Detective Noir Comedy

Charlie McGinley wanted literary fame—He got a front-row seat to murder. Charlie writes hardboiled detective novels from his New Mexico ranch. He dreams of literary respect and maybe a few good reviews. So, when world-famous author Jon Masterson invites him to join his prestigious writer’s group, Charlie jumps at the chance. Sure, Masterson’s smug, rich, and conceited, but Charlie’s willing to play nice if it means being taken seriously as a writer. Then cracks in the façade start to appear. Is Masterson mentoring new talent, or stealing their work? When writers in the group ...

Private eye Eddie Valiant doesn't like Toons - those cartoon characters who live side-by-side with humans. But Eddie will work for a Toon if his cash supply is low enough. So he reluctantly agrees when Roger Rabbit, a Toon who plays straight man (or should that be straight rabbit) in the Baby Herman cartoon series, asks him to find out who's been trying - unsuccessfully - to buy his contract from the DeGreasy Brothers syndicate. Then Rocco DeGreasy is murdered - and Roger is the prime suspect!

Resourceful Bingo Riggs and his partner, Handsome Kusak, are in the sucker-bait business, snapping candid pics of tourists off Central Park. Their fly-by-night enterprise can be irresistible to souvenir lovers, but with one camera in a pawnshop and their developing room in the bathtub of a two-room dump near Hell’s Kitchen, their venture is wretchedly underexposed - until they stumble upon an insurance fraud scheme between the allegedly dead eccentric Mr. S. S. Pigeon and his business partner and beneficiary.

You didn’t pick up a book. You picked up a Node—a pocket doorway into a set of worlds where stories don’t describe reality. They shape it. In Sector Folio-7, a catastrophic cascade has begun. Worlds are bleeding into each other, rules are breaking, and a city built from living pages is starting to collapse from the inside. Streets repeat out of order. People forget who they are mid-sentence. And “plot holes”—literal voids—open in the ground and swallow entire blocks. Mara Keene is a Scriptor tasked with keeping this place intact. She enters the City of Echoing Pages to recover...

Charlie McGinley writes about tough guys…then he has to become one. Fed up with writing cheesy detective fiction, Charlie dreams of writing something serious. Unfortunately, his publisher insists that he keep cranking out hard-boiled Johnny Dent PI novels. When Charlie stumbles across an urban legend about Thomas Edison inventing a machine that could speak to the dead, he thinks he’s found the perfect gimmick to spice up his next book. That is, until he builds the "Ghost Machine" and accidentally uses it... And people in his small New Mexico town start dying. Suddenly, Charlie must ...

Charlie just wants a quiet life … Then he finds a human skull buried in the front yard. Mystery writer Charlie McGinley moves from L.A. to a small town in New Mexico. No more big-city hassles. No more big-city hustles. Guess again! Suddenly Charlie has to deal with disappearing bodies, crabby cops, crazed killers, and a very pregnant wife, while trying desperately to avoid ending up in an unmarked grave next to the mysterious stiff. Gold Medal Winner, Humor and Satire —2024 Global Book Awards “Proverbial skeletons in closets and actual ones buried in the yard help make this a bone-...

YOU DIDN’T BUY THIS BOOK. YOU PICKED UP A NODE. In New Orleans, a “normal” lunch turns into an intake line—forms, name tags, and rules that start acting like they’ve always been true. When the room tries to file people into permanent categories, Mara does the only thing that works: she makes reality messy again. Today. Right now. This weather. This shift. No forever-words. But the storm doesn’t stop at the door. A service entrance peels open into the City of Echoing Pages—a metropolis built from book spines, ink-lamps, and sentences that rearrange themselves when you blink. ...

Gus suspected Father Xavier asked him out for Thanksgiving dinner for more than just the friendly company. When you’re the sheriff of a small county you learn quickly that people only put on airs of wanting to be with you out of friendship. Typically instead these people think they’ve spotted a crime that they want you to deal with. The father suspects something rotten is in the air concerning a holiday family reunion involving the daughter of a once rich rancher, her famous author older brother, and her less than famous younger brother, the loan writer from Santa Fe. Gus isn’t one to...

*FRANKIE BOYLE'S GRIPPING CRIME NOVEL: AN INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER * 'A dark and entertaining tranche of Glasgow noir . . . [A] deft, engaging thriller' Observer 'Full of scintillating sentences and perfect lines of dialogue' Sunday Times...

Gus isn’t one to normally get invited to garden tea parties. However, the host is a political donor, and even though it’s not an election year, it never hurts to humor them. Only this party becomes more painful than most semi-political gatherings when the host inconveniently falls over dead. At first, given the woman’s poor health, Gus suspects natural causes. Only the coroner points out that it’s possible that Mrs. Lydia White died from an overdose of the herbal treatment she was using to lose weight. Thus, it is most likely an unnatural death from an all-natural product. That ...

Leaping Yule logs! Santa Claus has gone missing! And it's almost Christmas! Where is he? It's a Christmas-tery! What happens when Santa goes MIA? Well, Tweedle the elf decides they need to hire an amazing Private Eye to find him. Unfortunately, all they can afford is Nick Flebber. Flebber's a private eye riding a dry patch, income-wise, looking to take any case that walks through his door. Sure, the elf's money looks legit, but how does he know this isn't the effects of some mind altering drugs? Then he remembers he can't afford any mind altering drugs. So, before you can say “pa rum pum ...

Nada oculta un secreto más rápido que una tumba recién cavada. Alguien con un bisturí y una mesa de embalsamamiento está enterrando cadáveres bajo otros nombres, y Pete Talbott y Sandy Kasmarek son los siguientes en la lista del enterrador. ¡Excelentes nuevas traducciones! Pete es un informático de Boston que todavía está de luto por su esposa cuando el sicario de la mafia Gino Parini le pone una pistola del calibre 45 y el periódico Columbus Ohio de esa mañana en la cara, abierto por la página de obituarios. El de Pete está ahí, en primer plano, y el de su esposa está al ...

Rien ne cache mieux un secret qu'une tombe fraîchement creusée. Quelqu'un muni d'un scalpel et d'une table d'embaumement enterre des cadavres sous le nom d'autres personnes, et Pete Talbott et Sandy Kasmarek sont les prochains sur la liste du croque-mort. Une nouvelle traduction passionnante ! Pete est un geek informatique de Boston qui pleure encore sa femme lorsque Gino Parini, un tueur à gages de la mafia, lui met sous le nez un calibre 45 et le journal du matin de Columbus, dans l'Ohio, ouvert à la page des nécrologies. Celle de Pete est là, en première page, et celle de sa femme...

Gus has traveled out of state and up to the city of Seattle to visit his daughter. She’s sharing an apartment with two criminology majors. Naturally their thoughts turn toward talking about crime and they ask Gus to talk about one of his cases. Since he doesn’t want to discuss anything too recent or else his daughter might know the people involved, he digs down deep into his memory banks for the perfect case from his first year as a sheriff. It also just so happens to be the first case he crossed path with Father Xavier. As he remembers it, Gus was called in to investigate an apparent ...

Of all the gin joints... ...wait, this is a space station, right? Some hotshot Councilwoman decided it was time to take a stroll out of an Airlock, and diligent Jain is on the case! Plain Jain is the name she gives herself because 'Jarco Artficial...yadayadayada is a mouthful, so it's just 'Plain' Jain. She's a crazy dame who thinks she's living in a Dashiell Hammet novel, whatever that is. For a Neuro, she's pretty much engineered flesh and blood, but the best part is; she can take the shape of any woman that she wants, from a hot Nesbit player to the girl who snubbed her assistant last ...

All Gus wanted to do was take a day trip up to the big city to get away from his constituents. However, some constituents are harder to avoid than others. He inadvertently bumps into Father Xavier while at an antique show. Neither this chance meeting or Gus’s appraisal are the worst thing to happen to the sheriff while out of town, because the other thing that’s hard for him to avoid is getting involved in a murder case. When one of the big winners at the antique show turns up dead it’s up to Gus to figure out who the murderer is. With the Father’s help, can Gus sort out the clues ...

The new case for P.I. Al Getty initially appears to be straightforward—it revolves around tying up a loose end. However, with a gun to his head and an indecent proposal presented to him, the case takes an unexpected turn. Al Getty must either perform in the bedroom or face death. Because it turns out that he's the loose end. The sequel to "Getty Gigs: The Stalker" delivers an unyielding dose of dark humor, unexpected twists, and high-stakes adventures for a P.I. who must confront a series of outrageous challenges head-on.

Al Getty is a dedicated private investigator on the hunt for cheating partners. Ethan Notes is an obsessive stalker fixated on a beautiful woman. After the initial consultation, Al realizes he needs to clarify online what he can lawfully do, to keep weirdos like Notes away. Doing the right thing and reporting the stalker to the police might lead to unexpected drama, but if anyone can handle setbacks, it's Al—he's had a lot of them. When a surprise date with the victim doesn't quite go as planned, it turns out that the stalker might just play a crucial role in the unfolding chaos. This ...

It’s just another morning on the fifth of July. The country is another year older; Gus is a touch hungover, the coffee in his office is stale, and all Gus wants to do is go home and start over again on July sixth. Unfortunately Father Xavier visits the sheriff’s office and he’s brought along a gift. He has a green jacket that should have been put in the church’s lost and found. The father suspects it belongs to a missing girl named Erica Torres which is odd given the jacket is marked as belonging to E. Rossi. Erica went to school one day and never came home. She was picked up by a ...

It’s the hottest heat wave of the summer and Gus’s air conditioner has decided to give up the ghost. It’s not the heat keeping Gus awake at night, though, but a nighttime visit from Father Xavier. He couldn’t sleep either due to the heat and decided it would be best that they didn’t sleep together. While the father was bothering Gus by telling him all about his recent visit to Italy, a welcome phone call came. Someone is going to be murdered at Deimos Technology. It doesn’t matter that the someone that is about to die is only an AI computer infected with a fatal computer virus. ...