Classic Detective Noir

Enjoy the great detectives of the Golden Age of classic mysteries in this unique collection of audio whodunits. Newly recorded for this original anthology, the crimes, criminals, and sleuths depicted here set the standard for decades to come, and remain as entertaining today as they were when first published. Fantastic narrators including Simon Prebble, Kate Fenton, Bill Wallace, and Robert Fass breathe new life into these stories.

Noir contains three classic thrillers by Richard Matheson, the grand master of suspense. Originally published in the 1950s, at the very beginning of Matheson’s distinguished career, these page-turning classics are finally on audio for your listening pleasure. Now listeners everywhere can savor three unforgettable tales of crime, corruption, and cold-blooded murder.

This book looks at the contributions made by the actors and actresses who appeared in film noir, and the directors who made them: Edward G. Robinson, Orson Welles, Joan Bennett, Dan Duryea, John Carradine, Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Frank Sinatra, Sterling Hayden, Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, Edmond O’Brien, Van Heflin, Robert Ryan, Cornel Wilde, Richard Conte, James Cagney, Ida Lupino, John Huston, Delmer Daves, Edgar G. Ulmer, Fritz Lang, Anthony Mann, Phil Karlson, Lewis Allen, Robert Wise, Henry Hathaway, John Brahms, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, Jacques Tourneur, Alfred ...

The renowned novel from crime fiction master Raymond Chandler, with the "quintessential urban private eye" (Los Angeles Times), Philip Marlowe Featuring the iconic character that inspired the film Marlowe, starring Liam Neeson. Philip Marlowe's about to give up on a completely routine case...

Every cynical detective who ever walked down a mean street with a gun and a code owes him a debt. Every hard-boiled cop, every burned-out private eye, every noir thriller on the shelf today traces back to one man — a former Pinkerton operative who had actually done the work, and who taught American crime fiction to stop being a parlor puzzle and start drawing blood. Before Dashiell Hammett, the detective story was a genteel game of clues. After him, it was literature. This volume collects the first three novels — written in a furious burst between 1929 and 1930, the books that invented ...

A private detective, down on his luck. A bus crash in the middle of nowhere. A murderer, hiding in plain sight. When Sydney Cartel investigates a murder, he usually stands on the other side of the police tape. Trying to escape the limelight of his career, he boards a night bus in rural southern Britain. But when the bus loses control and falls into a valley, Sydney and the survivors scramble to find shelter at a local inn by the side of the road. In the dead of night, with a storm preventing anyone from getting in or out, the survivors of the crash prepare for a long stay at the Roadside ...

A restaurant full of witnesses. A missing knife. And a murder that refuses to speak loudly. In 1948, The Gilded Ladle is the kind of place people come to be seen—and to forget who they are once the lights dim. White linen. Low music. Perfect timing. Everything in its place. Until the chef is found dead in the pantry. The knife buried in him belongs to the kitchen. The doors are locked. No one has left. Inspector Claire Lawson arrives to a room already telling itself stories. The staff insist on routine. The patrons insist on coincidence. Everyone remembers the night differently—and ...

The films, the stars, the filmmakers-all get their due in Hollywood Black, a sweeping overview of blacks in film from the silent era through Black Panther, with striking photos and an engrossing history by award-winning author Donald Bogle. The story opens in the silent film era, when white...

The absurdly outrageous, sarcastically satiric, and always entertaining New York Times bestselling author Christopher Moore returns in finest madcap form with this zany noir set on the mean streets of post-World War II San Francisco, and featuring a diverse cast of characters, including a...

A novel set in the underbelly of upstate New York that's as hardboiled and punchy as a swift right hook to the jaw, a classic noir for fans of James Ellroy and John D. Macdonald. Isaiah Coleridge is a mob enforcer in Alaska--he's tough, seen a lot, and dished out more. But when he forcibly ends...

San Francisco, 1949. A blonde in a red dress walks into a private investigator's office with a missing fiancé and a story that doesn't add up from the first word. Matt Mathews isn't your standard issue PI. Stanford fullback turned Naval Intelligence officer turned gentleman detective, he works cases that interest him from the comfort of a yacht he keeps in the San Francisco Yacht Club — and from instincts sharpened by four years of digging into everything the Navy preferred un-sniffed. When Suzette Gamble hires him to find her missing fiancé Freddy, he expects a domestic tangle. What he...

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER ‘Immensely gripping…Stayed up till past 2am to finish this’ Sophie Hannah Four people walked into the dining room that night. One would never leave. Matthew: the perfect husband. Titus: the perfect son. Charlie: the perfect illusion. Rachel: the perfect stranger...

**A murder. A snowbound train. A web of lies that runs the length of Europe.** When the _Orient Express_ grinds to a halt in a blizzard on its way from Istanbul to Paris, a passenger is found dead in his locked compartment. The door is bolted from the inside. The windows are sealed. And every soul aboard swears they heard nothing. Inspector Lucien Arnaud of the Bureau of International Investigations is dispatched to investigate—an assignment that becomes a descent into deception, politics, and guilt. Among the passengers: a countess, a colonel, a secretary, a smuggler, and a priest. Each ...

Ex-mob enforcer-turned-private investigator Isaiah Coleridge pits himself against a rich and powerful foe when he digs into a possible murder and a sketchy real-estate deal worth billions. Ex-majordomo and bodyguard to an industrial tycoon-cum-U.S. senator, Badja Adeyemi is in hiding and shortly...

Street thug Riko has some serious issues--memories wiped, reputation tanked, girlfriend turned into a tech-fueled zombie. And the only people who can help are the mercenaries who think she screwed them over. In an apathetic society devoid of ethics or regulation, where fusing tech and flesh can...

“Simenon could produce endless variations, as similar and as different as Shakespeare’s sonnets or Monet’s haystacks.” —Adam Kirsch When the glamorous wife of an American industrialist is murdered at a luxury Paris hotel, her past life as a nightclub dancer is the key to finding the...

(Note: The print version of this book is titled "THE CAPRIATI CONSIRACY") SHE WAS RICH AND BEAUTIFUL, AND ASKED ME TO SAVE HER DYING CHILD! A woman begs Alton Rhode to find the bank-embezzler lover who left her pregnant and in the lurch. She says her waif-like daughter needs the fugitive’s bone marrow to survive. But the trail has been cold for 14 years! That’s the least of Rhode’s problems. Local mobsters have their own agenda. Only a mysterious guardian angel – with an automatic pistol – keeps the private eye alive long enough to find the missing man. Then things really get ...

A private detective finds misfortune in his fortune cookie! Alton Rhode sets out to buy some Chinese takeout food, only to become involved in a possible war between rival Tongs. But that is just the beginning in a mystery that soon spirals out of the private eye's control. It includes arson, and an assassination that hits very close to home. A vengeful Rhode's investigation alienates friends and foes alike. And almost gets him killed. “A LAWRENCE DE MARIA TITLE GIVES YOU MORE BANG FOR YOUR BUCK THAN JUST ABOUT ANYTHING IN THE BOOK MARKETPLACE TODAY.” (Florida Weekly); “A MASTER OF ...

“Simenon was fascinated by peculiarities of human personality, which he described in elegant, simple prose . . . as pure as running water.” —Roger Ebert It’s the height of spring, and Maigret is grappling with doubly unfamiliar circumstances. He’s in the surreal new village of...

A penguin is all that stands between one man and murder by the mafia Sit back and enjoy this darkly comic full-cast adaptation of Andrey Kurkov’s bestselling novel set in mid-90s Ukraine, plus a bonus interview with the author. Viktor Alekseyevich Zolotaryov is an aspiring writer in Ukraine...