The woman screamed as he touched her...“Good God, you’re not Ralph.”Of course, he wasn’t Ralph. He was private eye Mike Shayne, trying to catch a little sleep in his own apartment-until a gorgeous doll slipped through the door, made herself delightfully at home, and then crawled into bed with him.Who was she? How had she known the layout of Shayne’s apartment in the dark? How had she gotten a key? And who, of all people, was Ralph?Shayne got the answer to the last question in a hurry. Ralph was the woman’s husband. He was in the apartment directly overhead — and he was dead...It was murder, and sleepy or not, Shayne was in up to his neck...

A Jack Reacher Novel – #23

Jack Reacher plans to follow the autumn sun on an epic road trip across America, from Maine to California. He doesn’t get far. On a country road deep in the New England woods, he sees a sign to a place he has never been – the town where his father was born. He thinks, what’s one extra day? He takes the detour.

At the very same moment, close by, a car breaks down. Two young Canadians are trying to get to New York City to sell a treasure. They’re stranded at a lonely motel in the middle of nowhere. It’s a strange place … but it’s all there is.

The next morning in the city clerk’s office, Reacher asks about the old family home. He’s told no one named Reacher ever lived in that town. He knows his father never went back. Now he wonders, was he ever there in the first place?

So begins another nail-biting, adrenaline fuelled adventure for Reacher. The present can be tense, but the past can be worse. That’s for damn sure.

**Family secrets come back to haunt Jack Reacher in this electrifying thriller from #1 *New York Times* bestselling author Lee Child, "a superb craftsman of suspense" ( *Entertainment Weekly* ).**

Jack Reacher hits the pavement and sticks out his thumb. He plans to follow the sun on an epic trip across America, from Maine to California. He doesn't get far. On a country road deep in the New England woods, he sees a sign to a place he has never been: the town where his father was born. He thinks, *What's one extra day?* He takes the detour.

At the same moment, in the same isolated area, a car breaks down. Two young Canadians had been on their way to New York City to sell a treasure. Now they're stranded at a lonely motel in the middle of nowhere. The owners seem almost too friendly. It's a strange place, but it's all there is.

The next morning, in the city clerk's office, Reacher asks about the old family home. He's told no one named Reacher ever lived in...

Now Robert B. Parker, author of the Spenser detective novels and foremost interpreter of the Chandler tradition, embarks once again into Chandler territory with an all-new sequel to the 1939 classic The Big Sleep. Set in the sun-drenched streets and on the lush hillsides of Los Angeles, Perchance to Dream takes private eye Philip Marlowe deeper than ever into labyrinths of crime, duplicity, and murder.

After the death of General Guy Sternwood, his daughter Vivian sends her psychotic sister, Carmen, to a sanatorium. Carmen’s sudden disappearance from the hospital leads Vivian to turn in desperation to Eddie Mars, a shady underworld club owner. Concerned for what is happening to the family, the Sternwoods’ butler asks Marlowe to find Carmen and fend off Eddie Mars once again.

Through it all, Marlowe presses for the truth, a tough, shop-soiled Galahad. In Perchance to Dream, Parker adds a major new work to the Philip Marlowe canon — a novel of high suspense, action, and pure entertainment.

A Jack Reacher Novel – #7

Amazon.com Review

Jack Reacher, the taciturn ex-MP whose adventures in Lee Child's six previous solidly plotted, expertly paced thrillers have won a devoted fan base, returns in this explosive tale of an undercover operation set up by the FBI to rescue an agent investigating Zachary Beck, a reclusive tycoon believed to be a kingpin in the drug trade. The novel begins with a bang as Reacher rescues Beck's son from a staged kidnapping in order to get close to his father – and trace the connection between Beck and Quinn, a former army intelligence officer who tried to sell blueprints of a secret weapon to Iraq but was murdered before he could pull it off. Or so Reacher thinks, until he spots Quinn in the crowd at a concert in Boston. As usual, Child ratchets up the tension and keeps the reader in suspense until the last page, although his enigmatic hero hardly ever seems to break a sweat. In the tough guy tradition, Reacher and his creator are overdue for a breakout, and this muscular, well-written mystery might be the one.

From Publishers Weekly

The promo copy on the ARC of Child's new thriller proclaims, "We dare to make this claim: Lee Child is the best thriller writer you're probably not reading yet." Hopefully the "six-figure" marketing campaign promised by Child's new publisher will make that statement obsolete, because readers will be hard-pressed to find a more engaging thriller this spring season. Child is a master of storytelling skills, not least the plot twist, and the opening chapter of this novel spins a doozy, as a high-octane, extremely violent action sequence sees Child hero Jack Reacher rescue a young man, 20-year-old Richard Beck, from an attempted kidnapping before the rug is pulled out from under the reader with the chapter's last line. The rest of the novel centers on the Beck family's isolated, heavily guarded estate on the Maine coast where Reacher takes Richard. Richard's father is suspected by Feds of being a major drug dealer and the kidnapper of another Fed, and also seems to have ties to a fiend who killed Reacher's lady 10 years before, someone Reacher thought he'd killed in turn, in a vengeance slaying. Tension runs high, then extremely high, as Reacher, ingratiating himself with the dealer and hired on as a bodyguard, pokes around the estate, looking for the kidnapped Fed and evading and/or disposing of in-house bad guys as they begin to suspect he's not who he seems. But then little in Child's novels is as it at first seems, and numerous further plot twists spark the story line. What makes the novel really zing, though, is Reacher's narration – a unique mix of the brainy and the brutal, of strategic thinking and explosive action, moral rumination and ruthless force, marking him as one of the most memorable heroes in contemporary thrillerdom. Any thriller fan who has yet to read Lee Child should start now.

Нехорошие люди напали на правильных пацанов. Эпизоды этой жуткой истории, подтверждающей славу нашего городка как криминальной столицы России, уже освещались в печати и на телевидении. Но черпавшие информацию в правоохранительных органах журналисты не смогли отобразить реальную картину произошедшего, а уголовные дела остались нераскрытыми, попав в разряд так называемых «глухарей».Полную версию и подноготную кровавой бандитской войны автору рассказал участник событий известный авторитет Алек Капонов, о чем и изложено в данном романе, являющимся продолжением книги «Лохотрон для братвы».

When the Saint and Patricia spot a country house on fire they rush to help, but are too late to rescue one man trapped inside. The dead man's door was locked, and Simon concludes there's a murder to be answered for, despite the coroner ruling otherwise. He launches his own investigation — getting engaged along the way — and soon gets caught up with generals, financiers, and an assassination plot designed to start a war.

Here, collected for the first time, are the earliest short stories bylined Mickey Spillane... all written between 1941 and 1942.

Enter a world of seedy nightclubs, dangerous, dimly-lit street and cool, wisecracking dicks pitting themselves against armies of ruthless gangsters. This is pulp fiction, a genre spawned amid the disillusionment of post-World War I America — and now reaching new heights of popularity.

Writers like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett turned that unique blend of rapid-fire action, violence and cynical humour into an art form that is being recreated by a fresh wave of young writers whose stories have all the drama and atmosphere of their predecessors’.

This page-turning collection, brought together by a true aficionado of the hardboiled story, includes, of course, Chandler and Hammett, but also Mickey Spillane, Ross MacDonald, Ed McBain and James Hadley Chase from the vintage years and from the current generation James Ellroy, Elmore Leonard and Quentin Tarantino, to name just a few of the twenty great writers featured here. Even Stephen King, doyen of the world of horror, has turned his hand to pulp fiction and is represented in this book.

The world of the hard-drinking, fast-action, apparently indestructible private eye, personified by Chandler’s creation, Philip Marlowe, was never more vibrant. It’s all here, and more, in a book that no fan of the genre can afford to miss.

Where does a hit man draw the line?

With a controversial presidential election just weeks away, Quarry is hired to carry out a rare political assignment: kill the Reverend Raymond Wesley Lloyd, a passionate civil rights crusader and campaigner for the underdog candidate. But when a hate group out of Ferguson, Missouri, turns out to be gunning for the same target, Quarry starts to wonder just who it is he’s working for.

The longest-running series from Max Allan Collins, author of Road to Perdition, the Quarry novels tell the story of a paid assassin with a rebellious streak and an unlikely taste for justice. Once a Marine sniper, Quarry found a new home stateside with a group of contract killers. But some men aren’t made for taking orders — and when Quarry strikes off on his own, God help the man on the other side of his nine-millimeter.

In these nine mysteries the criminal backdrops vary, but each requires the touch of Simon Templar, The Saint. Templar's reputation tends to precede him. A double-cross episode triggers his latest round of specialist crime-prevention, and in the ensuing tour of Americas' iniquity, he encounters racketeering, roulette and banditry.

Murder. Multiplied by Seven... equals supercharged action and breath-taking suspense in this carnivol of crime from the blood-dipped pen of Paul Cain, creator of close-lipped men whose rods did all their talking, and sultry women whose eyes were full of promises.A woman’s lips, a red-hot ruby necklace, and danger unlimited give us a scarlet motif for PIGEON BLOOD In PARLOR TRICK, there is conjured up a master slaying to prove to you that the knife is quicker than the eye, while a swarm of ruthless killers who settle their arguments with dynamite furnish the core for the blood-chilling tale, PINEAPPLE. These are but a few of the action-packed stories you will find between these covers.Paul Cain is a connoisseur of crime who writes in the best homicidal tradition of Dashiel Hammett and Raymond Chandler. This is one collection of spine-tingling murder yarns that you won’t read with your back to the door.

SHIELD FOR MURDER is a hard-hitting story about a rogue cop who ran with the hare while he hunted with the hounds — and so caught himself in the squeeze between the underworld and the law. Barney Nolan had a long record with the force. Some of it was good — but he was a killer who shot too fast and too straight. He fell in love with a beautiful singer and couldn’t quite win her. He slugged an unoffending bookie for the big money he carried — only to find it was hot and couldn’t be spent. He fought his way out of a deadly trap and escaped, only to learn that he was taking the trap with him as he fled.SHIELD FOR MURDER is the compelling story of a man falling into his own pit, of his attempt to escape, and his final plunge... It’s a spine-chilling story, with the police force of a great city matching wits with the brutish courage and cunning of one of themselves who was using his shield for murder.

The futuristic hardboiled noir that Lauren Beukes calls “sharp as a paper-cut” about a garbage man turned kill-for-hire.Spademan used to be a garbage man. That was before the dirty bomb hit Times Square, before his wife was killed, and before the city became a blown-out shell of its former self.Now he’s a hitman.In a near-future New York City split between those who are wealthy enough to “tap in” to a sophisticated virtual reality, and those who are left to fend for themselves in the ravaged streets, Spademan chose the streets. His new job is not that different from his old one: waste disposal is waste disposal. He doesn’t ask questions, he works quickly, and he’s handy with a box cutter. But when his latest client hires him to kill the daughter of a powerful evangelist, his unadorned life is upended: his mark has a shocking secret and his client has a sordid agenda far beyond a simple kill. Spademan must navigate between these two worlds—the wasteland reality and the slick fantasy—to finish his job, clear his conscience, and make sure he’s not the one who winds up in the ground.Adam Sternbergh has written a dynamite debut: gritty, violent, funny, riveting, tender, and brilliant.

Lew Archer #17In Sleeping Beauty, Lew Archer finds himself the confidant of a wealthy, violent family with a load of trouble on their hands – including an oil spill, a missing girl, a lethal dose of Nembutal, a six-figure ransom, and a stranger afloat, face down, off a private beach. Here is Ross Macdonald's masterful tale of buried memories, the consequences of arrogance, and the anguished relations between parents and their children. Riveting, gritty, tautly written, Sleeping Beauty is crime fiction at its best.If any writer can be said to have inherited the mantle of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, it is Ross Macdonald. Between the late 1940s and his death in 1983, he gave the American crime novel a psychological depth and moral complexity that his pre-decessors had only hinted at. And in the character of Lew Archer, Macdonald redefined the private eye as a roving conscience who walks the treacherous frontier between criminal guilt and human sin.

A wonderfully dark, pitch-perfect noir prequel to The Maltese Falcon, featuring Dashiell Hammett’s beloved detective, Sam Spade.It’s 1921 — seven years before Sam Spade will solve the famous case of the Maltese Falcon. He’s just set up his own agency in San Francisco and he gets off to a quick start, working cases (he doesn’t do domestic) and hiring a bright young secretary named Effie Perrine. When he’s hired by a prominent San Francisco banker to find his missing son, Spade gets the break he’s been looking for. He spends the next few years dealing with booze runners, waterfront thugs, banking swindlers, gold smugglers, and bumbling cops. He brings in Miles Archer as a partner to help bolster the agency, though it was Archer who stole his girl while he was fighting in World War I. All along, Spade will tangle with an enigmatic villain who holds a long-standing grudge against Spade. And, of course, he’ll fall in love — though it won’t turn out for the best. It never does with dames.

I swung the wet, flat money belt, enjoying the slap of it against my leg.

I had gone through a lot to get that belt. I had consorted with midgets and freaks. I had been lied to, framed, been offered the bribery of a beautiful but depraved normal-sized woman’s body.

I had also been beaten senseless twice, another time left for dead, locked in the trunk of an abandoned car.

And now I was home, free.

“It’s a long story,” I said. I thought about it for a moment. “It began with a beautiful little doll who stands three feet tall. Unhappily she had an ache inside her almost as big as she imagined the rest of us to be.”

Ed Jenkins, dodging a murder rap, finds time to help another crook who is trying to go straight.