Given its extraordinary span, its international scope, and its variant styles and groundbreaking stylists, A Century of Great Suspense Stories is a singular achievement. A bestselling master of suspense himself Jeffery Deaver had the enviable task of selecting from the thousands of stories written over the past one hundred years those which best represented the classic form, as well as the justly celebrated authors whose ironic twists and stunning payoffs left a lasting, vivid, and unnerving impression. The result is a triumph. In this ambitious anthology you’ll revel in the sardonic, overtly amoral plotting of Patricia Highsmith. You’ll rediscover the strangely poignant and surprising turns of Stanley Ellin, and the profoundly underrated Margaret Millar, a genius who mixed savage social satire with brooding horror. You’ll be treated to Stephen King at his chilling best. You’ll find yourself on the violent urban streets of Ross Macdonald and Mickey Spillane, and seeped in the ominous regional flavor of Sharyn McCrumb and Tony Hillerman. You’ll marvel at the cunning webs spun by Lawrence Block, Ruth Rendell, Anthony Boucher, and Sara Paretsky, all of whom defy expectations as they reinvent the genre. And you’ll understand the awesome reputations of those authors who set the standard, such as the legendary Harlan Ellison, Fredric Brown, the master of the twist ending, and James M. Cain, uncannily skilled at knowing what went on between men and women behind closed doors. (The darker the room the better.) Delivering everything from the one-two punch of the detective story to the ingeniously precise trappings of the police procedural, from the disquieting corners of the criminal mind to sheer dread-inducing horror, A Century of Great Suspense Stories is a rich anthology of this popular literary genre, a stunning tribute to the art of storytelling, and to the men and women who have done it best

ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S HOW-TO-DO-IT BOOK Including: • How to solve your marital problems       —(poison) • How to dress properly when admitting to first degree murder       —(black tie) • How to take off a few pounds fast       —(a knife) • How to ruin a perfect friendship       —(a homemade bomb) And many, many other helpful hints from such specialists as: EVAN HUNTER, JOHN CORTEZ, RAY BRADBURY, RICHARD STARK, RICHARD MATHESON, HELEN NIELSON, DONALD WESTLAKE, RICHARD DEMING, JACK RITCHIE, JONATHAN CRAIG, C. B. GILFORD, JAY STREET, ROBERT ARTHUR, FLETCHER FLORA, CHARLES EINSTEIN

Ed McBain is a pen name of Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Evan Hunter, who wrote the screenplays for Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” and “Strangers When We Meet,” and the novel The Blackboard Jungle. As Ed McBain, he has written fifty 87th Precinct novels, the blueprint series for every successful police procedural series. This original collection of eleven short stories takes you onto the gritty and violent streets of the city, and into the darkest places in the human mind. “First Offense” is narrated from behind bars by a cocky young man who stabbed a storeowner in a robbery attempt. In “To Break the Wall,” a high school teacher has a violent encounter with several punks. And a Kim Novak look-alike blurs the line between fantasy and reality in “The Movie Star.” These and eight more stories showcase the mastery for which the San Diego Union-Tribune dubbed McBain “the unquestioned king.”

Matthew Hope spotted her on North Sabal Beach, one of those fabulous Gulf Coast keys that yearly draw ever more people to condo life in the Sunshine State. She was spectacular, “carved of alabaster, pale white exquisite face framed by ebony cascades of hair, the flesh of her naked breasts almost translucent, lustrous in the hot rays of the sun. wide hips flaring above the restraining strings of the bikini patch, a shimmering mirage in black and white that came closer and closer, pale gray eyes in that incredibly lovely face, the scent of mimosa as she passed and was gone.” That was on Saturday. On Monday, Michelle Harper came to Hope as a client. Below the short sleeves of her T-shirt, ugly bruises obliterated the whiteness of her arms. Adhesive was taped across the bridge of her nose and both her eyes were discolored, one puffed almost entirely shut. She wanted Hope’s help in filing a complaint with the police. She wanted her husband arrested and put away. On Tuesday. Michelle Harper was found dead on Whisper Key Beach. Her hands and legs were bound with wire hangers and she had been burned to death. An empty five-gallon gasoline can lay some ten feet from the body. By four that afternoon. George Harper had been charged with the brutal murder of his wife. Big, black, and monstrously ugly, George Harper vociferously denied the charge. And somehow, Hope believed him. But in committing himself to help Harper, Matthew Hope is drawn into a hall of mirrors filled with lies, sexual perversity, and thrill- seeking corruption. The result, says The Sunday Times (London), is “a strictly X- rated fairy tale” and a thoroughly good read

It was a miserable day in August in the 87th Precinct. Detective Steve Carella was hot and tired and his shirt was sticking to his back, and now this dumpy little man named Roger Grimm was sitting across from him in the squadroom demanding to know if they were going to catch the arsonist who had burned down his warehouse. “We’ll see what we can do,” Carella sighed. In the next few days Carella and his partner, Cotton Hawes, find themselves in the middle of an astonishing case, one which quickly proves to contain not one, but two arsons — and two murders. Assisted by a rather unfortunate personality named “Fat Ollie” Weeks of the 83rd precinct coarse, bigoted, and given to terrible W.C. Fields imitations, but, they have to admit, first-rate cop — Carella and Hawes roam across the city from the waterfront to the heart of the black ghetto, following a deadly trail of greed and violence. Their path leads them directly to a gallery of very unpleasant suspects and to a most unusual afternoon poker game,complete with high stakes, fast company — and a wild card

Evan Hunter’s magnificent new novel is the story of a desperate journey of discovery-through a man’s past, through the byways of a great city, through the infinitely more complex labyrinths of the human psyche. Its nameless protagonist wakes at sunrise in Central Park in New York City, faced with a terrifying riddle: Who am I? Completely without memory, as naked of self-knowledge as a newly born child, he ventures out into the city in search of self, tentatively at first, then with increasing boldness, finally with a headlong fierce compulsion to find and face whatever truth it is that has stripped him of his past. As he approaches the explosive climax of his quest, the scenes shift in a kaleidoscopic succession of encounters and adventures, fragments of the intermingled past and present: Greenwich Village and the haunting echo from his past awakened by the girl who takes him in; Chinatown and the wild spree with a sailor on shore leave; the Italian all-night wedding feast; the scavenger hunt with the glossy rich woman on an emotional bender; Harlem and the incredibly tense high-stake crap game; the door slammed in his face... and, at the last twirl of the kaleidoscope, the final electrifying revelation

“This is your case,” the manual advised, “stick with the investigation.” Stick with it in the pouring rain where a man lay with his open skull seeping his brains onto the sidewalk, stick with it in a hospital room reeking of antiseptic, stick with it in a tenement apartment at two in the morning, the clock throwing minutes into the empty hours of the night while a woman wept tears for her man who was dead. Search her closet for the clothing the killer wore. Get her to talk about her husband’s possible infidelities. Be a cop. Being a cop was something Steve Carella of the 87th Precinct knew a lot about. He knew about the careful, painstaking work of tracking down leads that could mean nothing or everything. He knew that cops like continuity even if it takes a couple of corpses to provide it and that right now he and his partner Meyer Meyer had all the continuity they could handle. They had two corpses shot within four hours of each other on the same rainy Friday night with the same .38 Smith & Wesson — one a calypso singer from Trinidad who had just finished a gig the other a hooker named C. J. who had just turned her last trick. Carella knew they had a case that was growing as cold as a slab in the morgue. He knew that they had a killer loose in the city who had killed once, twice, and perhaps would kill again if he and Meyer didn’t follow the leads, didn’t stick with the case, didn’t get there first... With this breathtakingly suspenseful novel Ed McBain shows us what the police procedural novel is all about. Whether you’re one of the millions of faithful followers of the 87th Precinct or a fan-to-be, from the first terse page of Calypso to an ending that will frighten you out of your skin, you’ll know you are in the hands of a master

“It almost seemed as if winter had already come.”　 Those were the final words of Last Summer. In this, Evan Hunters new novel, winter has indeed arrived — and Sandy, David, and Peter are together again. Sandy, David, and Peter five years later. The searing summer of Rhoda is far behind them. More stylish and sophisticated than they were as adolescents, each complete in the presence of the other, they form a brilliant trio: handsome, intelligent, witty, humorous, impregnable — and deadly. Into their dazzling orbit come Foderman and Mary Margaret. What happens to them all, in the days before Christmas, is as chilling as the snow- covered terrain surrounding them, as terror-ridden as the trails they ski.　 COME WINTER is an unforgettable exploration into the nature of evil

“Consolation,” which appeared in Mystery Monthly, is one of his more recent tales; this powerful, uncompromising, and sexually explicit story of two small-time criminals named Colley and Jocko was later revised and incorporated into the McBain novel Guns, published that same year

“Just you,” Andrew Farrell says, when Sarah Welles asks him what he wants of her. “Just you.” But long before she finally gives in to Andrew, long before she walks up those steps into the mysterious world of his wood-paneled office, long before she feels his naked body against hers, Sarah knows she has already chosen to betray her husband and her marriage. Adultery will be the least of her crimes. Making forbidden love to Andrew, Sarah has no idea of the dangerous game she has begun. She is about to find out who her lover really is, and Andrew is about to discover how unforgiving and relentless her husband can be. CRIMINAL CONVERSATION is a gripping novel of sex, passion, and violence, set against a backdrop of a society tattered by criminality. Prom victims to predators, from foot soldiers to kingpins, Evan Hunter spins a masterly tale that no one — not even Ed McBain — could do better: an explosive and erotic novel of psychosexual suspense

What’s cuddly, cute, and the object of a high-stakes court battle? It’s Gladly, a cross-eyed teddy bear: the brainchild of slightly cross-eyed beauty Lainie Commins, Matthew Hope’s client and the litigant in a trademark dispute with toy company tycoons Etta and Brett Toland. Hope, still recovering from a near-fatal shooting, is certain he can win this case — until someone murders one of the key players. While Hope is locked in a battle of nerves and legal wits, two of his closest associates have found their way into another of Florida’s favorite people traps. Warren Chambers and Toots Kiley have entered the underworld of drug-smuggling violence from opposite ends — and they can only escape together

GUNS: A crime novel unlike any you’ve ever read by Ed McBain, a story of fear and obsession — tougher, grittier, even more suspenseful than his famous 87th Precinct series. GUNS: For months Colley Donato and his partners have been robbing liquor stores in New York — quick cash, easy pickings. But today something is very wrong. The weather is suffocatingly hot, tempers are short — and it is their thirteenth job. Colley doesn’t like it when the others decide to go ahead anyway. He likes it even less when two cops come charging down the aisle with guns in their hands. As if in slow motion, Colley sees his finger pull the trigger — and the back of a cop’s head comes off. Colley Donato, twenty-nine, has just been promoted. He used to be a small-time robber, hardly worth the trouble. Now he has killed a policeman — and all hell is about to break loose. GUNS is the story of the next twenty-four hours in Colley’s life as he scrambles for safety — dodging, improvising cons (for which he has surprising talent), using and being used by a bizarre variety of friends and strangers: like Benny, the broad, smiling, benign man who makes a living hooking girls on dope and turning them onto the streets; Jeanine, Colley’s ex-partner’s wife, who shows a terrifyingly unexpected gift for savagery; his brother, Albert, a Buick dealer in Larchmont, who lectures him: “Nick, a man who has to commit robberies is a man with a serious personality disorder.” With a razor-sharp eye for detail, McBain draws us into the codes and rhythms of Colley’s world, into the flickering scenes inside Colley’s head — the art of growing up in East Harlem; the Orioles “Social and Athletic Club,” where he first makes his mark as “sergeant at arms”; the jobs he pulls; the prisons; above all the exhilaration and glory of holding that first gun at age fifteen, feeling its beauty, its wonderful power... GUNS: Ed McBain’s abilities for characterization, tight suspense, and hard, clear detail have always been first-rate, but this new novel gives them room to stretch as they never have before. From the opening page to the stunning climax, the result is a superb thriller and a brilliant exploration into the criminal mind

The minute hand on the station-house clock crept past midnight, and another day began — a not untypical October Sunday, bringing the usual assortment of big city crimes to the detectives of the 87th Precinct. To start the morning hours of the night, there was a gory homicide: a young actress in a controversial play had been stabbed, and Carella and Hawes set out to investigate. Meanwhile, Bert Kling was taking a call about a bombing in the black ghetto, and Meyer found himself talking to an attractive, well-educated woman who had an unlikely complaint: larcenous ghosts. The day shift was no less eventful. Willis and Genero were investigating the death of a bearded youth who fell or was pushed from a fourth-floor window — stark naked. Alex Delgado took on a nasty beating in the Puerto Rican barrio, while Carl Kapek was looking for a man and woman who specialised in muggings. Andy Parker’s routine assignment took an unexpected twist: a pair of gunmen killed a grocer and shot Parker twice. And, just to fill in the idle moments, there was the usual parade of malicious punks, youthful runaways. hookers, and small-time burglars. For the first time, Ed McBain has brought together all the detectives of the 87th Precinct in a single novel — a book filled with his usual precise descriptions of police procedure and an ingenious assortment of interlocking plots — some violent, some touching, some ironic, but all marked by the masterful McBain touch

It has been almost ten years since Evan Hunter burst upon the literary scene with his first book, The Blackboard Jungle. That best-selling novel, with its important sociological implications, established Hunter immediately as a most exciting topical writer. In the ensuing decade his reputation has grown enormously and become solidified as a result of four other major novels, the most recent of which is Mothers and Daughters. During this same period, Hunter wrote a number of short stories for magazine publication. This collection presents the best of them and displays the stunning range of the author’s interests and talents. There are gay stories and grim stories; realistic stories and wildly fantastic stories; stories of character and stories of action. Only one thing about the collection is uniform: the intense quality that Hunter puts into everything he writes, which holds the reader spellbound to the page. Evan Hunter fans will find the two very long stories in the volume of particular interest, for each is a substantial work on its own and represents the author at top form. These are the title story, Happy New Year, Herbie, and the lead-off story, Uncle Jimbo’s Marbles

What are the ingredients of a hard-boiled detective story? “Savagery, style, sophistication, sleuthing, and sex,” said Ellery Queen. Often a desperate blond, a jealous husband, and, of course, a tough-but-tender P.I. the likes of Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. Perhaps Raymond Chandler summed it up best in his description of Dashiell Hammett’s style: “Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it... He put these people down on paper as they were, and he made them talk and think in the language they customarily used for these purposes.” Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories is the largest and most comprehensive collection of its kind, with over half of the stories never published before in book form. Included are thirty-six sublimely suspenseful stories that chronicle the evolution of this quintessentially American art form, from its earliest beginnings during the golden age of the legendary pulp magazine Black Mask in the 1920s, to the arrival of the tough digest Manhunt in the 1950s, and finally leading up to present-day hard-boiled stories by such writers as James Ellroy. Here are eight decades worth of the best writing about betrayal, murder, and mayhem: from Hammett’s 1925 tour de force “The Scorched Face,” in which the disappearance of two sisters leads Hammett’s never-named detective, the Continental Op, straight into a web of sexual blackmail amidst the West Coast elite, to Ed Gorman’s 1992 “The Long Silence After,” a gripping and powerful rendezvous involving a middle class insurance executive, a Chicago streetwalker, and a loaded .38. Other delectable contributions include “Brush Fire” by James M. Cain, author of The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raymond Chandler’s “I’ll Be Waiting,” where, for once, the femme fatale is not blond but a redhead, a Ross Macdonald mystery starring Macdonald’s most famous creator, the cryptic Lew Archer, and “The Screen Test of Mike Hammer” by the one and only Mickey Spillane. The hard-boiled cult has more in common with the legendary lawmen of the Wild West than with the gentleman and lady sleuths of traditional drawing room mysteries, and this direct line of descent is on brilliant display in two of the most subtle and tautly written stories in the collection, Elmore Leonard’s “3:10 to Yuma” and John D. MacDonald’s “Nor Iron Bars.” Other contributors include Evan Hunter (better known as Ed McBain), Jim Thompson, Helen Nielsen, Margaret Maron, Andrew Vachss, Faye Kellerman, and Lawrence Block. Compellingly and compulsively readable, Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories is a page-turner no mystery lover will want to be without. Containing many notable rarities, it celebrates a genre that has profoundly shaped not only American literature and film, but how we see our heroes and ourselves

Why would any man, however deranged, take an overdose of sleeping pills and then calmly turn off his air conditioner with the city sweltering through a backbreaking heat wave? This question nags at Detectives Bert Kling and Steve Carella. Kling’s got other problems: his startlingly beautiful wife is almost certainly cheating on him, and he is being stalked by a psychopathic ex-con bent on getting Wing for having sent him up. While Carella scratches away like a terrier at the “suicide,” Kling grows less and less capable of coping. In a shattering triple climax, the tinderbox elements converge Ed McBain makes it clear that there can be no real winners here, except for the reader. In this, his thirty-fifth 87th Precinct novel, Ed McBain reaffirms his mastery of the police procedural story

Here is Ed McBain’s most ambitious and far-reaching novel of the famed 87th Precinct. But Ice goes beyond the world of the 87th Precinct. Ice transcends the genre of crime fiction... as Le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold did the novel of espionage. Ice is Ed McBain’s most searching and compelling novel... of justice triumphant over the savage law of the city streets... of men and women who wear the golden detective shield with pride, honor and dedication. Ed McBain has written his most masterly story of crime and defection, life and sudden death in the chillingly realistic world of the 87th Precinct, and beyond

“Nothing can confuse a person (cops included) more than a lot of names and a lot of pieces and a lot of corpses...” The cops of the 87th Precinct are really confused this time. When Detective Arthur Brown finds two dead men, it looks like a nice simple double homicide — except for the piece of photograph clutched in one dead hand. The confusion doesn’t start until Irving Krutch, an insurance investigator, turns up at the squad room with another piece of the photograph. Part of a homemade jigsaw puzzle, according to Krutch. The handiwork of the late Carmine Bonamico. When all the pieces, which had been passed around to friends and relatives of Bonamicos gang, were assembled, they would reveal the hiding place of the§ 750,000 the gang had stolen from a savings and loan association six years ago. Find the missing pieces, find the missing money. The search is on, and it involves Detectives Brown and Carella with people like an art gallery owner, a cheap hoodlum, a middle-aged floozy, a hot-dog vendor and an old Sicilian woman. Detective Meyer gets lucky. He visits a boutique where all the salesgirls wear see-through blouses. Some of these people have another caller. It turns out that owning a piece of the photograph can be deadly, and it looks like a toss-up as to who will get the puzzle completed first — the police or a very determined murderer

It is late afternoon, Friday, October 13. Detectives Carella, Meyer and Kling of the 87th Squad are waiting for their relief, due at 5:45 P.M. At 5:15, the telephone rings. Meyer answers, listens, jots down a few notes, then says, “Steve, Bert, you want to take this? Some nut just shot up a bookstore on Culver Avenue. There’s three people laying dead on the floor.” The crowd had already gathered around the bookshop. There were two uniformed cops on the sidewalk, and a squad car was pulled up to the curb across the street. The people pulled back instinctively when they heard the wail of the siren on the police sedan. Carella got out first, slamming the door behind him. He waited for Kling to come around the car, and then both men started for the shop. At the door, the patrolman said, “Lot of dead people in there, sir.” A routine squeal for the 87th, answered with routine dispatch. But there was nothing routine about it a moment later. What Bert Kling found in the wreckage of the shop very nearly destroyed him. Enraged, embittered, the youngest detective on the squad begins a nightmarish search for a crazed and wanton killer. The hunt is relentless and intensely personal — not only for Kling but for every man on the squad. Lady, Lady, I Did It! like all 87th Precinct stories, is charged with emotion and moves from the first page with the relentless, driving intensity that is characteristic of Ed McBain

Last summer was a vacation island, beachgrass and plum, sunshine and sand... Last summer was a million laughs... Last summer a pretty blonde girl and two carefree, suntanned youths nursed an injured seagull back to health... Last summer, too, they befriended Rhoda, a shy young girl with trusting eyes... Let the reader beware. This is a shocking book — not for its candor and daring but for its cruelty and scorn, its shattering impact, and its terrifying vision of reality. What begins as a vacation idyll gradually turns into a dark parable of modem society, revealing the insensate barbarity of man. The opening is as bright as summer, as calm as a cobra dozing in the sun. But, as summer and compassion wane, the author strips away the pretense of youth and lays bare the blunt, primeval urge to crush, defile, betray. The tragic, inevitable outcome exposes the depths of moral corruption and the violation of the soul. In this tale of depravity, Evan Hunter has written a novel that is a work of art. Its theme and portent are inescapable, its insolence cauterizing, its humor outrageous — a brilliant stabbing, altogether unforgettable book

Ed McBain made his debut in 1956. In 2004, more than a hundred books later, he personally collected twenty-five of his stories written before he was Ed McBain. All but five of them were first published in the detective magazine Manhunt and none of them appeared under the Ed McBain byline. They were written by Evan Hunter (McBain’s legal name as of 1952), Richard Marsten (a pseudonym derived from the names of his three sons), or Hunt Collins (in honor of his alma mater, Hunter College). Here are kids in trouble and women in jeopardy. Here are private eyes and gangs. Here are loose cannons and innocent bystanders. Here, too, are cops and robbers. These are the stories that prepared Evan Hunter to become Ed McBain, and that prepared Ed McBain to write the beloved 87th Precinct novels. In individual introductions, McBain tells how and why he wrote these stories that were the start of his legendary career

“ ‘You’ll have to speak louder,’ the voice said. ‘I’m a little hard of hearing.’ ” What with one thing and another, such as a highly successful cat burglar and what seemed to be a hippie crucifixion, the 87th Precinct didn’t need The Deaf Man. Especially since he’d already put in two previous appearances resulting in blackmail, murder and general havoc. But they had him, certainly, they very definitely had him — or was it he that had them? This time, The Deaf Man thinks it fitting that a police detective will help him rob a bank. Detective Steve Carella, to be exact. So, each day, he sends Carella a photostat in the morning mail. The first two pictures of J. Edgar Hoover, the next are of George Washington. All are clues, obviously, but what do they mean? Who, where, when and how? This is tough, taut, funny mystery with a number of very peculiar cases and a most surprising ending, played against Ed McBain’s highly-detailed knowledge of police and detective procedure

A young woman is found hanging from a lamppost in a deserted area of the 87th Precinct. That same night, another woman is raped — for the third time in succession, by the same man each time. Not long after that, a second murder victim is found hanging from a lamppost in another part of the precinct. The murders are obviously linked. But how? And why are both murder victims female athletes and — more specifically — runners on the track teams of two different colleges? Why is someone, as it turns out, systematically raping different women twice, three times, sometimes four times in succession? Has the Deaf Man put in a return appearance, as the detectives of the 87th Precinct secretly suspect? Can Fat Ollie Weeks help the men of the 87th solve these crimes? Will Eileen Burke, working as a decoy for the Rape Squad, be forced into a confrontation that may change her life and her views about police work? Lightning can strike twice — and sometimes even more often. In his new 87th Precinct novel, Ed McBain once again shows how the patient, hard-working professionals with the golden shields cope with crime and killers, putting together the pieces of each difficult case with immense skill, intuition... and old-fashioned pounding of the streets... testing their expertise to the limit of endurance

The Crofts live with their blond, teenage daughter, Lissie, in a converted sawmill in Rutledge, Connecticut, an exclusive community of achievers. Lissie’s mother, Connie, is a Vassar graduate; her father, Jamie, a successful photographer. But these were the sixties — the time of Nixon and moon walks, prosperity and war, Woodstock and Chappaquiddick — and the Crofts are caught in a time slot that not only caused alienation but in fact encouraged it. Lissie, in her rush to independence and self-identity, along with others of her generation, goes her own way. She leaves school, skips to London and begins a journey across Europe to India. Breaking all the rules, flouting her parents’ values, she causes in Jamie a deep concern that frequently turns to impotent rage. When Lissie returns, she is surprised and angry to find that things are not the same. While she was out living her own life, her dad was falling in love with the woman he would eventually marry. Hurt and confused over her parents’ divorce, Lissie is not ready to accept for them what she sees as clear-cut rights for herself. And try as he will, her father cannot comprehend the new Lissie. More than a novel about the dissolution of a family in a turbulent decade, Love, Dad is an incredibly perceptive story of father and daughter and their special love — a love that endures even though understanding has been swept away in the whirlwind of change

This anthology features some of the most famous authors writing at the peak of their careers!

The four books that make up this novel — Amanda, Gillian, Julia and Kate — span three generations and nearly thirty years of time. Except that Kate is Amanda’s niece, none of these women is related, but their lives cross and recross, linked by Julia’s son David. Julia Regan belongs to the “older” generation in the sense that her son David was old enough to fight in the war. That he ended the war in the stockade was due more to his mother than to himself, and the book devoted to Julia shows what sort of woman she was — why, having gone to Italy before the war with an ailing sister, she constantly put off her return to her family — and why, therefore, David is the man he is. Unsure of himself and bitter (for good reason) David finds solace in Gillian, who had been Amanda’s room-mate in college during the war. He loses her because he does not know what he wants from life. Gillian is an enchanting character who knows very well what she wants: she is determined to become an actress. In spite of the extreme tenderness and beauty of her love affair with David (and Evan Hunter has caught exactly the gaieties and misunderstandings of two young people very much in love, when a heightened awareness lifts the ordinary into the extraordinary and the beautiful into the sublime) she is not prepared to continue indefinitely an unmarried liaison, and she leaves him. When, eleven years later and still unmarried, she finally tastes success, the taste is of ashes, and she wonders whether the price has not been too high. Amanda is considerably less sure of herself than Gillian, though foe a time it looks as if her music will bring her achievement. But she has in her too much of her sexually cold mother to be passionate in love or in her music. She marries Matthew who is a lawyer, and, without children of their own, they bring up her sister’s child, Kate, who, in the last book, is growing up out of childhood into womanhood — with a crop of difficulties of her own. Unlike all his earlies novels (except in extreme readability) Mothers and Daughters is not an exposure of social evils, but a searching and sympathetic study of people

She is a Broadway dancer, exquisite and mercurial. He is a dedicated psychiatrist, happily married to a beautiful woman, the father of two lovely children vacationing with their mother on Martha’s Vineyard. “Good morning, sir”, she said, as she passed David Chapman on a sunny June day in Central Park. Moments later, she was locked in mortal combat with a mugger, and David came to her rescue... They tell each other some truths, but only some. They know each other’s mysteries, but only some. They slip into a realm of sensual deception and imminent danger... For who is Kate Duggan really, the woman who makes sexual fantasies come true? And who is David Chapman, the doctor who spends his day with other people’s neuroses, guilt, and lies? Now, in the heat of a New York City summer, they will learn everything — when a stalker turns their mad lust into a murderous affair

Enter a world of seedy nightclubs, dangerous, dimly-lit street and cool, wisecracking dicks pitting themselves against armies of ruthless gangsters. This is pulp fiction, a genre spawned amid the disillusionment of post-World War I America — and now reaching new heights of popularity.　 Writers like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett turned that unique blend of rapid-fire action, violence and cynical humour into an art form that is being recreated by a fresh wave of young writers whose stories have all the drama and atmosphere of their predecessors’.　 This page-turning collection, brought together by a true aficionado of the hardboiled story, includes, of course, Chandler and Hammett, but also Mickey Spillane, Ross MacDonald, Ed McBain and James Hadley Chase from the vintage years and from the current generation James Ellroy, Elmore Leonard and Quentin Tarantino, to name just a few of the twenty great writers featured here. Even Stephen King, doyen of the world of horror, has turned his hand to pulp fiction and is represented in this book.　 The world of the hard-drinking, fast-action, apparently indestructible private eye, personified by Chandler’s creation, Philip Marlowe, was never more vibrant. It’s all here, and more, in a book that no fan of the genre can afford to miss

He was a model child. In fact, he’d been made to order

Ed McBain is a pen name of Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Evan Hunter, who wrote The Blackboard Jungle. As Ed McBain, he has written fifty 87th Precinct novels, the blueprint series for every successful police procedural series. In this original short story collection, you’ll see that McBain’s stories are not neat little plot pieces; just as in real life, the characters’ messy problems aren’t cleared up at the end with pat solutions. In “The Interview,” an egotistical director manages to antagonize and alienate everyone connected to the movie industry when he is grilled about a drowning that occurred during a film shoot. A circus owner hires an aerialist in “The Fallen Angel,” and gets more than he bargained for. The most affecting, famous story in the collection is “The Last Spin,” in which two opposing gang members play a game of Russian roulette. The eleven stories in this collection serve to remind us of how versatile and unique a writer Ed McBain a.k.a. Evan Hunter can be

Shimmering blonde hair framing an exquisite pale face. Deep green eyes, a generous mouth. Matthew Hope took one look and fell instantly in love. Sarah Whittaker had everything: stunning good looks, youth, money, social standing. Everything, that is, but her freedom. Because Sarah Whittaker was currently residing, against her inclinations and her will, in Knott’s Retreat — familiarly known to the residents of Florida’s booming West Coast as Nut’s Retreat. In the State of Florida, County of Calusa, Sarah Whittaker was a certified paranoid schizophrenic. That’s what the doctors said. It’s what her widowed mother said. It’s what the court-ordered psychiatric commitment papers said. It was not what Sarah Whittaker said — and that was why she had called Matthew Hope. Would he, she asked, act as her attorney and fight for her freedom — not to mention fighting for the $650,000 left her by her father and now controlled by her mother. Hope might have lost his heart, but he hadn’t lost his wits. He probed Sarah’s story of a mother driven by hate to confine her only child to a mental institution and decided she was telling the truth. He took the case. And in so doing was led into a hall of mirrors in which reality and delusion blurred into murder, mutilation, and the greatest danger Hope had ever known

This is the history of an unfaithful husband — his illusions, his stratagems, his fears, his entrapment. The young husband in Evan Hunter’s new novel is not a philanderer, not a disturbed personality. He has been a responsible family man. He loves his wife. But at a moment when his ego is slightly bruised, he meets a woman, a neighbor, who gives him a dangerous new image of himself — the image of a man who is not fully alive. He is convinced, and he is caught. In Strangers When We Meet, Evan Hunter charts the progress of infidelity: the beginning of the affair — stage fright and an illusion of romance; the first small deceptions that multiply into a nightmarish entanglement of lies; the panic when the phone rings at home; the endless, tortuous arrangements for hurried meetings; the strained chance encounters in public (“Did I give myself away?”); the rising guilt and desperation. And in the background — the person who knows, the confidant who should never have been told, who might some evening drink too much and bring the walls crashing down

Practically everybody will remember Bingo and Handsome, partners in the International Foto, Motion Picture and Television Corporation of America (or, to put it more bluntly, street photographers), whose earlier adventures were related in The Sunday Pigeon Murders and The Thursday Turkey Murders. Readers may have forgotten, however, that from these events our heroes assembled assets of $2,773 and some odd cents. This inspires them to try their fortune in Hollywood. (“After all,” Bingo said, “we’re photographers, aren’t we?”) Along with the bankroll they were blessed with Bingo’s complete faith in himself, Handsome’s photographic memory, and the innocence of city slickers. It seemed perfectly sensible to them, for example, to make a down payment of $2,000 on an empty Charles Addams type mansion because it had once belonged to April Robin, the great star of silent-screen days. Immediately thereafter, they paid a deposit against the rental for a small building on the Strip. These negotiations left them with no cash, but considerable prestige. They soon, inevitably, acquired a landlord who had supposedly been murdered four years earlier, a housekeeper who was murdered the night they moved in, a cop who would like to arrest them both just so that he can be doing something positive, and assorted characters who are willing to pay Bingo and Handsome (a) to find the body, and (b) not to find the body. All this inspires Bingo and Handsome into furious activities which are — well, not exactly efficient, but certainly fascinating. In trying to cope with their commitments they meet some remarkable people, the kind that supposedly are found in Hollywood but actually could have been conceived of only by Craig Rice. In other words, The April Robin Murders is funny, hilariously complicated, knowing, sentimental: that mixture of mirth and murder uniquely the product of one of the best-loved and best-selling mystery writers of our time

Best-selling author Scott Turow takes the helm for the tenth edition of this annual, featuring twenty-one of the past year’s most distinguished tales of mystery, crime, and suspense. Elmore Leonard tells the tale of a young woman who’s fled home with a convicted bank robber. Walter Mosley describes an over-the-hill private detective and his new client, a woman named Karma. C. J. Box explores the fate of two Czech immigrants stranded by the side of the road in Yellowstone Park. Ed McBain begins his story on role-playing with the line “ ‘Why don’t we kill somebody?’ she suggested.” Wendy Hornsby tells of a wild motorcycle chase through the canyons outside Las Vegas. Laura Lippman describes the “Crack Cocaine Diet.” And James Lee Burke writes of a young boy who may have been a close friend of Bugsy Siegel. As Scott Turow notes in his introduction, these stories are “about crime — its commission, its aftermath, its anxieties, its effect on character.” The Best American Mystery Stories 2006 is a powerful collection for all readers who enjoy fiction that deals with the extremes of human passion and its dark consequences

Have yourself a crooked little Christmas with The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries. Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler collects sixty of his all-time favorite holiday crime stories — many of which are difficult or nearly impossible to find anywhere else. From classic Victorian tales by Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Thomas Hardy, to contemporary stories by Sara Paretsky and Ed McBain, this collection touches on all aspects of the holiday season, and all types of mysteries. They are suspenseful, funny, frightening, and poignant. Included are puzzles by Mary Higgins Clark, Isaac Asimov, and Ngaio Marsh; uncanny tales in the tradition of A Christmas Carol by Peter Lovesey and Max Allan Collins; O. Henry-like stories by Stanley Ellin and Joseph Shearing, stories by pulp icons John D. MacDonald and Damon Runyon; comic gems from Donald E. Westlake and John Mortimer; and many, many more. Almost any kind of mystery you’re in the mood for — suspense, pure detection, humor, cozy, private eye, or police procedural — can be found in these pages. FEATURING: — Unscrupulous Santas — Crimes of Christmases Past and Present — Festive felonies — Deadly puddings — Misdemeanors under the mistletoe — Christmas cases for classic characters including Sherlock Holmes, Brother Cadfael, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Ellery Queen, Rumpole of the Bailey, Inspector Morse, Inspector Ghote, A.J. Raffles, and Nero Wolfe

This is EVAN HUNTER whose powerful and controversial first novel, THE BLACKBOARD JUNGLE, was a book, magazine and motion-picture sensation last year. Despite his youth (29), he has sold many short stories, a play, seven mysteries and several novels. Here are a group of his short stories concerning youngsters and crime. Stories of teen-age gangs, of girls in trouble, of Russian Roulette. The ordeal of a dope addict, the sex murder of a baby sitter, the menace of a mugger. Here are the stories behind the headlines — tragic, frightening, accurate episodes of life in the modern jungle, the streets and cellars, the hallways and roof tops, the parks and slums of a big city

Transgressions is an amazing collection of original crime novellas, compiled by Ed McBain, one of the most illustrious names in crime fiction.　 This collection includes original stories from Jeffery Deaver, Joyce Carol Oates and Ed McBain himself, all award-winning authors who have been regular New York Times bestsellers for many years. From a suburban shooting in Jeffery Deaver’s powerfully compelling Forever to Joyce Carol Oates’ darkly disturbing The Corn Maiden and Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct story Merely Hate, this collection showcases some of the best crime novelists in the business writing at the top of their form

Тема остросюжетного психологического детектива Эда Макбейна — общество во власти страха, порожденного расизмом. Обвиненный в убийстве чернокожий парень, мечется по Нью-Йорку в поисках убежища

Как у сказочной принцессы, у Сары Уиттейкер в романе «Белоснежка и Аллороза» есть все — молодость, красота, богатство, положение в обществе. Все, кроме… свободы. Заключенная в психиатрическую клинику, она просит Хоупа стать ее адвокатом. Сюда запрятала ее собственная мать. Причина — огромная сумма, оставленная Саре умершим отцом. Взявшись за дело, Хоуп оказывается в королевстве кривых зеркал, где ему угрожает страшная и неожиданная опасность…

Подозрение в убийстве еврейского священника на заднем дворе синагоги падает на ярого местного антисемита, который не раз угрожал ребе. Но после убийства главного подозреваемого установление истинных мотивов и личности преступника становятся делом случая

С присущей ему точностью наблюдений автор исследует криминальную среду как специфический срез современного американского общества. Сборник рассказов `Дети джунглей` посвящен подросткам, проводящим время на улицах Нью – Йорка. Наркотики, грабежи и убийства – неотъемлемая частьих опасной жизни…

Американский писатель Ивэн Хантер написал много книг в самых разных жанрах. Но наибольший успех завоевала серия полицейских романов, выпущенная под псевдонимом Эд Макбейн. Офицеры 87-го полицейского участка, расположенного в неназванном громадном городе, их друзья, их смертельные враги как живые встают на страницах романов. Эд Макбейн – это изощрённость криминальной интриги, тонкий психологизм, современные образы, атмосфера опасности, хитросплетения любовных интриг, умение с первой страницы завладеть вниманием читателя

Загадочны обстоятельства смерти Артура Шумахера, дважды женатого преуспевающего адвоката. Застреленный вскоре после жестокого убийства его любовницы, он оставил после себя коллекцию порнографических посланий и тайну, угрожающую жизни сразу нескольких женщин. В этом романе Стив Карелла сражается не только с кровавым маньяком, но и горечью собственных утрат

Этот сборник — настоящая сенсация. Эд Макбейн включил в него работы самых знаменитых мастеров остросюжетной литературы США — «короля ужасов» Стивена Кинга, «живых классиков» детектива — Дональда Уэстлейка и Лоренса Блока, не знающей себе равных среди авторов интеллектуального триллера Джойс Кэрол Оутс… И многих других писателей, каждый из которых — явление в современной детективной литературе. Все произведения, вошедшие в сборник, написаны специально для антологии!

Молодому полицейскому Ландину предъявлены обвинения во взяточничестве и лжесвидетельстве. Адвокат и невеста Ландина, убежденные, что его подставили, обращаются за помощью к частному детективу Мюррею Керку. Однако Керк не спешит оправдывать Ландина — да и информация, которую он получает в ходе расследования, весьма двусмысленна…