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Philip Marlowe's on a case: his client wants him to recover a rare gold coin called a Brasher Doubloon, missing from her late husband's collection. It becomes complicated when Marlowe finds that everyone who handles the coin suffers a run of very bad luck: they always end up dead.

Derace Kingsley's wife ran away to Mexico to get a divorce and marry a Chris Lavery. Trouble is, when Philip Marlowe asks Lavery about it he denies everything and sends the private investigator packing with a flea lodged firmly in his ear. But when Marlowe encounters Lavery, he's denying nothing on account of the two bullet holes in his heart.

This collection brings together the very best of Dashiell Hammett's early stories featuring the Continental Op, the dispassionate fat man working for the Continental Detective Agency whose only interest is in doing his job in a world of violence, passion, desperate action and great excitement.

Set in Elizabethan England, Burgess's first novel for four years centres on the life of Christopher Marlowe, who was killed in suspicious circumstances in a tavern brawl in Deptford 400 years ago. It portrays a theatre genius riven by sexual and political conflicts.

Her name is Orfamay Quest and she's come all the way from Manhattan, Kansas, to find her missing brother Orrin. Or least ways that's what she tells PI Philip Marlowe, offering him a measly twenty bucks for the privilege. But Marlowe's feeling charitable though it's not long before he wishes he wasn't so sweet.

'An acknowledged literary landmark' Robert Graves

First, there is a skeleton in a jacket, then a corpse in a golden aeroplane. After another body, Albert Campion nearly makes a fourth. Both the skeleton and the corpse have died with suspicious convenience for Georgia Wells. Georgia's best friend happens to be Valentine, Campion's sister. In order to protect Valentine, he must unravel the story.

Story of a bank robbery and its aftermath, of cross and double-cross. When it comes to pulling off the perfect bank job, Doc McCoy wrote the book. His partner Rudy Torrento, who is not only treacherous, but insane, and his wife is still an amateur. When the crime is big & bloody enough there is no such thing a clean getaway.

A beautiful young woman walked into the night and met her horrific destiny. Five days later, her tortured body was found drained of blood and cut in shelf. The newspapers called her 'The Black Dahlia'. Two cops are caught up in the investigation and embark on a hellish journey that takes them to the core of the dead girl's twisted life.