerned about a miscarriage of justice... egged on by the lovely and willing wife of the accused man, and the lovely and not-unwilling widow of the victim.

Ironically enough, while all the clues point to Shayne as Painter’s probable kidnapper and while all the detectives of Miami and Miami Beach are combing the twin cities for the rangy Redhead, he is engaged in an electrifying struggle against time to locate Painter and save him despite himself.

It takes a bomb thrown into the hospital room of a paralyzed man (occupied by Shayne) and the deliberate sinking of a luxury cruiser in the waters of Biscayne Bay (with Painter trapped below decks) to bring this fast-paced story to an exciting and unpredictable climax.

This country’s toughest private eye, and Miami’s most-publicized citizen has never been in a tighter spot or fought his way through against greater odds.

If you watch the Redhead’s synthetic adventures on NBC TV every Friday night, you’ll enjoy reading this to discover what the original stories are really like.

Jack Dwyer, ex-cop turned amateur actor, is delighted when his agent lands him a role in a local production of Long Day’s Journey Into Night. The real drama starts, however, when Michael Reeves — the play’s angry, bullying director — is found murdered, and Dwyer’s friend Stephen Wade — a sweet has-been of an actor — is charged with the crime.

Dwyer knows that Wade has been set up. But who did it? And why?

Was it David Ashton, an apparent fortune-seeker and heir to the Bridges Theater by marriage; or Richard Keech, the handsome, pushy young actor who shared the woman whom the dead man loved? Or could it have been Anne Stewart — the aging actress who carries a secret as dark as that of the character she plays? And what of Lenora Bridges — the matriarch of the theatrical family, who never comes out of her room in the building high above the stage?

Sure, all the world’s stage but, for Dwyer, it’s not that simple because a real man’s life is on the line. In order to save him, Dwyer’s going to have to discover what’s really going on behind the scenes at the most bizarre, mysterious, complex theater company west of Times Square.