Cashiered U.S. Army major Edd “Twodees” Partain is working as a clerk in Wanda Lou’s Weaponry in Sheridan, Wyoming. That is, he works there until the tall man in the lamb’s wool topcoat walks into the shop and announces that a certain secret operation that took place in El Salvador is about to hit the media fan. For Partain, the visit from the man in gray leads to an unforeseen career move. Flying to L.A., the ex-major is grilled by a woman hiding out — in a $2000-a-day hospital room — from the “Little Rock folks.” Millicent Altford is a rainmaker, and a good one. adept at shaking the money tree for deserving politicos. Her secret war chest is missing $1.2 million, and she wants Partain to ride shotgun while she gets it back. And that leads Partain across the continent to Washington, where the blunders of U.S. covert action in Central America are at last percolating up through the political ranks. A storefront organization called VOMIT — Victims of Military Intelligence Treachery — is trying to defend a network of former intelligence operatives, soldiers, and covert warriors, including Partain himself, from a plot to keep the truth buried. VOMIT has its hands full. Because Twodees Partain is making even more enemies than he used to, a number of bags containing $1.2 million are floating around, and some old El Salvador hands are stirring up the ashes of political sin — with corpses sprawling from Georgetown to Beverly Hills

A saloon owner and a former CIA agent team up to help a pair of assassins escape death The twins who walk into Mac McCorkle's bar look identical, despite their differing genders. Their names are Wanda and Walter Gothar, and from the steel in their eyes it's apparent that their business isn't the friendly kind. They've come seeking help from Mac and his partner, Padilla, an ex-CIA agent who has skulked in the world's darkest corners.   Anxious for a big payday, the twins took an assignment out of their depth, working as bodyguards for a Saudi prince who came to Washington to sign an oil deal. The job fell apart, and now the twins are being pursued by the world's two finest killers­—who take out Walter without breaking a sweat. Now Mac and Padilla are faced with a choice: Save Wanda, or join her in the grave

Thus begins what may be the most popular of Ross Thomas’s unique stories. The combination of Wu, pretender to the Imperial throne of China, and Quincy Durant, who has his own colorful past, makes for a heady experience. After starting with the deceased pelican on a California beach, the plot mixes in the disappearance of a large sum of money that should have been buried in Vietnam, and the search for the missing member of a trio of singing sisters from the Ozarks. Only Thomas could have stirred this concoction with the style, humor, and suspense that captures the reader at the very beginning and doesn’t let go until the last word

Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of city-based noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with BROOKLYN NOIR. Each book is comprised of stories set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. The original D.C. NOIR, a groundbreaking collection of new fiction by sixteen different writers, displayed the curatorial prowess of best-selling author George Pelecanos. In D.C. NOIR 2: The Classics, Pelecanos once again assembles an enchanting array of dark and subversive stories, this time selecting the very best of Washington’s historical literary legacy

Hired by a political kingmaker to investigate a cocaine war, journalist Morgan Citron uncovers a scandal involving the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. It’s a story that will make Watergate look like a parking ticket — if Citron lives to tell about it

Fifth Philip St. Ives novel in which he acts as a go-between to recover a rare book that has been stolen and ransomed for $250,000. Interestingly, the owner of the book, PI Jack Marsh, has been kidnapped as well. St. Ives soon finds himself involved in a deadly game of deception and murder

Set in California, Mexico, Washington, D.C., and Germany in 1946, The Eighth Dwarf centers around a struggle among three intelligence agencies, each seeking the same man. Minor Jackson, and ex-OSS operative, is thrown into this conflict with only his wits, a dwarf and an almost-beautiful woman to help him. Jackson is broke when he pulls the dwarf, Ploscaru, out of a Beverly Hills swimming pool. Ploscaru — Romanian aristocrat, genius-spy, love-object for fascinated women — has an almost-legal scheme to make both of them rich. Kurt Oppenheimer's relatives, says the dwarf, will pay them handsomely to find Kurt, who disappeared in Germany during the war. Unknown to Jackson, Oppenheimer is a slightly crazed, but highly efficient assassin, who has continued to murder ex-Nazi leaders after the war, and who is being sought by the British, the Russians, the Americans and, quite possibly, this Israelis, all of whom have their reasons for wanting the killer — and alive. As Oppenheimer, a master of disguises and dialects, skillfully steals across a divided Germany finding his victims, the dwarf plays one country against another in a dangerous game of intrigue, pursuit and entrapment with a totally unexpected conclusion

The Fourth Durango is not your ordinary Durango. It's not in Spain, or Mexico, and it's not a ski town in the Colorado Rockies, although Durangos do exist in all of those places. This Durango has an industry, albeit a rather odd one – it is a hideout business, a place where people pay to find sanctuary from former friends and associates who are either trying to kill them or have them killed. Into this Durango comes a former chief justice of a state supreme court, followed by son-in-law Kelly Vines to act as his emissary to the beautiful and savvy mayor. It takes a Ross Thomas to stir these characters into a witty and ingenious mix readers will not be able to – and certainly would not want to – resist

A provocative and entertaining novel of political adventure in contemporary Africa... Clinton Shartelle, a Southern gentleman partial to seersucker, is the best rough-and-tumble political campaign manager in the United Stares. Peter Upshaw, the narrator, is a public relations man who searches out Shartelle and persuades him to run a very unusual campaign. The candidate is Chief Sunday Akomolo. and the office sought is the premiership of Albertia, an African colony soon to achieve independence. THE SEERSUCKER WHIPSAW is an exciting and suspenseful story, full of wild but wise humor and penetrating insights into American and African attitudes. But it is Clinton Shartelle, the Seersucker Whipsaw, who animates the entire narrative with his wit, charm and cunning. Whether he is planning his opponents’ mistakes or performing a drunken cakewalk, Shartelle is the unique character who makes this novel unforgettable