Noir Fiction

Some cases never leave you. For John Rebus, 40 years may have passed, but the death of beautiful, promiscuous Maria Turquand still preys on his mind. She was murdered in her hotel room on the night a famous rock star and his entourage were staying there, and Maria's killer has never been found. Meanwhile, the dark heart of Edinburgh remains up for grabs.

Traumatized by his reeducation at the hands of his former best friend, and struggling to assimilate into French culture, the Sympathizer finds Paris both seductive and disturbing. As he falls in with a group of left-wing intellectuals he meets at dinner parties given by his French Vietnamese “aunt”, he finds stimulation for his mind but also customers for his narcotic merchandise. But the new life he is making has perils, whether the self-torture of addiction, the authoritarianism of a state locked in a colonial mindset, or the paradox of how to reunite his two closest friends.

- Peut-on étudier la magie et exercer le métier de guérisseur ? - Bien entendu. La plupart des mages ont des passions personnelles et des projets bien à eux. Mais pour l'instant, ta priorité est d'apprendre à contrôler ton pouvoir. C'est ce que l'on appelle le "prix de la magie". Si tu ne réussis pas, ton don finira par te tuer. Considérant la force de ton pouvoir, je doute que les ravages se limitent à une seule pièce.

"Cette jeune fille est plus puissante que la moyenne de nos élèves, peut-être même plus que nos mages ! Elle est un danger. Il faut la trouver et l'arrêter. Si c'est une renégate, la loi nous oblige à l'amener devant le roi. Sinon, nous sommes tenus de lui enseigner le Contrôle. C'est encore une enfant, probablement une voleuse! Mais elle pourrait devenir une grande magicienne...".

As a massive storm batters the Scottish coast, Gordon Smith’s home is falling into the sea. The trouble is: that’s where he’s been hiding the bodies. It’s too dangerous to go near the place, so there’s no way of knowing how many people he’s murdered. Or how many more he’ll kill before he’s caught. As more horrors are discovered, ex-detective Ash Henderson is done playing nice. He’s got a killer to catch, and God help anyone who gets in his way.

It's not the dead that seem strange to Quirke. It's the living. One night, after a few drinks at an office party, Quirke shuffles down into the morgue where he works and finds his brother-in-law, Malachy, altering a file he has no business even reading. Odd enough in itself to find Malachy there, but the next morning, when the haze has lifted, it looks an awful lot like his brother-in-law, the esteemed doctor, was in fact tampering with a corpse—and concealing the cause of death.

In The Cold Six Thousand, James Ellroy's most ambitious and explosive novel yet, he puts the whole of the 1960s under his blistering lens. The result is a work of fierce, epic fiction, a speedball through our most tumultuous time.

When fifteen-year-old Oscar Dreyer-Hoff disappears in this “masterpiece” (Booklist, starred review), the police assume he’s simply a runaway—a typically overlooked middle child doing what teenagers do all around the world. But his frantic family is certain that something terrible has happened. After all, what runaway would leave behind a note that reads:

All that’s left of her is a depression in the dirt and a pool of blood. Robert Maxim is ruthless, powerful, and determined to find her. April Madden is a preacher’s wife, and Sydney’s mother. She’s willing to risk everything...her sobriety, her marriage, even her faith, to hunt for her daughter. But they can’t find Sydney Rye if she doesn’t want to be found. ISIS has a new enemy, a ghost haunting their territory, infecting their flock with radical ideals. They will do anything to capture her. Their reign depends on this new prophet’s destruction.

Detective Easy Rawlins returns in a mystery set in 1961 Los Angeles as Easy accepts a job searching for a beautiful woman nicknamed Black Betty who works as a housekeeper in Beverly Hills.

Layla is my crown, my purpose, the sheer essence of life. She’s the key. The key to unlocking the darkness in my soul. There is no reform. No restitution. Only retaliation and fear. I’ll decorate my throne with the broken wings of my enemies. Their blood will run like a river, a red carpet at my feet. The games have just begun. The players have been cast. And in this world of darkness and sin, all will bow to their king.

Killing Me Softly introduces Key West private eye Gideon Lowry, who moonlights as a piano player at a local jazz club. When Virginia Murphy shows up one night to ask him to investigate her sister's death 40 years earlier, Gideon is led down the darker side of memory lane where secrets linger. Some are buried as deeply as the paradise that was once Key West, now entombed in concrete. Key West's Hemingway Days is in full swing in Night and Day, when Gideon is pulled into the world of a famous nightclub singer known only as Asia.

"Ici, on a tous du sang indien et quand ce n'est pas dans les veines, c'est sur les mains." Le 11 juin 1981, trois cents policiers de la sûreté du Québec débarquent sur la réserve de Restigouche pour s'emparer des filets des Indiens mig'maq. Émeutes, répression et crise d'ampleur : le pays découvre son angle mort.

A Purple Place for Dying finds Travis McGee witness to a murder he can't prove and a kidnapping nobody wants to believe. McGee becomes a pawn between a wealthy Southwestern patriarch, the law, and a mysterious gang bent on insurance fraud. Just the kind of thing McGee revels in!

Sammy Dee is a mid-level Long Island mafioso in witness protection. Didier Onyekachukwu was the corrupt minister of finance of the former Upper Volta. Both men find themselves in middle age, living in the Southern California version of genteel poverty in a down-market condo complex called Paradise Gardens. Enter Marcy Gray, a "mature" actress barely getting by on a meager SAG pension.

Iceland, 1956. Fourteen-year-old Lára decides to spend the summer working for a couple on the small island of Videy, just off the coast of Reykjavík. In early August, the girl disappears without a trace. Time passes, and the mystery becomes Iceland‘s most infamous unsolved case. What happened to the young girl? Is she still alive? Did she leave the island, or did something happen to her there? Thirty years later, as the city of Reykjavík celebrates its 200th anniversary, journalist Valur Robertsson begins his own investigation into Lára's case.

The police are desperate for information on the triple homicide. Detective Joona Linna enlists the help of hypnotist Erik Maria Bark. But when Bark unlocks the secrets in the boy’s memory, he triggers a terrifying chain of events that will put all their lives in jeopardy.

"Happy birthday, Raven. Welcome to Noir Reformatory." Not what every girl wants to hear on her 18th birthday, but I accepted my fate long ago. I was born with black wings, earning me a permanent jail sentence from day one. A noir angel for life. That's fine. I'll own this prison just like I did back home. Even if it's ruled by two hot kings.

Los Angeles, August 4, 1962. The city broils through a midsummer heat wave. Marilyn Monroe ODs. A B-movie starlet is kidnapped. The overhyped LAPD overreacts. Chief Bill Parker’s looking for some getback. The Monroe deal looks like a moneymaker. He calls in Freddy Otash. The freewheeling Freddy O: tainted ex-cop, defrocked private eye, dope fiend, and freelance extortionist. A man who lives by the maxim “Opportunity is love.” Freddy gets to work. He dimly perceives Marilyn Monroe’s death and the kidnapped starlet to be a poisonous riddle that only he has the guts and the brains to untangle

Bull riding is dangerous as hell, but that’s half the fun. Guts, glory, and cute country girls lined up for days. It may take only eight seconds to win, but I can go all night. Yeah, I’ve broken almost every bone in my body at some point, but I’ve been the world rodeo champion two years running. Nothing’s gonna keep me from making it three. Not even Mae Guthrie....