Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio" in Noir

Eddie's on his way back from a routine investigation when his horse almost runs down a half-naked blonde in serious trouble. Against his better judgment, he promises to protect the frightened young woman, only to find himself waylaid by unknown assailants and left for dead beside her mutilated body.

It is early 1942. You are in San Francisco, and you need a private eye. Sam Spade is rumored to be in Istanbul. The Continental Op has been drafted and is a sergeant in the Aleutians. Philip Marlowe is up at Little Fawn Lake investigating the disappearance of Mrs. Derace Kingsley. Lew Archer is in the army. Who's left? Nobody but C. Card. You haven't heard of C. Card? That's all right. Nobody has.

North San Diego County. A gifted pianist. A beautiful violinist. A multimillion-dollar land deal. A story of intrigue, mystery and murder in the comic-noir tradition.

Time is up in Old Town. As the pace of gentrification reaches frenzy in Portland, Oregon, Darby Holland’s beloved tattoo parlor, Lucky Supreme, is destroyed by a bomb that ripped through an entire city block. Only a warning call from his favorite prostitute saved his life. Developers have been like wolves at the door of Dmitri (the drunken landlord) for the past few years, but this is different.

Midnight Rider Productions is a dark-web nightmare machine, headed by the one man who years ago drove Darby to hide in the seamy environs of Old Town and make his life there. But Darby left his own mark back in the day, and the shadowy head of production has a grudge to settle. Rider has found him at long last and plans to make an example of him.

The night world of Old Town, Portland, Oregon, has gone mad in the grip of gentrification, and at the center of it all is Lucky Supreme, a seedy tattoo parlor, whose proprietor is a street-bred artist with a unique approach to problem solving. Darby Holland has enough on his radar, but when some flash (tattoo artwork) stolen from him resurfaces in California, he can't help himself. His efforts to reclaim it set him on a dangerous path, dragging along his delightfully eccentric colleagues.

The infamous Deadbomb Bingo Ray is a high-level fixer in the City of Brotherly Love. He's the man you call when you've crossed the line into hopeless and there's no way back to anywhere. Three years have passed since Ray burned a hedge fund manager on behalf of a pool of retirees, and now the money man is back for revenge. While Ray unravels the plot and orchestrates some payback of his own, he unwittingly steps into the ultimate high-stakes game. Falling in love with the beautiful physicist trapped at the edge of the burn was just bad timing.

A comic vignette in which a carnival barker's valuable watch gets stolen during an illegal poker game. The local sheriff seems in no hurry to apprehend the thief, until a reward is offered.

Crissa Stone is a career criminal who has pulled a number of impressive heists by knowing how to keep her mouth shut and her temper in check. Still, as good as she is, she wants to get out of the life. All she needs is one last big score, enough to bribe her lover's way out on parole, setup a safe and stable new life, and get her daughter back. But things keep going wrong, like when her last two partners lost their cool and fought over the take instead of walking away $150,000 richer. The mess they made of the job and each other has put her on the run again.

It's been a year since professional thief Crissa Stone last pulled a job, and she's spent that time under the radar, very carefully not drawing attention to herself. That kind of life is safe, but it's boring, and it's lonely, and it's not very lucrative. So when Crissa starts to get antsy - and low on funds - she agrees to act as a thief for hire, partnering with a wealthy art collector to steal a truckload of plundered Iraqi artifacts before they're repatriated to their native country. But what's supposed to be a "give-up" robbery with few complications quickly turns deadly.

This account of a fugitive gun moll masterfully compresses the essence of "noir" fiction.

Crissa Stone is a career criminal. A complete pro, she never works too close to her New York City home, rarely signs on with the same crew, and never rushes a job. These are the rules that have kept her from getting caught, from doing time. They're the rules her mentor and lover taught her, rules he didn't follow as closely as he should have. Now he's up for parole, and Crissa needs to come up with some real money real fast to help grease the wheels.

Did a spoiled rich girl die in a plane crash, or is she hiding with her homicidal lover in the Florida Keys? Whose body is that in the wreckage? Who put it there?

Max Fisher used to run a computer company; Angela Petrakos was his assistant and mistress. But that was last year. Now Max is reinventing himself as a hip-hop crack dealer, and Angela is back in Ireland hooking up with a would-be record setter - in the field of serial killing. Will their paths cross again?

Half a million dollars in drug proceeds, guarded by three men with automatic weapons - for professional thief Crissa Stone and her team, stealing it was the easy part. But when the split goes awry in a blaze of gunfire, Crissa finds herself on the run with a duffel bag full of stolen cash, bound by a promise to deliver part of the take to the needy family of one of her slain partners.

Jingo Hawks is out of luck when Mrs. Daggatt from the orphan house hires him out as a chimney sweep to the awful General Dirty-Face Scurlock. But it's gypsy luck that puts Jingo into the right chimney and then into the care of the mysterious Mr. Peacock, who claims to know Jingo's scoundrel father. Together they set out on a treasure hunt for buried gold. But they are not alone - those nasty gold diggers Mrs. Daggatt and General Scurlock are hot on their trail.

In Woolrich's iconic tale, Detective Tom Shawn saves a lovely young woman from a suicide attempt one night, and later hears her story. She is in despair because the death of her wealthy father has been predicted by a confidence man seemingly gifted with the power of clairvoyance; a man whose predictions have unerringly aided her father in his business many times before. Shawn and a squad of detectives investigate this dire prediction and try to avert the millionaire businessman from meeting his ordained end at the stroke of midnight.

After he fails to save a stranger from being mauled to death by a bear, a young mercenary is saddled with the baby girl the man died to protect. Now, 16 years later, that young mercenary has grown up to become cynical sword jockey Eddie LaCrosse. When his vacation travels bring him back to that same part of the world, he can't resist trying to discover what has become of the mysterious infant. He finds that the child, now a lovely young teenager named Isadora, is at the center of a complicated web of intrigue.

Twenty years ago, a barmaid in a harbor town fell for a young sailor who turned pirate to make his fortune. But what truly became of Black Edward Tew remains a mystery, one that has just fallen into the lap of freelance sword jockey Eddie LaCrosse. For years, Eddie has kept his office above Angelina’s tavern, so when Angelina herself asks him to find out what happened to the dashing pirate who stole her heart years ago, he can hardly say no—even though the trail is two decades old. Some say Black Edward and his ship, The Bloody Angel, went to bottom of the sea, taking with it a king’s ransom in treasure.

Over his acclaimed career, Cook’s novels have haunted, riveted, and spellbound audiences across the world, and his short stories are equally acclaimed. They range from the intensely focused world of "Fatherhood", the Herodotus prize-winning title story, to the Edgar nominated "Rain", a dark, kaleidoscopic tale of Manhattan on a single, rain-swept night. "The Fix", the story of a famous boxing fix that was, well, not a fix at all, was selected for inclusion in Best Mystery Stories of the Year. "What She Offered", the gripping tale of a one-night stand, was included in The Best Noir Stories of the Century.