San Francisco Noir 2: The Classics

A wonderfully dark, pitch-perfect noir prequel to , featuring Dashiell Hammett’s beloved detective, Sam Spade.

It’s 1921 — seven years before Sam Spade will solve the famous case of the Maltese Falcon. He’s just set up his own agency in San Francisco and he gets off to a quick start, working cases (he doesn’t do domestic) and hiring a bright young secretary named Effie Perrine. When he’s hired by a prominent San Francisco banker to find his missing son, Spade gets the break he’s been looking for. He spends the next few years dealing with booze runners, waterfront thugs, banking swindlers, gold smugglers, and bumbling cops. He brings in Miles Archer as a partner to help bolster the agency, though it was Archer who stole his girl while he was fighting in World War I. All along, Spade will tangle with an enigmatic villain who holds a long-standing grudge against Spade. And, of course, he’ll fall in love — though it won’t turn out for the best. It never does with dames.

On a Hollywood studio lot a dancing bear does a little pickpocketing on the side. In Son Francisco the repo men of Daniel Kearny Associates ore on a nonstop campaign to repossess twenty-seven classic cars from twenty-seven people who will go to classic lengths to keep them. And in a fortress in the Big Sur wilderness a rich man vows to steal an ultraprecious collectors’ item. Soon the dancing bear, DKA, and the millionaire will entangle in a twisted plot of betrayal and murder.

It all starts when the dancing bear actually a full-blooded Gypsy in o fur suit — is unceremoniously killed. Now the police are searching for the bear’s beautiful Gypsy wife, Yana. At the request of the Gypsy King, whose honorable world of thievery does not tolerate murder, the men and women of DKA also look for her. But the seductive, ever-changing Yana is eluding them all, and working on a new grift of her own.

Meanwhile, the tribe raises cosh for a moss pilgrimage to the holy city of Rome — just in time for the Jubilee celebration and a feast of tourists. And while a crime wave is erupting in California, while the cops are distracted by their hunt for Yana and every head is turned in the wrong direction, a helicopter is beating its way to Big Sur, carrying the greatest scam of all.

In this sexy hilarious tale action and seduction cops, robbers, and repo men, Joe Gores takes us into a shifting subculture of ancient rituals and cutting-edge cons. With one mystery at its core and another unfolding at its end, Joe Gores latest and most entertaining novel yet should come with a warning: Enjoy the ride, but hold on to your wallet...

It begins in the small Iowa town of Steubenville, where a seemingly respectable citizen takes a head-over-heels tumble on a department store escalator. As if on cue, Cadillacs — 31 in all — start disappearing from lots in the San Francisco Bay area, as a team of scam artists use phone fraud, bank fraud, and pure criminal genius to do one California bank out of $1.3 million worth of Detroit’s finest.

The bank wants those cars back, and turns to Daniel Kearny Associates to get it done. Rock-jawed, relentless Dan Kearny puts his best agents, as well as two new ones, on the case. It doesn’t take long for Kearny’s team to find out what they’re up against: Gyppos. Con artists, scammers, liars, thieves and dangerous charmers, Gypsies are one nation united in street crime. And since the escalator fall has mortally wounded their beloved King, they’ve decided to get to his funeral in Cadillac style. But there’s one more Cadillac to contend with: the shocking pink 1958 Cadillac ragtop convertible the dying leader insists on being buried in. The Gypsy who can get his hands on one is sure to be the next King... or Queen.

When the tilt starts, it’s Gypsies 32, DKA O. But by the second inning the score changes. From San Francisco to Hawaii, from Florida to New York, it’s a matter of everybody scamming everybody in a cross-country duel of wits and nerves. And the action won’t let up until both repomen and Gyppos reach the dying Gypsy King — and the ultimate scam of all.

Заключенный сбежал из тюрьмы, чтобы проводить умирающего отца.

Имя Альфреда Хичкока, создателя знаменитых американских фильмов ужасов, известно всему миру. Однако немногие у нас в стране знают, что Хичкок выступал в качестве «крестного отца» десятков авторов остросюжетных произведений: книги из серии «Хичкок представляет» популярны у читающей публики всех континентов.

Сборник «Истории, от которых не заснешь ночью» — из этой серии. Он даст нашему читателю яркое представление о том, что такое настоящий триллер: «крутой» сюжет, драки и ужасы, от которых и впрямь кое-кто начинает бояться темноты.

Герой романа «Время хищников», университетский профессор Халстед, вернувшись ночью домой, обнаруживает, что его жена, Паула, став жертвой насилия, покончила с собой. Муж жаждет отмщения и наконец выходит на след шайки юных бездельников из весьма благополучных семей…

В романе «Замурованный труп» рассказывается об опасной, полной неожиданностей работе сотрудников частного сыскного агентства «Керни и компаньоны».