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...

Цих трьох не можна назвати приємними хлопцями. Джек Вінсеннс — коп-нарцис, що час від часу зливає інформацію жовтим виданням. Бад Вайт — відморозок, якого використовують для брудної роботи і яким рухає невгамовне бажання помсти. Ед Екслі — молодий та обдарований детектив, герой війни, який насправді не зробив нічого героїчного, кар’єрист і честолюбець. Такою насправді не має бути команда супергероїв. Але після кривавої бійні в «Нічній сові» цим трьом доведеться об’єднати зусилля. Із ненавистю один до одного, але водночас бажанням відновити справедливість. Рухаючись у різних напрямках однієї справи. Шукаючи банду особливо небезпечних злочинців у найпотаємніших закутках Лос-Анджелеса ХХ...

Featuring the best from the modern masters of detective, intrigue, suspense, and mystery fiction

Freddy Otash was the man in the know and the man to know in ’50s L.A. He was a rogue cop, a sleazoid private eye, a shakedown artist, a pimp — and, most notably, the head strong-arm goon for Confidential magazine. Confidential presaged the idiot internet — and delivered the dirt, the dish, the insidious ink, and the scurrilous skank. It mauled misanthropic movie stars, sex-soiled socialites, and putzo politicians. Mattress Jack Kennedy, James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Burt Lancaster, Liz Taylor, Rock Hudson — Frantic Freddy outed them all. He was the Tattle Tyrant who held Hollywood hostage, and now he’s here to CONFESS. “I’m consumed with candor and wracked with recollection. I’m...

New Year’s Eve 1941, war has been declared and the Japanese internment is in full swing. Los Angeles is gripped by war fever and racial hatred. Sergeant Dudley Smith of the Los Angeles Police Department is now U.S. Army Captain Smith and a budding war profiteer. He’s shacked up with Claire De Haven in Baja, Mexico, and spends his time sniffing out Fifth Column elements and hunting down a missing Japanese naval attaché. Hideo Ashida is cashing LAPD paychecks and working in the crime lab, but he knows he can’t avoid internment forever. Newly arrived U.S. Navy Lieutenant Joan Conville winds up in jail accused of vehicular homicide, but Captain William H. Parker squashes the charges and puts...

The Black Dahlia is a police novel on an epic scale; a classic period piece that provides a startling conclusion to America’s most infamous unsolved murder mystery. Already hailed as a masterpiece, it establishes James Ellroy as this country’s most powerful living writer of noir fiction. On January 15, 1947, the torture-ravished body of a beautiful young woman is found in a vacant lot in Los Angeles. The victim makes headlines as the Black Dahlia, and her murder sparks the greatest manhunt in California history. Caught up in the investigation are Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard: Warrants Squad cops, friends, and adversaries in love with the same woman. But both are obsessed with the...

Los Angeles, 1950. Red crosscurrents: the Commie Scare and a string of brutal mutilation killings. Movieland leftists on a collision course with a grand jury investigating team. A young homicide detective obsessed with capturing a murderer of unparalleled viciousness — even though the price may be horrific self-revelation. Gangsters and cops and fixers and Hollywood grotesques in a noir novel of epic scope and depth. The Big Nowhere is the story of three men caught up in a massive web of ambition, perversion, and deceit. Danny Upshaw is a Sheriff’s deputy stuck with a bunch of snuffs nobody cares about; they’re his chance to make his name as a cop — and to sate his darkest curiosities. Mal...

Meet Freddy Otash: corrupt cop turned sleaze hustler, extortionist, pimp, and an actual historical figure who made the 1950s magazine “Confidential” the go-to source for the sins of the rich and famous. In his prime, Freddy raised hell, and in the pages of “Shakedown” he finds himself in purgatory — literally — waiting for a transfer. Will he make it to heaven, or is his fate trending south? Promised redemption if he confesses, Freddy writes a tell-all peopled by Hollywood greats like Liz Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, John Wayne, and Gary Cooper (to name a few), who are up to all sorts of wrong. Threesomes, foursomes, men’s room misadventures — anything goes in this licentious world.

The Shroud Shifter speaks: I clipped my self-sharpening, teflon-coated, brushed-steel axe and swung it at her neck. Her head was sheared cleanly off; blood burst from the cavity, her arms and legs twitched spastically, then her whole body crumpled to the floor. The force of my swing spun me around, and for one second my vision eclipsed the entire scene — blood spattered walls, the body shooting an arterial geyser out the neck, the heart still pumping in reflex... Martin Plunkett has struck again.

Nocturnes: Short dark riffs, the blues formalized. James Ellroy, described by the Los Angeles Times: “Developing into one of the great American writers.” Ellroy’s L.A. Quartet novels — The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, White Jazz — an epic pop history of a toxic metropolis. Hollywood Nocturnes: An alternative Ellroy universe, etched less in blood and more in elegiac neon. Dick Contino: Accordion virtuoso, lounge lizard, Red Scare scapegoat. On a greased slide in ’58 L.A.: A show biz fatality begging to happen. Dick Contino’s Blues: Half nocturne, half torch song. A blast back to tailfins, disease-free promiscuity, sex killers, Commie-bashing, publicity kidnaps, and...