The Thin Man: (Penguin Red Classics S.)

'An acknowledged literary landmark' Robert Graves

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.

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.

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.

'The finest series of detective novels ever written by an American' -- William Goldman

Los Angeles is a city where the police are as corrupt as the criminals. Six prisoners are beaten senseless in their cells by cops crazed on alcohol. For the three L A P D detectives involved, it will expose the guilty secrets on which they have built their corrupt and violent careers.

In 1924, San Francisco is booming. The great fire and earthquake of 1906 cleared the ground for a modern city. but the closer Mary Russell comes to the place she used to call home, the more troubling her dreams.

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.

The classic tale of an evil woman motivated by greed who corrupts a weak man motivated by lust. Walter Huff is an insurance investigator like any other until the day he meets the beautiful and dangerous Phyllis Nirdlinger and falls under her spell. Together they plot to kill her husband and split the insurance.

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.