Crime and mystery: hard-boiled crime, noir fiction

Code of the Hills

Chris Offutt

An explosive return to the Kentucky hills, Code of the Hills is a novel of family and what we’re willing to do to protect and avenge the ones we love.

Viper’s Dream

Jake Lamar

Viper’s Dream is a hard-boiled crime novel set in the jazz world of Harlem between 1936 and 1961. The protagonist is Clyde ‘The Viper’ Morton, one of the most respected and feared Black gangsters in America. The story combines elements of the epic Godfather films and the Harlem detective novels of Chester Himes.

Robert B. Parker’s Fallout

Mike Lupica

When two seemingly unconnected mysterious deaths occur on his watch, police chief Jesse Stone must pull out all the stops to unravel the truth and stop a killer from striking again….

Shoot the Moonlight Out : Longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger 2023

William Boyle

An explosive crime drama, Shoot the Moonlight Out evokes a mystical Brooklyn where the sidewalks are cracked, where Virgin Mary statues tilt in fenced front yards, and where smudges of moonlight reflect in puddles even on the blackest nights….

The Bones of Wolfe

James Carlos Blake

In the newest Wolfe-family adventure from James Carlos Blake, Rudy and Frank Wolfe are engaging in routine miscellaneous business – some legitimate and some less so – for their family when they stumble upon a stash of high-quality pornographic films in a raid. The plot thickens when their Aunt Catalina, the family matriarch aged 115,…

Law and Order

G F Newman

A seminal series about the British criminal justice system, examining endemic corruption from the perspectives of the police, the criminal and the solicitor. The novels in this omnibus edition became the basis of the groundbreaking and controversial television series Law & Order. In the wake of a bungled armed…

Killer Christmas

Leigh Russell

It’s Christmas Eve but not all is merry and bright for Detective Geraldine Steel. With her family abroad and her friends booked up, she finds herself alone in York for the holidays. But when a man collapses at the local fair, it’s clear that this isn’t a case of winter flu. There’s a killer in the crowds. Can Geraldine find the culprit…

A Death in Sarajevo

Ausma Zehanat Khan

Detectives Esa Khattak and Rachel Getty are asked to help unlock the secrets of a woman killed during the Bosnian war in this captivating story from acclaimed author Ausma Zehanat Khan. An old friend from Esa’s past has reappeared in his life, reaching out to ask Esa for help solving a mystery about the woman he once loved. But before…

Robert B. Parker’s Debt to Pay

Reed Farrel Coleman

All is quiet in Paradise, except for a spate of innocuous vandalism. Good thing, too, because Jesse Stone is preoccupied with the women in his life, both past and present. As his ex-wife, Jenn, is about to marry a Dallas real-estate tycoon, Jesse isn’t too sure his relationship with former FBI agent Diana Evans is built to last. But…

Sad Bastard

Hugo Hamilton

Garda Pat Coyne – aka ‘Mr Suicide’ is back. Injured in the line of duty, he is now out of work with too much time on his hands. Living alone, he’s become more obsessive and volatile, developing a fetish for women’s knickers. When a body washes up on the docks, the prime suspect is none other than the former Garda’s son, Jimmy. Like…

Headbanger

Hugo Hamilton

Pat Coyne is a Dublin policeman who is passionately devoted to sorting out the world and its problems. For Coyne, such things as cars, crime, pollution and golf are all ominous signs of a disintegrating society. The world is committing suicide, with MTV droning in the background. Coyne’s principal mission is to deal with crime,…

Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins

Reed Farrel Coleman

In the wake of a huge storm, three bodies are discovered in the rubble of an abandoned factory building in an industrial part of Paradise known as The Swap. One body, a man’s, wrapped in a blue tarp, is only hours old. But found within feet of that body are the skeletal remains of two teenage girls who had gone missing during a Fourth…