Showing results by publisher "Phoenix Books" in Noir

Burt Reynolds reads three of Robert B. Parker's finest Spenser novels. Includes Chance, Hush Money, and Small Vices.

The Sternwood family, immortalized in The Big Sleep, is in trouble again. Lovely Vivian's psychotic sister, Carmen, has disappeared from the sanitarium, and Vivian herself has once again fallen into the clutches of the shady underworld character Eddie Mars. Enter Philip Marlowe, the original tough-but-tender private eye, resurrected by Robert B. Parker, creator of his own phenomenally popular Spenser mystery series.

Marlowe is back...and he's married to a rich, beautiful society lady who wants him to settle down in the posh desert community of Poodle Springs. Marlowe may have married rich, but old habits die hard: he's hired to recover a gambling debt and soon finds himself in a case involving bigamy, pornography and murder. The first four chapters of this final Marlowe mystery were written by noir master Raymond Chandler at the end of his life. Robert B. Parker was chosen by Chandler's estate to complete his last work.

With a troubled past and a job that attracts too much attention from the law, private investigator John March has always been the black sheep of his merchant banking family—which makes the identity of his latest client all the more surprising: his smug older brother. David March has been having affairs with anonymous women he meets on the internet, and now one of these women is stalking him. David knows her only as Wren. She, however, knows everything about David. After Wren turns up dead, John finds he's no longer searching for a stalker—now he's looking for a murderer.

It's not Carmen Colson and her ironworker husband Wayne's fault that they were in the real estate office when a pair of thugs walked in with extortion on their minds. But as far as aging Ojibway Indian hitman Armand Degas is concerned, the Colsons are going to have to pay dearly for seeing too much, and for the damage Wayne inflicted on Armand and his sicko partner Richie Nix with a tire iron.

With a troubled past and a job that attracts too much attention from the law, John March has always been the black sheep of his staid merchant-banking family. That makes the identity of his latest client all the more surprising: his smug older brother, David. But when a body turns up, John finds that he's no longer searching for the woman stalking his brother. Now he's hunting a killer - along a trail that leads ever closer to his brother's door.

Porter Wren makes a living sifting through the debris of New York's most horrific murders and sensational crimes, searching for the twist that the beat reporters missed, the illuminating irony, the romantic detail that adds meaning to the relentless wreckage of human appetite and folly. Devoted to his wife and two children, why then does Porter telephone his wife and lie about his plans for the evening, minutes before he finds himself in the Fifth Avenue apartment of a beautiful woman with a story to tell?