Introduction: The Sins of the Fathers (Matthew Scudder #1) The hooker was young, pretty...and dead, butchered in a Greenwich village apartment. The prime suspect, a minister's son, was also dead, the victim of a jailhouse suicide. The case is closed, as far as the NYPD is concerned. Now the murdered prostitute's father wants it opened again-and that's where Matthew Scudder comes in. But this assignment carries the unmistakable stench of sleaze and perversion, luring ex-cop-turned-investigator SView Details>

Introduction: In the era before he created moody private investigator Matthew Scudder, burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, sleepless spy Evan Tanner, and the amiable hit man Keller&mdashand years before his first Edgar Award&mdasha young writer named Lawrence Block submitted a story titled "You Can't Lose" to Manhunt magazine. It was published, and the rest is history. One Night Stands and Lost Weekends is a sterling collection of short crime fiction and suspense novelettes penned between 1958 and 1962 by aView Details>

Introduction: A beautiful young woman called Marilyn picks up a stranger in a bar and takes him home to her Manhattan apartment. The next morning her housekeeper discovers Marilyn's body. Marilyn's life and death have far-reaching effects on others, even people she has never met: a charismatic former police commissioner on the verge of a breakdown a struggling writer a folk art dealer plumbing the depths of her own fierce sexuality a lawyer who prefers murder trials because there's one witness fewer.View Details>

Introduction: Hit Me (Keller #5) A man named Nicholas Edwards lives in New Orleans renovating houses, doing honest work and making decent money at it. Between his family and his stamp collection, all his spare time is happily accounted for. Sometimes it's hard to remember that he used to kill people for a living. But when the nation's economy tanks, taking the construction business with it, all it takes is one phone call to drag him back into the game. It may say Nicholas Edwards on his driver'View Details>

Introduction: Hit and Run (Keller #4) Keller's a hit man. For years now he's had places to go and people to kill. But enough is enough. He's got money in the bank and just one last job standing between him and retirement. So he carries it out with his usual professionalism, and he heads home, and guess what? One more job. Paid in advance, so what's he going to do? Give the money back?In Des Moines, Keller stalks his designated target and waits for the client to give him the go-ahead. And oneView Details>

Introduction: Hit Parade (Keller #3) Keller is friendly. Industrious. A bit lonely, sometimes. If it wasn't for the fact that he kills people for a living, he'd be just your average Joe. The inconvenient wife, the troublesome sports star, the greedy business partner, the vicious dog, he'll take care of them all, quietly and efficiently. If the price is right. Like the rest of us, Keller's starting to worry about his retirement. After all, he's not getting any younger. (His victims, on View Details>

Introduction: Hit List (Keller #2) Keller is a regular guy. He goes to the movies, works on his stamp collection. Call him for jury duty and he serves without complaint. Then every so often he gets a phone call from White Plains that sends him flying off somewhere to kill a perfect stranger. Keller is a pro and very good at what he does. But the jobs have started to go wrong. The realization is slow coming yet, when it arrives, it is irrefutable: Someone out there is trying to hit the hit man. Keller, GView Details>

Introduction: Hit Man (Keller #1) Keller is an assassin – he is paid by the job and works for a mysterious man who nominates hits and passes on commissions from elsewhere. Keller goes in, does the job, gets out: usually at a few hours’ notice . . . Often Keller’s work takes him out of New York to other cities, to pretty provincial towns that almost tempt him into moving to the woods and the lakeshores. Almost but not quite. But then one job goes wrong in a way Keller has never imagined and it leaves himView Details>

Introduction: Devil's Bargain (Red Letter Days #1) Jasmine "Jazz" Callender is on the downhill slide to ruin. Once a decorated homicide detective, she's lost it all: her former partner's been convicted of murder, she's been cashiered out, and she's drinking away what little self-respect she's got left. But Jazz has a talent for trouble, and somebody knows it. When a mysterious, sexy stranger comes looking for her with a fateful red envelope in his hand, she's about to make tView Details>

Introduction: Mixing poetry with drugs, sex, and murder would not be the first thing to come to mind if you were thinking about writing crime fiction. And unless you're Victor Gischler, the results of such an abominable coupling would likely be a bad as it sounds. But if Gischler isn't the most talented new crime writer to hit the pages in the last few years, he is certainly the most bizarre. Of his three novels - five stars everyone - "The Pistol Poets" is the most blackly humorous - think a moView Details>