Showing results for "Song Noir" in Crime Fiction

There are sharps and flats. Majors and minors. And then there’s the sound of a Top 10 hit. That sound. It shouldn’t be so, of course. A song is, after all, a simple thing. At its heart, it’s just a collection of verses and choruses, maybe a bridge to stir things up and tie it all together. A few chords with a solo thrown into the middle. That’s all there is to it. And yet, for an art form that’s ruled by and relies upon mathematical patterns, there is still an unquantifiable quality that defies reason.

Film star Amelie Hart is the darling of the silver screen, appearing on the front pages of every newspaper. But at the peak of her fame she throws it all away for a regular guy with an ordinary job. The gossip columns are aghast. Any hope the furore will die down is crushed when Amelie’s boyfriend, Dave, is arrested on charges of child sexual abuse. Dave strongly asserts his innocence, and when Amelie refuses to denounce him, the press witch hunt quickly turns into physical violence and she has to flee the country.

The action swings from London to Sweden, and then back into the past, to Franco’s Spain, as Roy and Castells hunt a monstrous killer...in the latest instalment of Johana Gustawsson’s award-winning series. Spain, 1938: the country is wracked by civil war, and as Valencia falls to Franco’s brutal dictatorship, Republican Therese witnesses the murders of her family. Captured and sent to the notorious Las Ventas women’s prison, Therese gives birth to a daughter who is forcibly taken from her.

Dionysos Mavroulis is a man without a future: a man who embraces destiny and risks everything for love. A refugee from Asia Minor, he escapes Smyrna in 1922 disguised as an old woman. Alienated and plagued by feelings of remorse, he spirals into poverty and seeks solace in the hashish dens around Piraeus. Hitting rock bottom, he meets Aleko, an accomplished bouzouki player. Recognizing in the impoverished refugee a rare musical talent, Aleko offers to teach him the bouzouki.

A "vivid and visceral, gritty and magical, dark and soaring” (Meg Gardiner) novel from one of the most electrifying voices in contemporary crime fiction, Gabino Iglesias, this deeply honest story follows several, lost, desperate folk in the heart of the southwest. In this mosaic horror/crime...